- procedural textures -- the texture is computed using an algorithm
- image textures -- an image is mapped onto an object
Textures are usually added in the shading editor as shown in the following tutorial. Note, that it is important, that a material needs to be assigned to the object if we want to add the texture:
The image textures have several settings which influence the mapping of the texture onto the object -- texture interpolation, type of mapping, the extrapolation of the texture on the boundaries. For the reference, see this part of the documentation: link Texture settings
Although, there are many ways how we can wrap the texture around the object, we usually need to adjust it manually. This is done using the UV unwrapping which consists of the following steps:
- Marking seams on the object, which allows us to unwrap the object. In other words, our aim is to develop the polyhedron, so it can be projected onto the UV plane, where the texture is placed
- Adjusting the vertices of the developed polyhedron
The details are found in the following video:
The procedural textures are created by following a pattern. Blender offers several procedural textures. The advantages of procedural textures are low memory requirements, however the final look of the textures is often not realistic. Quick guide on the procedural textures may be found here:
As we have seen so far, the textures do not have to influence the color only. Textures may be used also for advanced effects as modification of the transparency, normal vectors direction or the geometry itself. One of the most frequently used modifications is the normal and bump mapping which creates the detail of a certain material (e. g. the texture of a fabric, peel of the orange). However, these fine details are added only visually, by changing the direction of the normal vector. More details, how to achieve this, are found in this quick tutorial:
