Modify Map Properties

Map properties can be modified to create complex patterns by changing the map settings.

The map property settings displayed on the Texture Editor depend on the selected map type.

The Texture Editor, which is a modeless inspector panel, allows you to modify texture properties. This is displayed when you click on a texture swatch for a procedural or image-based texture.

Texture Preview

A preview of the texture swatch is displayed and any changes to the settings is reflected in the preview. You can enlarge or reduce the preview of the image in order to accurately manipulate the texture.

Appearance

The Appearance settings are only available for procedural-based textures.

Transformations

Linkable attributes are specific attributes of the same type that have been identified in the content design resulting from synchronization. Rotation is an example of a linkable attribute.When the Link Texture Transforms is enabled, all edits to all linkable attributes between all texture sockets are published. If it is disabled, the edits affect only the specific texture socket where the edit is made.Linked properties, such as Offset: X,Y and Sample Size: Width, Height, are not related to the concept of linkable attributes.

The Position, Scale, and Repeat are three standard transformations used in various texture sockets. The following identifies the type of texture (image and procedurals) where linkable attributes exist:

Texture Type	Position	Scale	Repeat
Image	Yes	Yes	Yes
Tiles	Yes	Yes	Yes
Gradient	Yes	Yes	Yes
Checker	Yes	Yes	Yes
Noise	Yes	No	No
Waves	Yes	No	No
Wood	Yes	No	No
Speckle	Yes	No	No
Marble	Yes	No	No

Position. Each map has its own material offset and rotation factors. You can control the coordinates of the material on a swatch. You can also rotate the image around the W axis of the UVW coordinate system. As these settings are changed, a preview is displayed in the Texture Editor.
NoteUVW stands for the three axes of the texture space, similar to XYZ in world, object, camera, and other coordinate systems. Because of the way textures use the UV coordinates to project a bitmap on to a surface, coordinates with values above 1 cause the texture to repeat (or “tile”), virtually warping back to the same coordinate space from 0,0,0 to 1,1,1. This does not mean that UV coordinates have to be limited to values between 0 and 1. They can contain arbitrary values, both positive and negative.

rotated map
Scale. You can specify real-world units to use in scaling. Click Scale to Fit to fit the image to the face or object.

scaled map
Repeat. You can tile or mirror a material to create a pattern, or select None for no modification to the map pattern.
You can apply an image and repeat the image as a pattern using Tile. This effect is used to represent a tiled floor or fountain.

repeated map

Tiling wraps the selected object with the map image. In default mapping, tiling is active. Because the map is scaled to fit the object, you must offset the UV coordinates or rotate the map to see the tiling effect. The portions of the surface from which the image has moved away are filled by other portions of the map.

Mirrored Map

Mirroring doubles the map and flips the doubled copy. As with tiling, you can mirror in the U dimension, the V dimension, or both.