Note that normal maps are still widely used in PBR workflows. The article doesn't mention them, but older renderers tended to use diffuse, specular, normal maps, and modern asset creation typically involves albedo, roughness/smoothness, metalness, and ambient occlusion maps in addition to normal maps for textures.
> If we could afford a polygon for every pixel we wouldn’t need textures at all.
Heh; with mesh shaders and Nanite, we sort of can now. Whether older GPUs can render them is a different matter altogether though.
Great article on tangent spaces! Could you explain how UV distortion affects tangent vector calculation in more detail?
Another great reference on this: https://3dreference.notion.site/Texture-Types-15aef4826bf04d...
Note that normal maps are still widely used in PBR workflows. The article doesn't mention them, but older renderers tended to use diffuse, specular, normal maps, and modern asset creation typically involves albedo, roughness/smoothness, metalness, and ambient occlusion maps in addition to normal maps for textures.