Glossary
  • This page contains definitions of various words and phrases you are likely to encounter as you learn about track building.

Bump Map: See Normal Map

Cube Map: An invisible cube that is used to make a surface appear reflective, rather than trying to calculate genuine reflections. More info...

Diffuse Map: A texture that determines the general appearance of a material.

Material: A combination of a diffuse map, bump and specular maps (if there are any), and various properties that determine how the textures should be applied. E.g. how much space a single tile occupies, transparency settings, and in some cases, a name that the game uses to work out what it should be like to drive on that material (e.g. tarmac, gravel etc). There are yet more properties that a material can define, though it depends on what program is being used.

Mipmap: Also referred to as mip. Certain types of texture (.dds, .mip) contain the main image plus a series of smaller images (1/2 the original size, 1/4, 1/8 etc) that are shown when the surface is far away. This reduces the load on graphics cards in maintains a good frame rate. Many programs will have a mip bias material setting. Entering a negative value will increase the distance at which the game continues to show the most detailed image. A typical value for a race track texture is -4.

Normal Map: A texture that can make a flat surface look like it has lots of bumps and protrusions. More info...

Specular Map: A texture that determines how intensely each part of a surface reflects light, rather than merely setting a single intensity for the whole surface. More info...

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