Textureel

Textureel is a term used in some discussions to denote a single sample within a texture map, analogous to the well-established concept of a texel. In this usage, a textureel carries the color information for a specific location in UV space and participates in the rasterization process that maps textures onto 3D surfaces.

Textureels are typically arranged in a 2D grid that defines the texture's resolution and sampling density. A textureel can include the standard color channels (red, green, blue, alpha) and, in modern formats, may also be associated with metadata such as a mipmap level, sampling mode, or surface attributes used by shaders. In some pipelines, textureels may be referenced through wrapper structures that bundle color data with extra attributes to support advanced texturing techniques.

Compared with the traditional term texel, textureel is often used to emphasize modularity or tiling of texture data, such as in texture atlases or procedurally generated textures. Both terms describe the same underlying unit of texture sampling, but the preferred term can vary by engine or documentation.

Applications of textureels include real-time rendering, material creation, texture compression studies, and shader development. They are addressed via UV coordinates and can be affected by filtering, such as nearest-neighbor or linear interpolation, and by mipmapping to preserve detail at varying distances.

Origin and usage notes: textureel is not a universally standardized term. It appears sporadically in literature and tutorials as an informal synonym or a pedagogical distinction from texel, rather than as a formal replacement in core graphics APIs.