Creating and saving texture maps

The visual aspects of a material can be modified through the use of textures. In order to create and edit image files, you will need an image editor, such as Adobe Photoshop (the industry standard, and has its native format supported by Unity) or GIMP. In order to follow the recipes in this chapter, it's strongly recommended that you have access to a few pieces of software such as these.

When saving Texture Maps, especially the ones that have an Alpha Channel, you might want to choose an adequate file format. PSD, Photoshop's native format, is practical for preserving the original artwork in many layers. The PNG format is also a great option, but please note that Photoshop doesn't handle PNG's Alpha Channel independently of the transparency, possibly compromising the material's appearance. Also, PNG files don't support layers. For this chapter, we will often use the TIF format for three main reasons:

• It's open to those not using Photoshop
• It uses layers
• It preserves the Alpha Channel information

The file size is significantly greater than in PSDs and PNGs, so feel free to save your work as PSDs (if you have Photoshop) or PNGs (if you don't need layers and, if using Photoshop, Alpha Channels).

Finally, a word of advice: although it's possible to manually create Texture Maps for our materials by using the traditional image-editing software, new tools such as Allegorthmic's Substance Painter and Bitmap2Material make this work much more efficient, complete, and intuitive, complementing the traditional Texture-making process or replacing it altogether. These tools provide Texture work support in a similar way to what zBrush and Mudbox did for 3D modeling. For design professionals, we strongly recommend at least trying such tools. Note, however, that products from Allegorithmic won't make use of Unity's Standard Shader, relying on the substance files (which are natively supported by Unity).