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At any time, a game will likely have many objects rendering textures.
So what is a texture? an image for example?

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3 Answers

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Yes, a texture for most purposes is an image.

Once a texture is loaded from a file, it can be applied as a sort of "decal" to any polygon you wish.

When you see textures in an image file they typically appear a bit warped,

a texture

That's because when the texture is "wrapped" around the model, it will all even out and wrap around the model properly. You use a technique called UV mapping to be able to create a nice texture that will wrap around the model properly.

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+1 because this is the best answer so far. – Randolf Richardson Aug 8 '11 at 3:36
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In the world of programmable shaders, a texture is a 1D/2D/3D grid of pixel values. These textures can be sampled with different interpolation filters (nearest, bilinear, trilinear, anisotropic) to retrieve values from the texture. Common use-cases are as normal albedo (color) images, gradient maps and palettes, normal maps for bump-mapping, and much much more. – Lars Viklund Aug 8 '11 at 8:56
Yes, but given the context of the question, I think he meant "texture as a picture" – bobobobo Aug 8 '11 at 15:37
up vote 3 down vote

Yes, it typically is an image (often of a pattern) that is usually applied to the surface of a 3D model

Note: Textures can be applied to 2D models as well (thanks to @The Legend of 1982 for pointing that out in a Comment).

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Textures don't exist in 2D model too? – Chiron Aug 8 '11 at 2:41
@The Legend of 1982: I don't see why not (I'll update my Answer to reflect that, thanks and +1), and I certainly didn't mean to imply that textures couldn't be applied when I wrote my Answer. – Randolf Richardson Aug 8 '11 at 3:32
up vote 2 down vote

Textures are basically images that are used in 3D games on 3D objects, 2D planes in 3D space, or GUI elements.

Textures can also be generated at real time.

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