A brief history of 3d texturing in video games

bump mapping.

1976

bump mapping is a combination of phong shading and texture mapping it adds alot of depth to 3d models

Raytracing

1980

Raytracing is a technique that used the cameras render plane it traced every pixel of the final image into a virtual scene, but raytracing became popular again in video games where it adds things like realistic shadows, lighting, and reflections all in real time

displacement mapping

1990

Displacement mapping was an alternative 3D texturing technique to bump mapping

UV mapping

1990

unwrapping a mesh so all the faces and then creating a texture and then applying the texture to the mesh this technique would make texturing object a lot faster and easier

Pre-rendering

1999

Pre-rendering has been around for along time. It means when a a 3d texture has been rendered before hand so its easier for your computer to run those textures

Refraction

2000

is the process of light bending as it passes through a solid, liquid, or gas, distorting the way things look when you view them through a transparent object.

real-time shadows

2001

Silent hill (a game) had one of the biggest break throughs in shadow textures it used real time shadows (its when lighting info was already placed on the textures so shadows would appear)

Increased resolution

2002

This made it easier to add more details to textures

3d-Texturing

2004

3d Texturing made it easier to add textures to objects, this made it so that people creating the textures didn't have to hand draw the whole texture.

Ambient occlusion

2007

Ambient occlusion made lighting better all artists had to do is add ambient occlusion to their textures. Ambient occlusion is indirect shadow from light