textureproperty

Texture property is a parameter of a material or shader that holds a reference to a texture asset and controls how that texture contributes to the surface appearance. In modern graphics pipelines, textures provide color, detail, and physical cues without adding geometry. A texture property is typically exposed in a shader or material editor as a slot for a texture, plus optional sampling settings that influence how the texture is read.

Common texture property types include albedo/diffuse, normal, height/displacement, metallic, roughness (or specular), ambient occlusion, and emissive textures. Many workflows use packed textures where two or more channels encode separate properties, such as a single image storing metallic in the red channel and roughness in the green channel. Textures can also be used as detail layers, masks, or environment maps for reflections.

Texture sampling parameters accompany the texture asset and determine how it is applied. Tiling and offset adjust the mapping over the surface. Wrap modes (repeat, clamp) define behavior at edges. Filtering options (point, bilinear, trilinear) and anisotropic filtering affect sampling quality, while mipmaps optimize performance at a distance. Color space and gamma handling (sRGB vs linear) influence color accuracy.

In major engines, texture properties are named and organized differently: Unity uses slots like _MainTex for albedo, _BumpMap for normals, and separate maps for metallic/roughness; Unreal uses Texture Sample nodes with materials feeding into the PBR workflow. Practical considerations include texture resolution, compression, platform memory, and the balance between detail and performance. Properly chosen texture properties contribute to realism while keeping rendering efficient.

See also: Texture mapping, Materials, Shaders.