looktexture

Looktexture is a term used in computer graphics to describe texture data that encodes the perceived appearance of a surface under lighting. It is not a standardized term in major rendering pipelines, but it appears in discussions and some production workflows as shorthand for textures that control the look of materials in a scene.

Practically, a look texture can be a single texture that packs multiple material properties, or a set of textures used together to influence shading. For example, a packed look texture might place base color in RGB, roughness in the red channel, metalness in the green channel, and ambient occlusion or emissive information in blue or alpha channels. In other pipelines, the look concept refers to a conventional set of maps used by physically based rendering (PBR), such as albedo, roughness, metalness, normal, and AO, but referred to collectively as the look of the surface.

Benefits of a look texture approach include reduced texture fetches and streamlined asset management, particularly in real-time rendering where bandwidth and memory are critical. Drawbacks include potential loss of precision, the need for custom shaders to unpack channels, and reduced flexibility for artists who want to tweak individual properties independently.

While not a formal standard, the idea of a look texture reflects a practical interest in representing a material's visual appearance efficiently. It is largely dependent on the rendering engine and pipeline in use and may be implemented differently across studios and tools.