Texturing is where 3D production slows down. A single hand-authored material can take hours, and a real project needs dozens to hundreds of them. That's the math that's driving studios to move to AI. Teams like 37 Interactive Entertainment have cut asset production time by 50%, and studios like Thorns Tavern report 90%+ faster production at 80% lower cost.
This guide shows you the end-to-end workflow with Meshy's AI texture generator: how it generates a full PBR texture set directly on your model's UVs (not flat-tiled), and how to import those maps into Unity, Unreal, and Blender. Let's go from prompt to game-ready maps.
What Is a PBR Texture?
A PBR texture isn't a single image. It's a set of texture maps that together describe a surface's physical properties (color, metalness, roughness, surface detail) so it renders realistically under any lighting. PBR stands for Physically Based Rendering, the standard that modern engines like Unity, Unreal, and Blender use to make materials look believable.
How Does PBR Texturing Work?
PBR simulates how light actually behaves on a surface, obeying energy conservation (a surface never reflects more light than it receives) and the Fresnel effect (reflectivity changes with viewing angle). Instead of baking everything into one "diffuse" image, it splits a material into several maps, each describing one physical property. The engine reads those maps together and computes lighting in real time, so the same material looks right in sunlight, in shadow, or in a dark dungeon.
What Are the Core PBR Texture Maps?
The standard PBR map set:
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Albedo (Base Color): the pure surface color, with no baked-in lighting or shadows. This is the single most important rule in PBR: baked light in the albedo breaks under dynamic lighting.
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Metallic: whether a surface is metal (white/1) or not (black/0).
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Roughness: how scattered the reflections are; high roughness = matte, low = glossy.
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Normal: fakes fine surface detail (a normal map) without adding geometry.
Meshy generates PBR maps including Albedo, Roughness, Metallic, and Normal, plus an Emission map when using Meshy-6 or later.
How to Generate PBR Textures with Meshy (5 Steps)
To follow along you'll need a 3D model (GLB / FBX / OBJ / STL), or you can generate one inside Meshy with Text-to-3D or Image-to-3D. You'll also want a material idea or reference image, and a target engine in mind.
Step 1: Generate or Prepare Your 3D Model in Meshy
Start with the geometry you want to texture. You have two paths:
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Upload an existing model (GLB / FBX / OBJ / STL), including untextured blockouts. Meshy handles UV unwrapping automatically (projection, seam placement, and texel density), so you can skip the manual UV step.
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Generate one in Meshy with Text-to-3D or Image-to-3D.
Then choose how to drive the texture: Text-to-Texture (describe the material in words) or Image-to-Texture (upload a reference image). The same flow lets you retexture an existing 3D model you've already made.
Prompt recipe. A reliable structure is Material + Surface + Color + Scale + Tech:
Lead with the material, add the surface treatment and wear, then color and tactile detail. Concrete, physical words ("brushed," "hammered," "weathered") produce far better maps than vague adjectives.
Step 2: Generate the PBR Maps
Open the Texture step on your model. Pick an art style for the overall look (for example, realistic or stylized), and keep Generate PBR Maps on (it's enabled by default). Two more toggles matter:
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Remove Lighting (delighting): removes highlights and shadows from the base color texture so it stays clean and relights correctly. If lighting is baked into the base color, your engine adds its own lighting on top, producing doubled shadows and highlights that look wrong as the object or lights move. Delighting prevents that. It's enabled by default, so keep it on. (Available on Meshy-6 and later.)
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HD Texture: pushes the base color to 4K.
Generation typically completes in under 60 seconds.
Step 3: Refine Locally with Texture Edit
Need to fix one spot rather than re-roll the whole thing? Texture Edit gives you three tools to target and refine a region:
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AI Texture Edit: select an area with a Brush or Lasso, type a prompt, and Meshy re-textures just that selection (returning a few candidates). Tune the result with Prompt Influence Strength.
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Brush Tool: hand-fix small areas with Healing (repairs using surrounding color and pattern), Stamp (Ctrl/Cmd-click to sample, then drag to clone), and Solid Paint (a flat color, with optional blur).
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Decal Tool: project an image or pattern onto a spot like a sticker, with Feathering for soft edges, independent X/Y scaling, and move/rotate placement.
When you're happy, Save to Model creates a new model, leaving your original untouched.
Step 4: Preview and Check Seams
Use the built-in 3D Viewer (Auto Rotate, Wireframe, and Statistics modes) to rotate the model and check how the material responds to light, and to spot any visible seams along UV boundaries. As you rotate, sanity-check the physics: metal should catch bright, sharp reflections while non-metals stay matte, and rough areas should show broad, soft highlights where smooth areas show tight, sharp ones. If something that should be metal looks like plastic, revisit the Metallic and Roughness maps. One honest caveat: the viewer is real-time WebGL, not a path-traced render, so the final look in your engine will differ slightly.
Step 5: Export
Export your textured model with its maps. GLB is the recommended format, since it's widely supported and bundles all textures. FBX imports cleanly into Unity and Unreal with material slots mapped; OBJ ships the maps as separate files for manual setup.
What Resolution and Formats Does Meshy Export?
Here's exactly what Meshy outputs, so you can export and import with confidence:
| Spec | Value |
|---|---|
| Base Color resolution | up to 4K (Meshy-6+) |
| PBR maps resolution | 2K |
| Normal convention | OpenGL (+Y), per the glTF/GLB standard |
| Color space | Albedo = sRGB; all other maps = Linear / Non-Color |
| Metallic values | pure black (0) or pure white (1), no grayscale for non-metals |
| Export formats | GLB, FBX, OBJ, USDZ, STL, BLEND, 3MF |
Import into Unity, Unreal & Blender
Meshy's maps are standard PBR, and the recommended GLB follows the glTF normal convention (OpenGL, +Y), so importing is mostly drag-and-drop. Each engine has one thing to watch:
| Engine | Import | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Unity | Drag the .glb in; materials and a prefab are created automatically | Unity uses Smoothness (the inverse of roughness) |
| Unreal Engine 5 | Import the .glb via the Content Browser (default settings are usually fine) | If normals look wrong, enable Flip Green Channel on the normal map (or use the Meshy Bridge plugin) |
| Blender | GLB loads with textures connected | Set non-color maps (Roughness, Metallic, Normal) to Non-Color |
Best Practices & Troubleshooting
Do:
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Use tactile, physical prompt words and specify scale.
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Keep Remove Lighting on when you'll relight the asset in-engine.
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Verify metallic reads pure black or pure white, with no gray on non-metals.
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Judge the material under more than one lighting setup, not just the default viewer.
Common fixes:
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Metallic renders the wrong color → check the metallic values (0/1) and that color spaces are correct (Albedo sRGB, the rest Linear).
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Roughness looks inverted in Unity → remember Unity uses Smoothness = 1 − Roughness.
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Visible UV seams → re-generate, or patch with Texture Edit's Healing tool. (Meshy's multi-view projection minimizes seams but can't guarantee they're invisible on complex UV layouts.)
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Albedo looks "lit" / won't relight → enable Remove Lighting (delighting).
Export Checklist
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☐ Albedo has no baked lighting
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☐ Metallic is pure 0 or 1
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☐ Color spaces correct (Albedo sRGB, others Linear/Non-Color)
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☐ Normals look correct in-engine (flip green channel in Unreal only if needed)
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☐ Seams checked in the viewer
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☐ Resolution matches your target (4K base / 2K maps)
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☐ Test-imported into your engine
Conclusion
With Meshy you can go from a text prompt or reference image to a clean, relightable PBR texture set in minutes, and drop it straight into your engine. Try Meshy's AI texture generator for free and texture your next model in a single sitting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Meshy's AI texture generator free?
Yes. The Free plan needs no credit card and includes 100 credits per month; a texturing task costs 10 credits, and most textures generate in under 60 seconds. Free-plan outputs are licensed CC BY 4.0 (commercial use with attribution).
Can I retexture an existing 3D model?
Yes. Upload a model you already have and apply a new texture with a text prompt or reference image. It works on imported meshes and untextured blockouts alike.
Can I upload my own model or reference image?
Both. Use Text-to-Texture to describe a material, or Image-to-Texture to drive it from a reference image. You can upload your own GLB/FBX/OBJ/STL to texture.
Can I edit only part of a model's texture?
Yes. Texture Edit lets you select a region and fix it without re-rolling the whole model: re-texture a selection from a prompt (AI Texture Edit), hand-paint with the Brush tools (Healing, Stamp, Solid Paint), or place an image with the Decal tool. Saving creates a new model, leaving your original intact.
Are the textures seamless or tileable?
Meshy generates textures baked to a specific model's UV map, not seamless, infinitely tileable 2D material tiles. The maps wrap around the exact geometry and UV layout of the model they were made for. If you need a tileable / repeating texture to apply across many objects (a brick wall, fabric, terrain), use a dedicated seamless texture generator such as Scenario, Adobe Substance Sampler, or PolyHaven instead.
