Modeling

Albedo Map

An albedo map (base color map) is the PBR texture that defines a surface's pure color with no lighting or shadows baked in, the foundation of a physically based material.

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What is an Albedo Map?

An albedo map, also called the base color map, is the PBR texture that stores a surface's true, flat color information without any lighting, shadows, or reflections baked in. It is the starting point that all other PBR maps build upon.

How it works

Keeping the albedo free of lighting is essential in PBR: the render engine adds shading, shadows, and highlights dynamically based on the scene. Baking light into the base color (a common mistake in older workflows) makes materials look wrong under different lighting. Albedo pairs with roughness, metallic, normal, and AO maps to form a complete material.

Albedo map vs diffuse map

30-240 sRGB, charcoal to snow

Safe dielectric range

sRGB; data maps stay linear

Color space

baseColorTexture, glTF 2.0

glTF PBR slot

Albedo map

Diffuse map

Lighting in the texture

None, pure surface color only

Often has baked AO and shadows

Workflow era

Modern PBR metallic-roughness

Legacy Phong and Blinn pipelines

Metal handling

Metal tint set via metallic map

Specular color map carries metals

Relighting

Holds up under any HDRI or light rig

Baked shading breaks when lights move

Where you meet it

Base Color slot in modern engines

Older assets and unlit mobile art

Validate an albedo by viewing it unlit: any visible shadows or highlights will double up once the engine adds real lighting. Reusing a legacy diffuse texture in PBR means painting out its baked shading first.

In Meshy Meshy's AI Texturing generates a clean albedo/base color map with no baked lighting as part of its PBR set alongside metallic, roughness, and normal maps, so exports shade correctly in any engine.

Use cases

Defining the pure color of a material for PBR shading
Providing a clean base for engine-computed lighting
Anchoring a PBR set alongside roughness and metallic maps

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Last updated September 14, 2026

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Other terms

Roughness Map Normal Map Texture Mapping Ambient Occlusion PBR Metallic Map Diffuse Map Opacity Map Bevel

Frequently Asked Questions

An albedo map, also called the base color map, is the PBR texture that stores a surface's true, flat color information with no lighting, shadows, or reflections baked in. It is the starting point that all other PBR maps build upon. Keeping it lighting-free lets the render engine add shading dynamically.

Yes. Base color is the term many engines and tools, such as Unreal Engine and the glTF standard, use for the albedo channel of a PBR material. The two words refer to the same lighting-free color input.

They are similar but not identical. A legacy diffuse map often had some lighting or ambient occlusion baked in, while a PBR albedo map is strictly pure color with no lighting information. Albedo is the correct input for physically based rendering.

In PBR the render engine computes lighting and shadows dynamically based on the scene. If shadows or highlights are baked into the albedo, the surface looks wrong when the lighting changes, producing double shadows or flat, painted-on lighting.

Albedo defines the pure color, and it pairs with roughness, metallic, normal, and ambient occlusion maps to form a complete material. The engine combines them so the base color reacts correctly to light, reflection, and surface detail.

Author or capture the surface color without any baked lighting, removing highlights, shadows, and ambient occlusion so only flat color remains. Delighting tools in Substance and careful painting help, and reference charts keep values within physically plausible ranges.

Real-world materials rarely reach pure black or pure white in albedo; most non-metals sit in a mid range, and even fresh snow or charcoal stay within known bounds. Keeping albedo within these ranges prevents surfaces from looking unnaturally bright or dark under PBR lighting.

In Blender you connect the albedo image texture to the Base Color input of the Principled BSDF shader, keeping its color space as sRGB since it holds color data. Roughness, metallic, and normal maps then connect to their own inputs.

Yes. Meshy generates clean albedo maps with no baked lighting, so your AI-generated models shade correctly under any lighting setup in your engine or renderer. This avoids the double-lighting artifacts that come from baked-in shadows.

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Albedo Map

What is an Albedo Map?

How it works

Albedo map vs diffuse map

Use cases