POV-Ray Textures

Objects in a POV-Ray scene look the way they do because of their geometry, the light available and the texture applied to the object. While an object's geometry describes its physical shape, its texture describes the way light bounces off the surface of the object.

There are several components to textures. They are: pigment, finish and normal.

Pigment

Pigment defines the actual color of an object. It is what makes a red object appear red. Pigments can be solid colors or they can be patterns such as gradients and checkers. Pigments can even be layered to create very complex and realistic effects.

The pigment does not entirely define the perceived color of an object however. Under perfectly white light radiating uniformly from all directions, the pigment would completely define the appearance of the object. But in real conditions the perceived color of the surface of an object will vary across its surface showing shadows where the light is reflected away from the observer and highlights where the light is reflected toward the observer. The poorly lighted parts of a red object will still be red, just a darker shade of red.

Finish

The finish component controls how light reflects off the surface of an object. Finish is what makes shiny objects look shiny and reflective objects show a reflection.

The material an object appears to be made of is largely controlled by the finish properties of its surface. For instance, polished metal objects will be reflective with bright shiny highlights. Plastic materials tend to be medium smooth with fairly fuzzy bright spots. Unglazed clay is very rough causing reflected light to diffused uniformly resulting in no bright highlight at all.

more information about finishes

Normal

The third component of a texture affects the angle at which light bounces off a surface. Generally angle of reflection is determined by the geometry of the object, but the NORMAL texture component can further alter it. Using the NORMAL component can make an otherwise too-perfect shape appear imperfect and thus more realistic. Consider a piece of citrus fruit, such as an orange. The skin is actually dimpled with thousands of small pores. To model each of these pores would require very complex geometry. Using NORMALs, it is possible to describe the piece of fruit geometrically as a perfect sphere but still instruct the renderer to create the appearance of thousands of dimples.

Examples of the various FINISH properties

Samples of the T_Wood textures supplied with POV RAY