Maps

Front left sphere: Marble bitmap

Front right sphere: Clouds bitmap

Back left sphere: Noise procedural map

Back right sphere: Marble procedural map

The images you assign to materials are called maps. The software provides several different map types. They include standard bitmaps (such as .bmp, .jpg, or .tga files), procedural maps, such as Checker or Marble, and image-processing systems such as compositors and masking systems.

You can assign maps to most of the components that make up a material. Materials that contain one or more images are called mapped materials. By assigning the maps to different attributes of the materials, you can affect the color, the opacity, the smoothness of the surface, and much more.

Maps offer the level of realism you look for in materials. The different types of maps you can use range from the common bitmap, to the flexible procedural map.

For many map types, the Renderer needs instructions telling it where the map should appear on the geometry. These instructions are called mapping coordinates.