.PTEX File Extension

A PTEX file is a texture file used by Ptex, a texture mapping system for the rendering of production-quality animation in movies and shorts. It contains one or more texture images including channels and metadata that can be accessed through the memory-managed cache.

Ptex was developed by Walt Disney Animation Studios in the late 2000s. It was developed to eliminate UV assignment, provide seamless filtering, and allow thousands of textures to be stored in one file, which is the PTEX file.

The Ptex mapping system was first used in the animated short Giago's Guest in 2008 but has also been used in the full-length feature Bolt. It is now the main texture mapping method used in all productions at Walt Disney Animation Studios.

A PTEX file is a texture created by Material Maker, a procedural material creation program. It contains JSON-formatted data that defines how Material Maker generates and applies the texture to an object. When opened in Material Maker, PTEX files appear as a series of interconnected nodes.

You can open a PTEX file in Material Maker (multiplatform):

1. Open Material Maker and select File → Load.
2. When the Open File(s) window appears, navigate to and open your PTEX file.

You can also open a PTEX file in any text editor, to view the JSON data it contains.