There is a close relationship between Textures, Materials, and Shaders, and their relationships are important:
- Textures are two-dimensional images. The surface of 2D and 3D objects in Unity games are defined by meshes. The Texture images are mapped onto meshes by Materials – each point (vertex) on a mesh has to be mapped to some value in the Texture. A Texture may indicate colors, but may indicate bumps/wrinkles or transparency – all of which can contribute to determining what is finally rendered for the user to see.
- Materials specify which Shader should be used to render the images onto the meshes, plus values for the Shader's parameters (such as which textures/parts of a texture map, colors, other values). Learn more at the Unity documentation page about Materials: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Materials.html.
- Shaders define the method to render...
