What is a seamless (tileable) texture?
A texture whose left edge continues into its right edge and top into bottom, so it can repeat across a surface with no visible seam.
Test it by tiling it 3×3: any line or obvious repeating feature shows at once. A normal map made for a seamless texture must tile the same way, or lighting will reveal the seam even when the colour does not.
Related terms
- MipmapsPre-shrunk copies of a texture (each half the size of the last) that the GPU uses when the texture is drawn small or far away, to avoid shimmering.