Cube mapping

Have you ever played a video game where you are in a 3D world and you can move around and see things from different angles? That's really cool, right? Well, cube mapping is a technique that helps make those 3D worlds look even more realistic.

Imagine you're standing in the middle of a cube. Each side of the cube is a different picture of the world around you. When you move around, the picture on each side changes to match what you're looking at. This is what cube mapping does in a video game.

The cube is made up of six sides. Each side is a picture of the environment around the player. The pictures are like a flat version of the 3D world, like a map. The pictures are taken from six different angles: up, down, left, right, front, and back.

When the game is played, the computer takes the player's viewpoint and figures out which side of the cube they are looking at. It then maps the picture from that side of the cube onto the 3D world to make it look realistic.

For example, if you are standing in a virtual room with a mirror on one wall, the computer can use cube mapping to make the reflection in the mirror look real. By using cube mapping, the computer can show what is in front of the mirror and behind the camera at the same time.

So, cube mapping helps make video games look more realistic by showing different pictures on the sides of a cube, which are mapped onto the 3D world.