What is a texture atlas?
A single large texture packing many unrelated images (icons, UI pieces, props) so the game can draw them without switching textures.
Where a sprite sheet usually holds one animation set, an atlas mixes anything that is drawn together. Leave a pixel or two of padding (or extrude edges) between packed images, otherwise filtering and mipmaps can bleed a neighbour's colour into the edge.
Related terms
- Sprite sheetOne image that holds many frames of a 2D character or effect, laid out in a grid or packed, plus data saying where each frame is.
- 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.