Digital Mapping

What is a diffuse/colour map?

A Diffuse map is the most common kind of texture map. It identifies the colour and pattern of the object. Mapping the diffuse colour is like painting an image on the surface of the object.

What is a specular map?

Specular maps are the maps you use to define a surface's shininess and highlight colour. The higher the value of a pixel (from black to white), the shinier the surface will appear in-game.

What is a normal map?

Normal mapping is a technique used for faking the lighting of bumps dents, which adds detail onto the object, without using more polygons.

What other kinds of texture mapping are there?

Opacity map

An opacity map makes the object transparent and cut-out effects from grayscale images. The black part will get cut out; the white part will be fully displayed; the grey values determine the object’s level of transparency.

Glow map

This technique allows users to control the glow shape of an object, as well as the colour and strength. Glow maps will blend with your original diffuse maps, so the lighter the glow colour, the stronger the glow effect.

Reflection map

Reflection map is also referred to as environment map. The image map is projected onto a 3D surface to represent a reflection of the environment.

What is PBR Rendering?

Physically based rendering (PBR) refers to the concept of using realistic shading/lighting models along with measured surface values to accurately represent real-world materials.