Texture mapping

Until now, all of our shapes and models used color, but a whole new world awaits us when we start applying textures to our models. Adding a 2D texture to a 3D model is known as texture mapping, or in some cases texture wrapping. Let's see what it takes to add a little texture to our 3D models. We are going to start with a simple cube.

First, use your favorite image editing software to create a 256 x 256 pixel square and give it some kind of texture. I will be using the following one:

Save this texture as a bitmap (BMP). We are going to use bitmaps, as opposed to PNGs, for texture mapping because the internal data structure of a bitmap happens to coincide with the data structure that is expected by OpenGL. In other words, it is easier!

I always create a folder called resources for my images. It is also a good idea to include these as resources in the Visual Studio project (right-click on the Resources folder in the Solution Explorer panel and choose Add Existing…, then navigate...