A texture array is a collection of same size/format/flags 2D textures that look like a single object to the GPU, and can be sampled in the shaderA program that runs on the GPU. More info
See in Glossary with a texture element index. They are useful for implementing custom terrainThe landscape in your scene. A Terrain GameObject adds a large flat plane to your scene and you can use the Terrain’s Inspector window to create a detailed landscape. More info
See in Glossary renderingThe process of drawing graphics to the screen (or to a render texture). By default, the main camera in Unity renders its view to the screen. More info
See in Glossary systems or other special effects where you need an efficient way of accessing many textures of the same size and format. Elements of a 2D texture array are also known as slices, or layers.
Texture arrays need to be supported by the underlying graphics API and the GPU. They are available on:
Other platforms do not support texture arrays (OpenGL ES 2.0 or WebGL 1.0). Use SystemInfo.supports2DArrayTextures to determine texture array support at runtime.
As there is no texture import pipeline for texture arrays, they must be created from within your scriptsA piece of code that allows you to create your own Components, trigger game events, modify Component properties over time and respond to user input in any way you like. More info
See in Glossary. Use the Texture2DArray class to create and manipulate them. Note that texture arrays can be serialized as assets, so it is possible to create and fill them with data from editor scripts.
Normally, texture arrays are used purely within GPU memory, but you can use Graphics.CopyTexture, Texture2DArray.GetPixels and Texture2DArray.SetPixels to transfer pixelsThe smallest unit in a computer image. Pixel size depends on your screen resolution. Pixel lighting is calculated at every screen pixel. More info
See in Glossary to and from system memory.
Texture array elements may also be used as render targets. Use RenderTexture.dimension to specify in advance whether the render target is to be a 2D texture array. The depthSlice argument to Graphics.SetRenderTarget specifies which mipmap level or cube map face to render to. On platforms that support “layered rendering” (i.e. geometry shaders), you can set the depthSlice argument to –1 to set the whole texture array as a render target. You can also use a geometry shader to render into individual elements.