Texture

From DmWiki

A texture (technically: texture map) is an image that is loaded from a file and applied to a surface in the 3D game world. Textures provide additional detail to what would otherwise be flat surfaces. There are many kinds of texture maps - the most common one is a "diffuse map" or "color map" (i.e. one that defines the natural color of an object, without taking into account any effects like light and shadows), but more complicated shaders may make use of normal maps, height maps, gloss maps, glow maps, and others. See also volume textures, which are three-dimensional.

Textures are mapped onto an object using texture coordinates, also known as UV coordinates.