FBX SDK Programmer's Guide >

# Meshes, Materials and Textures

This section presents meshes, textures, and materials in the FBX SDK.

## Meshes

Meshes are abstracted by the FbxMesh class. A FbxMesh defines a list of control points, also known in common literature as vertices. A single instance of FbxMesh can be bound to multiple instances of FbxNode to reduce memory consumption. This is known as instancing. Scene geometry uses the concept of layers and layer elements (FbxLayerElement) to define normal maps, material maps, texture maps, etc.

## Materials

Materials (FbxSurfaceLambert, FbxSurfacePhong) are bound to instances of FbxNode via FbxNode::AddMaterial(). Materials define the basic rendering characteristics of geometry in the scene, such as its diffuse, ambient, and emissive color properties. Each material occupies a specific index in a FbxNode, which can be referenced by FbxMesh::BeginPolygon() to define the material of a newly created polygon.

## Textures

Textures (FbxFileTexture, FbxLayeredTexture, FbxProceduralTexture) are connected to material channels to define how geometry is rendered. The FbxFileTexture class uses data contained in a file, for example a .jpg, to define a texture's values.

#### Topics in this section

- Meshes
- Materials
- Textures