Texturemapping is a method for defining high frequency detail, surface texture, or color information on a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. The original technique was pioneered by Edwin Catmull in 1974.
In computer graphics, a texturemapping unit (TMU) is a component in modern graphics processing units (GPUs). They are able to rotate, resize, and distort a bitmap image to be placed onto an arbitrary plane of a given 3D model as a texture, in a process called texturemapping.