Albedo Map

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.