Game Art Game Texturing and Materials 3

Question 1

What is a 'height map' used for in game texturing pipelines?

Accepted Answer

Encoding surface elevation detail to drive parallax or displacement effects

Answer

Height maps store surface elevation as grayscale data and are used for parallax occlusion mapping or mesh displacement in shaders.

Question 2

What does 'RGB channel packing' mean in game texture optimization?

Accepted Answer

Storing three separate grayscale maps (e.g., AO, roughness, metallic) in a single texture's RGB channels

Answer

Channel packing stores multiple grayscale maps in the R, G, and B channels of one texture to reduce the number of texture samples in a shader.

Question 3

What is an 'emissive map' used for on a game asset?

Accepted Answer

Defining areas of the model that appear to glow or emit light independent of scene lighting

Answer

An emissive map marks areas that appear to emit light, like glowing screens, lava cracks, or neon signs, regardless of scene illumination.

Question 4

What is 'texture compression' in game development and why is it important?

Accepted Answer

Encoding texture data in GPU-native formats to reduce VRAM usage without large quality losses

Answer

Texture compression uses formats like DXT/BC to encode image data in a GPU-friendly way, dramatically reducing VRAM consumption.

Question 5

What is the purpose of a 'trim sheet' in game environment art?

Accepted Answer

A single tileable texture strip containing multiple edge and surface detail variations reusable across many meshes

Answer

A trim sheet is a horizontal tiling texture containing architectural details (edges, panels, borders) that can be mapped onto any mesh edge to add surface complexity cheaply.

Game Art Practice Test

Game Art Practice Test

Game Art Game Texturing and Materials 3