Texture Types
Modern graphic APIs like DirectX12 or Vulkan support a wide range of texture types because there are many ways that a texture can be accessed and presented. Evergine supports all of them. However, some of them are only loaded using specific image formats (like .dds or .ktx).
Texture 2D
The classic two-dimensional texture. It has width and height, and as a graphic resource, it can be accessed using two texture coordinates UV.
Almost every image file can be imported as a Texture2D asset because it is the most common one.
Usage
They are used for almost everything, like sprites, diffuse channels, and normal mapping.
Texture 2D Array
The same as the Texture2D above, but it contains an array of textures.
Modern graphics APIs support texture arrays, which are arrays of textures with the same size and format. They are treated as the same graphic resource, can have mipmapping information, and can be sampled using an extra texture coordinate that indicates which array item needs to be sampled.
Usage
They are useful, for example, for creating sprite atlases or animations, with each element of the array containing a frame of the animation or atlas.
Texture 1D
A texture that contains only one dimension (width) and is sampled using only one texture coordinate.
Usage
Useful when dealing with one-dimensional information like gradients, for example.
Texture 1D Array
An array of one-dimensional textures as specified before. It's sampled using two texture coordinates: one for the texture address and another for the element in the array.
Usage
Using multiple gradients for a custom shader.
Texture Cube
Commonly known as a Cubemap, it's a texture that contains 6 individual 2D textures, each forming one side of a cube. It has the useful property that it can be sampled using a direction vector instead of texture coordinates.
It's like having a 1x1x1 cube and a vector with the sampling direction at its center. It will return the texel placed at the intersection point. Like in the following diagram.
Usage
TextureCubes are mainly used as environment textures for IBL, like radiance and irradiance texture cubes for specular or diffuse components, or creating Skyboxes for the background environment of your scene.
Texture Cube Array
Texture Cube Arrays take a step further than the normal cubemap and store an array of texture cubes, so they need an additional coordinate to retrieve the element of the array.
Usage
TextureCubeArrays are an interesting choice when creating Reflection Probes of your scene. In one resource, you can store all the probes of the scene.
Texture 3D
A 3D Texture is an image that contains information in three dimensions rather than the standard two.
Usage
They are commonly used to simulate volumetric effects such as fog, smoke, raymarching operations, or for sprite animation blending.