<p>I am reading the paper <em>Texture Synthesis over Arbitrary Manifold Surfaces</em> available <a href="http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/texture-synthesis-sig01/texture.pdf?q=illustrating-smooth-surfaces" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>.</p>

<p>On page <span class="math-container">$3$</span> on the right sight of the page they refer to isotropic and anisotropic textures.
I am familiar with anistropic texture filtering, but not an actual texture itself called anisotropic.</p>

<p>Further they refer to an <em>n-way symmetric texture</em>, which I am not familiar with, and a google search did not yield any results.</p>

<p>I am guessing an <em>anisotropic</em> texture is a texture that accounts for different viewing directions (?) and perhaps an <em>n-way symmetric texture</em> is such a texture that accounts for <span class="math-container">$n$</span> different viewing directions?</p>

<p>If anyone could clarify these two terms that would be much appreciated. I realize this paper is from <span class="math-container">$2001$</span> so these terms might not still be in use.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-04-16T05:24:22.907Z
A texture where structures have a specific directionality (e.g. Fig. 7 stripes). If you compute the power spectrum of such a texture, you will see that the energy is concentrated along specific directions.
lightxbulb
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-04-16T05:31:40.013Z
@lightxbulb what is a texture spectrum?
IntegrateThis
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-04-16T05:38:00.667Z
These textures where used before anisotropic filtering appeared as a hardware feature, it's basically a hack to be make bilinear filtering more anisotropic.
PaulHK
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-04-16T06:56:15.047Z
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_density
An anisotropic texture has structures that are "elongated" along some direction(s).
lightxbulb
<terminology>
Isotropic vs Anisotropic Textures
IntegrateThis
# Isotropic vs Anisotropic Textures

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-04-16)

I am reading the paper *Texture Synthesis over Arbitrary Manifold Surfaces* available [here](http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/texture-synthesis-sig01/texture.pdf?q=illustrating-smooth-surfaces).

On page $3$ on the right sight of the page they refer to isotropic and anisotropic textures.
I am familiar with anistropic texture filtering, but not an actual texture itself called anisotropic.

Further they refer to an *n-way symmetric texture*, which I am not familiar with, and a google search did not yield any results.

I am guessing an *anisotropic* texture is a texture that accounts for different viewing directions (?) and perhaps an *n-way symmetric texture* is such a texture that accounts for $n$ different viewing directions?

If anyone could clarify these two terms that would be much appreciated. I realize this paper is from $2001$ so these terms might not still be in use.

**Tags:** terminology

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: A texture where structures have a specific directionality (e.g. Fig. 7 stripes). If you compute the power spectrum of such a texture, you will see that the energy is concentrated along specific directions.  
> **username_0**: @username_1 what is a texture spectrum?  
> **username_2**: These textures where used before anisotropic filtering appeared as a hardware feature, it's basically a hack to be make bilinear filtering more anisotropic.  
> **username_1**: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_density An anisotropic texture has structures that are "elongated" along some direction(s).  

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## 0 answers

