Why Use the 3D Texture Extension?

Why Use the 3D Texture Extension?

3D textures are useful for

volume rendering and examining a 3D volume one slice at a time
animating textured geometry, for example, people that move
solid texturing, for example, wood, marble and so on
eliminating distortion effects that occur when you try to map a 2D image onto 3D geometry

Texel values defined in a 3D coordinate system form a texture volume. You can extract textures from this volume by intersecting it with a 3D plane, as shown in Figure 6-2.

Figure 6-2 : Extracting a Planar Texture From a 3D Texture Volume The resulting texture, applied to a polygon, is the intersection of the volume and the plane. The orientation of the plane is determined from the texture coordinates of the vertices of the polygon.