Image

| Texture | Image Filtering | Advanced | Render Tree Usage

Category: Texture

Shader Family: Texture

Output: Color

Is the fastest way to apply a texture onto a surface, whether it be through the Ambient, Diffuse, Specular, Transparency, or Reflectivity parameters (or all of them). By default, this shader is always set to use the no icon image clip. The noicon clip is a standard color bar on a labeled grid.

NoteIn the render tree, this shader is connected to the default no icon.pic.

Name	The shader's name. Enter any name you like, or leave the default.

Texture

Texture Image	Defines an image clip to use. Click Edit to open a property page for the image clip being presently used. To retrieve a new clip, click New and indicate whether you wish to create a new clip or create one from a source.
Image View Window	Displays the selected image. You can right-click on the image to access the Image Clip Property Editor. If the image is a sequence, use the playback controls to play the sequence image.

Copy Alpha to RGB

Enable	Multiplies the RGB channels with the alpha channel by the factor defined in the Alpha Strength parameter.
Alpha Strength	Determines the factor by which the Alpha is multiplied with the RGB channels.

Texture Projection

Selects the texture projection to use. See Specifying a Texture Projection [Texturing].

Bump Mapping

Creates a bumpy surface by altering the X, Y, and Z coordinates of the material's surface. A negative value perturbs the surface inward, a value of 0 has no effect on the surface, and a positive value perturbs the surface outward, all prior to illumination calculation. This parameter does not affect the object's geometry.

Enable	Switches on the bump map parameter of a surface and applies the selected texture (Texture Image).
Bump Map Factor	Defines how "bumpy" the bump map will be. A negative value inverts the bump inward; a positive bump map factor bumps outward.
Use Alpha	Uses the texture's alpha channel to achieve a bump map.
Step	Controls the U, V, and Z steps of a bump map. Use this parameter to "smooth" bumps or make them more jagged.

Image Filtering

This type of filtering is used for high-detail textures that will be moving near to far from the camera, or vice versa. Use this filtering as a less memory-hungry alternative to increasing anti-aliasing on a texture. Elliptical filtering projects a circle (from the camera's pixel) on to the object's surface. Usually, the circle will be elliptical so that all the pixels within the projected circle will be looked up and computed when a color value is returned for all the pixels in the circle.

Elliptical Filtering

Apply to	Specify whether elliptical filtering should be applied to the image's RGBA channels, its Bump Mapping, or both.
Maximum Eccentricity	Defines the eccentricity of the ellipse. The higher the value, the more pronounced the ellipse will be. This parameter defines the space between the ellipse's radii.
Maximum Pixels for Minimum Radius	Defines the maximum number of texture pixels for the minor radius of the ellipse.
Disc Radius	This value is used in the computation of screen-to-texture-space information. If artifacts appear when on objects with highly curved surfaces, use a value between 0 and 0.3.
Bilinear Interpolation	When enabled, magnified areas will be interpolated bilinearly, thus rendering these areas blurrier when seen close up as opposed to the common blocky look.

Advanced

Alternate

U, V, Z

Specifies whether every other copy of the repetition should be reversed so that the successive copies of the texture are alternated.

Repeats

Texture Repeats

Contains the repetition factor in X,Y, and Z. A value of 2, for example, shrinks the texture so that it fits twice in a [0, 1] interval.

UV Remap

Minimum, Maximum

Remaps the [0, 1] texture UV coordinate range by interpolating between the specified values. This lets you expand or shrink a texture image. For a 2D image, only X and Y are used.

Render Tree Usage

The image shader is one of the most basic and useful shaders in the library. Use this shader whenever you wish to use an image clip in a render tree. Only one image clip can be defined per image shader. To blend several images, you can connect them to a Mix8Colors shader.

The image shader can be connected to any color input, whether it be a Surface input, an Image Processing shader, a Mixer shader, or an Environment shader to create an environment map.

On a surface shader, you can use a different image shader to define a separate texture for the Diffuse, Specular, Reflection (to create a reflection map), Transparency (to create a transparency map), etc.

A texture shader has limitless capabilities in a render tree. It can texture an object, be used as a camera or light projection, define bump or displacement maps, or be blended with any number of other textures to create any effect.