Texture

A texture gives a game surface information the underlying geometry does not contain. A color texture can depict paint, skin, or stone, while normal, roughness, metallic, opacity, and emissive maps control how the material reacts to light. Textures are sampled through coordinates assigned to the model, commonly called UVs. Higher resolution can preserve detail at close range but consumes more memory and bandwidth. Engines use mipmaps, compression, and streaming to load appropriate detail for distance and hardware limits. Texture quality therefore affects both visual fidelity and performance.