# AI Texture Generator

> An AI texture generator turns a prompt like “mossy cobblestones, top-down” into a square texture image for a 3D material. On Kenerate AI it makes the base colour (albedo) map — a tileable image with flat, even light — on models such as Qwen Image 3.0 (free plan). It does not output roughness, metallic or AO maps: make the normal and height maps in Kenerate's free Normal Map Generator, and the rest with free tools such as Materialize or by hand.

URL: https://kenerateai.com/ai-texture-generator
Publisher: Kenerate AI (https://kenerateai.com)
Last updated: 22 October 2026

## Key facts
- What it makes: Base colour (albedo) texture — PNG or JPG
- Free-plan model: Qwen Image 3.0 (1K or 2K)
- Native 4K: GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst, Nano Banana 2.1
- Bigger: Image Upscaler to 2K, 4K or 8K
- Normal + height: Free Normal Map Generator, in your browser, up to 2048 px
- Not made: Roughness, metallic, AO — free tools below
- Watermark: None

## Steps
1. Open Image Studio — Press “Make a texture”. Image Studio opens on Qwen Image 3.0, a free-plan model. Keep Square 1:1.
2. Describe the surface — Name the material and its wear, then end with “seamless tileable texture, top-down orthographic view, flat even lighting, no shadows, no perspective, edge to edge”.
3. Check the seams — Offset the tile by half its width and height with wrap-around in Photoshop, GIMP or Photopea. A cross in the middle means a seam: fix it and offset again.
4. Upscale if you need 4K — Open the Image Upscaler, pick 4K and upscale the clean tile. Offset it once more before you use it.
5. Make normal and height maps — Upload the colour map to the free Normal Map Generator, pick OpenGL or DirectX, switch on Seamless edges and download both PNGs.
6. Build the material — Base colour in sRGB, normal and height as Non-Color. Plug them into Principled BSDF in Blender or a material in Unreal or Unity.

## In depth

### Which PBR maps can you get, and where from?
A PBR material is several images working together. Here is what each one stores and how you get it with Kenerate plus free tools.
- Base colour (albedo): The surface's own colour, with no light, shadow or reflection. From Kenerate: Yes — any image model. How: Prompt “top-down, flat even lighting, no shadows”; check the seams.
- Normal: Which way each pixel faces, as RGB, so flat surfaces catch light like bumps. From Kenerate: Yes — free Normal Map Generator. How: Upload the colour map; pick OpenGL (Blender, Unity, Godot) or DirectX (Unreal); switch on Seamless edges.
- Height / displacement: Greyscale: white is high, black is low. From Kenerate: Yes — same tool, height map PNG. How: Use as a bump map, or as real displacement on a dense mesh.
- Roughness: Greyscale: black is glossy (mirror), white is matte. From Kenerate: No. How: Materialize (free, Windows) makes a smoothness map — invert it — or paint one from the colour map.
- Metallic: A mask: white for bare metal, black for everything else. From Kenerate: No. How: Most stone, wood and ground textures are all black; paint white only where metal shows.
- Ambient occlusion: Soft shadow in cracks and gaps. From Kenerate: No. How: Materialize, or bake it in Blender from the real geometry.

### Texture prompts to copy
The last prompt is an edit: upload your surface photo in Image Studio first. The rest work from text alone.
- Mossy cobblestones: Grey cobblestones with moss in the gaps and a few wet patches, photoreal surface detail, seamless tileable texture, top-down orthographic view, flat even lighting, no shadows, no perspective, edge to edge, square.
- Oak floor planks: Weathered oak floorboards running vertically, visible grain and small knots, natural honey colour, seamless tileable texture, top-down orthographic view, flat even lighting, no shadows, no perspective, edge to edge, square.
- Red brick wall: Old red brick wall in a running bond with light grey mortar, slightly chipped edges, photoreal, seamless tileable texture, top-down orthographic view, flat even lighting, no shadows, no perspective, edge to edge, square.
- Rusty metal plate: Painted steel plate with orange rust, scratches and a few rivets, worn industrial look, seamless tileable texture, top-down orthographic view, flat even lighting, no shadows, no perspective, edge to edge, square.
- Desert sand: Fine desert sand with soft wind ripples and a few small pebbles, warm beige colour, seamless tileable texture, top-down orthographic view, flat even lighting, no shadows, no perspective, edge to edge, square.
- Forest floor: Forest floor of pine needles, dry leaves, twigs and small stones, natural browns and greens, seamless tileable texture, top-down orthographic view, flat even lighting, no shadows, no perspective, edge to edge, square.
- Hand-painted stylised stone: Hand-painted stylised stone tiles for a fantasy game, chunky shapes, soft painted highlights, muted blue-grey palette, seamless tileable texture, top-down orthographic view, flat even lighting, no shadows, no perspective, edge to edge, square.
- Sci-fi floor panel: Sci-fi metal floor panels with grooves, small vents and hazard stripes, clean grey and dark blue, seamless tileable texture, top-down orthographic view, flat even lighting, no shadows, no perspective, edge to edge, square.
- Remove baked light (edit): This is a photo of a surface. Turn it into a flat, evenly lit texture seen straight from above: remove the shadows, highlights and perspective, keep the material, colours and pattern the same, and make the edges tile seamlessly.

### What makes a texture usable in a 3D engine?
A texture for a material is not a photo of a surface. It is the surface's colour with the light taken out, seen straight from above, in a square that repeats without a line. Epic's own guide describes Base Color as the colour you would see through a polarising filter — no reflections, no lighting, no shading.
Image models draw one picture at a time, so each of those properties is something you ask for, not something you get by default. That is why every prompt on this page ends with the same tail: top-down orthographic view, flat even lighting, no shadows, no perspective, edge to edge.

### From one colour image to a full material
The order that keeps the maps lined up:
- Generate the base colour tile and fix any seam (offset test).
- Upscale it if you need 4K — then run the offset test again, because the upscaler sees the tile as a single picture.
- Make the normal and height maps from that final tile in the free Normal Map Generator, with Seamless edges on. It works up to 2048 px; for a 4K colour map, a 2K normal map is usually fine.
- Make roughness and metallic: for stone, wood and ground the metallic map is plain black; roughness can come from Materialize's smoothness map (inverted) or a desaturated, levelled copy of the colour map.
- Load the colour map as sRGB and every other map as Non-Color (linear), then check the material under a moving light.

### What it costs on Kenerate
Qwen Image 3.0 (free plan) is 9 credits per texture at 1K or 2K. GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst at medium quality is 7.2 credits at 1K, 12 at 2K and 21 at 4K; an edit adds 4.5 credits per reference image, so a seam fix on one uploaded tile is 11.7 credits at 1K. Nano Banana 2.1 is 21, 31.5 or 42 credits at 1K, 2K or 4K. The Image Upscaler is 3 credits per image, and the Normal Map Generator costs nothing — it runs in your browser and uploads nothing.

## FAQ
Q: What is an AI texture generator?
A: A tool that makes texture images for 3D and games from a text prompt — stone, wood, metal, ground, fabric or sci-fi panels — usually as square tiles that repeat across a surface. On Kenerate AI you describe the material and ask for a “seamless tileable texture, top-down, flat even lighting”; the result is the colour (albedo) map of a material.

Q: Can AI generate PBR textures?
A: Partly. Kenerate's image models make the base colour map only. The free Normal Map Generator on Kenerate adds a normal map and a height map from that image, in your browser. Roughness, metallic and ambient occlusion maps are not made by Kenerate: use a free tool such as Materialize (Windows), paint them in an image editor, or bake AO in Blender. Any tool that guesses these maps from one picture is estimating — check them lit in your engine.

Q: How do I make a seamless, tileable texture?
A: Ask for it in the prompt (“seamless tileable texture, edge to edge, no border”), keep the canvas square and the lighting flat, then prove it with the offset test: move the tile by half its width and height with wrap-around on. If a cross appears in the middle, clone over it or upload it and ask an edit model to remove the seam, then offset again. Our seamless pattern generator page walks through the test step by step.

Q: What resolution should a game texture be?
A: Square power-of-two sizes — 1024, 2048 or 4096 pixels — are the usual choice for game textures, and the larger the surface is on screen, the bigger the tile it needs. Generate at 1K or 2K, or at 4K on GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst or Nano Banana 2.1, and use the Image Upscaler for 4K or 8K. In Kenerate's tests the upscaler's 4K setting turned a square image into 4096 × 4096 pixels.

Q: How much does it cost?
A: Qwen Image 3.0 is a free-plan model at 9 credits per image (1K or 2K). Recraft 20B is 6.6 credits. GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst at medium quality is 7.2, 12 or 21 credits at 1K, 2K or 4K, plus 4.5 per reference image on an edit. Nano Banana 2.1 is 21, 31.5 or 42. The Image Upscaler is 3 credits at 2K, 4K or 8K, and the Normal Map Generator is free. New accounts get starter credits; packs are one-time and never expire.

Q: How do I use an AI texture in Blender?
A: Add an Image Texture node with the colour map into the Base Color of a Principled BSDF. Add the normal map as a second Image Texture set to Non-Color, run it through a Normal Map node into Normal — Blender uses the OpenGL convention, so export the normal map as OpenGL (Y+). Use the height map through a Bump node, or as displacement on a subdivided mesh.

Q: How do I use it in Unreal Engine?
A: Import the colour map into Base Color of a material and the normal map into Normal. Unreal uses the DirectX convention, so pick DirectX (Y−) in the Normal Map Generator. Epic describes Base Color as the surface colour without lighting or shading, which is why the texture prompt asks for flat, even light and no shadows.

Q: Can I turn a photo of a real surface into a texture?
A: Yes. Upload the photo to Image Studio, pick GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst or Nano Banana 2.1 and ask it to “remove the shadows, highlights and perspective, keep the material, colours and pattern, make the edges tile seamlessly”. Edit models redraw the image, so compare it with the photo and run the offset test before you use it. Only use photos you took or have the rights to.

Q: Can it texture my own 3D model?
A: Not directly. Kenerate's image models make flat texture tiles, not textures painted onto your mesh's UV layout, and 3D Studio's Retexture mode has been removed. 3D Studio does texture the models it generates itself — several engines output PBR materials — so for a whole textured prop use the AI game asset generator or the AI 3D model generator for Blender instead.

Q: How is this different from the seamless pattern generator?
A: The seamless pattern generator is for print and graphic repeats — fabric, wallpaper, gift wrap, web backgrounds. This page is for 3D and game materials: top-down surfaces, flat light, power-of-two sizes and the extra PBR maps. The prompting and the offset test are the same idea.

## Related pages
- Normal map generator: https://kenerateai.com/normal-map-generator
- Minecraft texture generator: https://kenerateai.com/minecraft-texture-generator
- Seamless pattern generator: https://kenerateai.com/seamless-pattern-generator
- AI game asset generator: https://kenerateai.com/game-asset-generator-ai
- AI 3D model generator for Blender: https://kenerateai.com/3d-model-generator-for-blender
- Upscale image to 4K: https://kenerateai.com/upscale-image-to-4k
- AI fantasy map generator: https://kenerateai.com/ai-fantasy-map-generator

## Sources
- Epic Games — Physically Based Materials in Unreal Engine: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/physically-based-materials-in-unreal-engine
- Blender Manual — Normal Map node: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/shader_nodes/displacement/normal_map.html
- CG Channel — Free tool Materialize converts photos to PBR materials (2018): https://www.cgchannel.com/2018/10/free-tool-materialize-converts-photos-to-pbr-materials/
- Materialize source code (GitHub, GPL-3.0): https://github.com/BoundingBoxSoftware/Materialize
- Kenerate Image Studio: https://kenerateai.com/app/image