Animation: Material Properties Mapped Materials
- Mapped materials (also called texture maps) use either scanned-in texture bitmaps or procedural (mathematically defined) maps in place of diffuse colour. For example you can replace a diffuse colour with a real image of a piece of wood. There are many channels where you can make use of mapping:
- Ambient- Replaces ambient colour of a material with a map.
- Diffuse- Replaces the general colour of a material with a map.
- Specular- Specular highlights of an object can be perturbed (distorted) with a map to give the appearance of a less smooth but still shiny surface.
- Shininess- Affects the shape of the highlight instead of just the colours.
- Shininess Strength- Enables a map to be used to vary the shininess strength
- Self-Illumination- Enables a map to be used to define where it is self-illuminated and where it is not.
- Opacity- Enables a map to be used to defined where it is opaque and where it is not.