Texture Maps

Overview

Texture Maps are specified through the Material Editor and cover a wide variety of options. The available texture slots are often dynamic and depends on which shader is selected and which shader options are activated.

Texture Map Tools

The Texture Map slot layout is fairly straight forward, the left colum displays which type of texture map the slot is associated with, the middle column is where the texture map file is place and on the right there are 5 buttons:

Button	Description
	Open the file browser dialog to select a texture.
	Open the current texture in the Texture Browser.
	Open the current texture's associated .psd file in Photoshop (requires defining Texture Editor in Preferences).
	Open the current texture's .tif file (if available) in Photoshop (requires defining Texture Editor in Preferences).
	Assigns currently selected texture in Texture Browser to this slot.

Diffuse Map

See Diffuse Maps for more information.

Specular Map

See Specular Maps for more information.

Normal Map / Bump Map

See Normal Maps for more information.

Environment Map

See Environment Maps for more information.

Detail Map

See Unified Detail Mapping for more information.

Opacity

TBA.

Decal

The decal slot has different functions depending on what kind of shader is used. It is activated with the Illum and Cloth shader.

Decal for the illum shader:

The Illum Shader is linked to the glow feature. Use it to add animated glow to your material without changing the diffuse map.

First, add a glow texture to the decal slot in the material editor. Then add a glow amount value to make the effect visible. Now you can see the glow texture on your model. You can use both black/white and color glow textures.

The glow texture can also be animated. To do this, set up the oscillator in the decal slot sub menu.

To make the decal glow texture visible on specific areas, paint an alpha map for it. Save the alpha map in the alpha channel of the diffuse map. White represents the area where the glow will be visible, and black will hide the glow.

Here is an example. The area where the glow is visible is controlled by a texture stored in the alpha channel of the diffuse map:

Decal for cloth shader:

In combination with the cloth shader, you can occlude or illuminate your model by using an occlusion map as a decal. An example of this is adding dirt to cloth.

You can use any RGB texture. It will be blended into your diffuse map with a mode that is comparable to Photoshop's hard light blend mode.

Without Decal	With Decal

The decal used will be tiled the same way as the diffuse map is tiled. If you change the tiling of the diffuse map, the decal tiling with also be changed.

SubSurface

TBA

Custom

TBA

[1] Custom

TBA

All texture map slots have sub menus for controlling the rotation, offset, and tiling of the texture. They work the same in all map slots.

Filtering

Here you can define what type of texture filtering you wish to use for this texture slot. Anywhere from Point filtering to 16x Anisotropic.

By default, PC builds are forced (and override settings made here) to 16x Anisotropic Filtering (min/max). Console builds are forced to 0x (min) and 4x (max) Anisotropic Filtering. This can be changed via Config files:

PC: <root>/Engine/Config/CVarGroups/sys_spec_Texture.cfg
Console: <root>/Engine/Config/<console>.cfg

Tiling

You can tile your texture for the U and V axis separately by using die arrow button, the slider, or the text field.

Note that you currently cannot tile normal or specular maps independently of the diffuse map. This is because of material instancing which saves many draw calls.


Texture tiling 1, 1	Texture tiling 5, 5	Texture tiling 1, 3

Offset

You can move the texture on the model in U and V direction separately.

In this example the texture is moved 1.32 in U and 2.17 in V direction.

Rotate

You can rotate the texture on a model in U and V direction separately.

In the example the texture is rotated about 45 degree into U and V direction.

Rotator

With the rotator you are able to create a rotating/shifting texture animation. Choose between three different types of rotation by clicking the option box.

No change: Rotator is deactivated.
Fixed rotation: Static rotation with no animation. Similar to the rotation function of the tiling menu.
Constant rotation: Rotation is constant, rotating/shifting in one direction and back.

Oscillated rotation: Rotation oscillates from the minimum, to the maximum, and back.

If you chose the rotation type, you can control its behavior by adjusting the rate, phase, and amplitude separately for U/V.

Rate: Rate or frequency defines the number of complete rotation cycles per unit of time. Or in the case of oscillating rotation, defines the rate of change of direction.
Phase: The phase of an oscillation or wave is the fraction of a complete cycle corresponding to an offset in the displacement from a specified reference point in time t = 0.
Amplitude: Amplitude defines the maximum value of a oscillation/wave.

Oscillator

Like the rotator, the oscillator animates a texture. Choose between different types of oscillation.

Fixed moving: Fixed moving is a static oscillation with no animation.
Constant moving: Texture shifts endlessly in the adjusted direction.

Jitter moving: Texture shifts endlessly in the adjusted direction with jittering added. Has a stroboscope effect.

Pen moving: Texture shifts in the adjusted direction until the maximum amplitude is reached and back until the minimum amplitude is reached. Comparable to a pendulum movement.

Stretch moving: Similar to pen moving, but different in that the texture is stretched and not shifted to the adjusted direction until the maximum amplitude is reached and back until the minimum amplitude is reached.

Stretch-Repeat moving: Similar to stretch moving with the difference that the texture stretching restarts at 0 when the maximum amplitude is reached.