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Create a 3D texture

Import a flipbook texture as a 3D texture.
Read time 1 minuteLast updated 21 days ago
A 3D texture is a bitmap image that contains information in three dimensions rather than the standard two. 3D textures are commonly used to simulate volumetric effects such as fog or smoke, to approximate a volumetric 3D mesh, or to store animated textures and blend between them.
To create a 3D texture, import a 2D texture with the following properties:
  • Flipbook format - a single 2D texture arranged as regular cells.
  • Maximum size of 2048 × 2048 × 2048 pixels.
The size of a 3D texture on disk and in memory increases quickly as its resolution increases. For example, a 3D texture with 
RGBAFloat
 format, no mipmaps, and a size of 32 × 32 × 32 pixels has a size of 512 KB (32 × 32 × 32 × 16 bytes) in memory. If you increase the resolution to 256 × 256 × 256 pixels, the size in memory becomes 256 MB (256 × 256 × 256 × 16 bytes).
Follow these steps to import:
  1. Import the texture into your project.
  2. In the Project window, select the texture asset. Unity displays the texture import settings in the
    Inspector

    ?

    window.
  3. In the Inspector window, set Texture Shape to 3D.
  4. Set Columns and Rows to the appropriate values for your flipbook texture.
  5. Select Apply.
Unity adds a 3D texture slice for each cell in the texture.

Flipbook image as a 2D texture

An imported flipbook texture with 8 columns and 8 rows.

Flipbook image as a 3D texture

The texture after you set Texture Shape to 3D, Columns to 8, and Rows to 8.
Refer to Importing textures for more information.

Additional resources