Texture Synthesis - Textures

Textures

"Texture" is an ambiguous word and in the context of texture synthesis may have one of the following meanings:

  1. In common speech, the word "texture" is used as a synonym for "surface structure". Texture has been described by five different properties in the psychology of perception: coarseness, contrast, directionality, line-likeness and roughness .
  2. In 3D computer graphics, a texture is a digital image applied to the surface of a three-dimensional model by texture mapping to give the model a more realistic appearance. Often, the image is a photograph of a "real" texture, such as wood grain.
  3. In image processing, every digital image composed of repeated elements is called a "texture." For example, see the images below.

Texture can be arranged along a spectrum going from stochastic to regular:

  • Stochastic textures. Texture images of stochastic textures look like noise: colour dots that are randomly scattered over the image, barely specified by the attributes minimum and maximum brightness and average colour. Many textures look like stochastic textures when viewed from a distance. An example of a stochastic texture is roughcast.
  • Structured textures. These textures look like somewhat regular patterns. An example of a structured texture is a stonewall or a floor tiled with paving stones.

These extremes are connected by a smooth transition, as visualized in the figure below from "Near-regular Texture Analysis and Manipulation." Yanxi Liu, Wen-Chieh Lin, and James Hays. SIGGRAPH 2004

Read more about this topic:  Texture Synthesis

Famous quotes containing the word textures:

    “Rice and peas fit into that category of dishes where two ordinary foods, combined together, ignite a pleasure far beyond the capacity of either of its parts alone. Like rhubarb and strawberries, apple pie and cheese, roast pork and sage, the two tastes and textures meld together into the sort of subtle transcendental oneness that we once fantasized would be our experience when we finally found the ideal mate.”
    —John Thorne, U.S. cookbook writer. Simple Cooking, “Rice and Peas: A Preface with Recipes,” Viking Penguin (1987)