Texturing turns a grey model into a believable object. This workflow takes a model from UV layout to a finished physically-based (PBR) material that holds up in any lighting.
Step by step
Unwrap the UVs
Place seams where they are least visible — along hard edges and on hidden sides — then unwrap. Keep texel density consistent, so detail looks even across the whole object.
Pack and pad
Pack UV islands to use the texture space efficiently, and leave padding between them so mipmaps don’t bleed. For hero assets, split the object across several texture sets (or UDIM tiles) instead of one enormous map.
Bake the mesh maps
Bake normal, ambient occlusion, curvature and thickness maps from the high-poly model. They drive realistic wear: edges get chipped, cavities collect dirt.
Build the material in layers
Start from a base material, add variation in colour and roughness, then add wear, dirt and details with masks generated from the baked maps.
Wire the shader
In Blender, connect the maps to the Principled BSDF: Base Color as sRGB; Roughness and Metallic as Non-Color; the normal map as Non-Color through a Normal Map node. The same logic applies to V-Ray, Redshift and Octane materials.
Test under neutral light
Check the material under a neutral studio HDRI and in close-up, then under the final lighting. A material that only works in one light isn’t finished.
Export for the target
Export with a preset for the renderer or engine you deliver to — offline renderers and real-time engines expect different channel packing and formats.
Tips
- Roughness variation sells realism more than colour variation.
- Keep the albedo free of shadows and highlights.
- Check the normal-map convention (OpenGL or DirectX) for your renderer.
- Need a quick normal map from an image? Try the ZIBADIS normal map tool.
For the theory behind the numbers, read the PBR material workflow guide.
