Book excerpt: To the materials science community, Texture is an important property which describes the relative orientations of the various material elements which constitute the microstructure. These elements are usually the crystalline grains; each with a different orientation of its crystal lattice. However, morphological textures, such as the arrangement of fibers in a composite material, also have to be considered. In rare cases, the texture is random; with all possible orientations being equally represented in the material. But, usually, processing of the material has caused the texture to become non-random; with a consequent anisotropy of the material properties. Thus, not only metallurgists and materials scientists take an interest in textures, but also physicists, mathematicians, geologists, mechanical engineers and others.