Chapter 14 - Texture mapping techniques

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This chapter provides a sampling of some of the building block algorithms that are used to create sophisticated texture mapping techniques. It also examines the uses of texture mapping, studying texture coordinate generation and filtering as building blocks of functionality, rather than just a way of painting color bitmaps onto polygons. Examples of these techniques include texture animation, billboards, texture color coding, and image warping. Texture mapping is undoubtedly the most powerful component in a graphics library. A part of the reason is its ability to combine image-based and geometry-based processing with great flexibility. Texture mapping is a powerful building block of graphic techniques. The traditional use of texture mapping applies images to geometric surfaces. Nothing can replace a careful reading of the OpenGL core and extension specifications, augmented with some well-crafted test applications. The techniques that allow the application to maximize basic texture mapping functionality include rendering very larger textures using texture paging, prefiltering textures to improve quality, and using image mosaics (or atlases) to improve texture performances.