What are Textures?

In shaders, textures are images used as data sources. They allow you to add rich detail to your visuals—like colors, patterns, noise, masks, or even entire scenes—without manually computing every pixel value.

Why Use Textures?

Textures let you:

• Apply image-based detail without complex math
• Reuse real-world images or hand-drawn art
• Store custom data like flow maps or normal maps
• Add stylization, distortion, or layering

Types of Texture Data

Textures don't always just hold color. They can represent:

Type	Description
Color Map	Regular image used for shading
Mask	A grayscale image for blending/mixing
Normal Map	Encodes surface bump direction
Height Map	Stores elevation or depth data
Distortion	Offsets UVs for warping effects

How Are Textures Used?

In WGSL shaders, textures are sampled using two parts:

• A texture_2d<f32> – the image data
• A sampler – the method for reading/interpolating pixels

Where:

• iChannel0 is a texture_2d<f32>
• iChannel0Sampler is a sampler
• uv is a vec2<f32> in the range [0.0, 1.0]

UV Coordinates

UVs are how you look up pixels in a texture.

• (0.0, 0.0) = bottom-left
• (1.0, 1.0) = top-right

Values outside [0.0, 1.0] may repeat or clamp, depending on the sampler

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To learn how to assign textures in the Splitshade UI, continue to Texture Usage.

To see how to use textures in your WGSL shader code, see iChannel0–iChannel3.