Texturology Addon Documentation

1. Open Blender (version 4.2 or newer is required).
2. Go to Edit > Preferences > Extensions.
3. Click the Install... options from the Dropdown menu at the top-right.
4. Navigate to the Texturology.zip file you downloaded and select it.
5. Click Install Add-on.
6. Find "Texturology" in the Extensions list.

1. Blender Backend: OpenGL is Mandatory

This is the most critical requirement. The AI models used by Texturology are only compatible with Blender's OpenGL graphics backend. Using the Vulkan backend will cause errors or prevent the addon from working entirely.

2.1. Input Image

This is where your journey begins. This section is for loading and viewing your source texture.

• Load Image: Click this to open Blender's file browser and select the image you want to process.
• Image Info: Once loaded, this area displays the image's name, dimensions, format, color space, and channel information.
• View in Image Editor: A handy button to ensure the input image is the one currently active in the main editor view.

2.2. Generation Settings

This section contains the main controls for the PBR material generation process.

• Generate Materials: The main operator button. Click this to start the AI inference process based on your selected maps.
• Load PBR AI Workspace: This button loads a custom Blender workspace preset designed for PBR texture viewing and material setup, helping you visualize your results.
• Maps to Generate: This is a crucial area where you select which PBR texture maps the AI should create. Check the boxes for the maps you need for your material. (More on what each map does in Section 4).
• Generate Curvature Map: An additional, non-AI process that generates a curvature map from the normal map. This requires the "Normal Map" to be enabled.
• Blur Radius: (Only visible when Curvature is on) Controls the softness of the curvature map.

2.3. Generated Textures

After the generation process is complete, this gallery will appear, listing all the texture maps you created.

• Texture List: Each generated map is listed with an appropriate icon.
• View Button (Eye Icon): Click the eye icon next to any texture to view it in the Image Editor.
• Export Textures: This button opens an export dialog, allowing you to save all the generated textures to a folder on your computer in various formats (PNG, JPEG, etc.) and bit depths.

2.4. Advanced AI Features

This collapsible section provides access to powerful, standalone AI tools that complement the main PBR workflow.

• AI Upscaling: Enhance the resolution of any image in your Blender project. You can select an image, choose a 2x or 4x scale factor, and the ESRGAN AI model will intelligently add detail to create a larger, clearer version.
• AI Inpainting: A tool for removing or replacing parts of a texture. You can paint a mask over an area, and the addon's texture synthesis algorithm will fill it in based on the surrounding context.

Image Dimensions & Aspect Ratio

• Aspect Ratio: For seamless tiling, a 1:1 square aspect ratio is strongly recommended.
• Dimensions: Use textures with power-of-two dimensions. The addon is optimized for tiles of 2048x2048 pixels. Good sizes include:

• 1024 x 1024
• 2048 x 2048 (Optimal)
• 4096 x 4096
• 8192 x 8192
• 16384 x 16384

Making Your Texture Seamless (Mandatory for Tiling)

This is a critical point. For a material to tile correctly across a large surface without visible seams, the final material must be seamless.

Why is this so important? Many textures, especially photos of real-world surfaces, are not naturally tileable. They don't have repeating patterns. Traditional algorithms that try to make an image seamless often fail on such textures, producing blurry edges or unrealistic artifacts. Texturology's AI interprets the image as it is; it does not automatically make it seamless.

You have several options to achieve seamless tiling, depending on your workflow:

Step 2: Load the Image

In the Input Image section of the Texturology panel, click Load Image and select your prepared, seamless texture.

Step 3: Configure Generation Settings

In the Generation Settings section, choose which PBR maps you want to create. Texturology now offers multiple methods for generating certain maps, giving you control over quality and processing approach.

Step 4: Generate Materials

Click the big Generate Materials button. The process is asynchronous, meaning it will not freeze Blender's UI. You can monitor the progress in the status bar at the bottom of the panel. The time this takes will depend on your hardware and the resolution of your input image.

Step 5: Review and Export

Once finished, the Generated Textures gallery will appear. Click the eye icon on each map to inspect the results.

🎨 Base Color (Albedo)

This map defines the pure, diffuse color of a surface without any lighting or shadow information. It's what the material looks like under flat, neutral lighting.

🔵 Normal Map

This is one of the most important maps for adding detail. It's an RGB texture where each color channel corresponds to an X, Y, or Z direction. The renderer uses this information to simulate bumps, cracks, pores, and other fine surface details by changing how light reflects off the surface. It adds complexity without adding extra geometry.

⚪ Roughness

This grayscale map controls how rough or smooth a surface is. A black value (0.0) represents a perfectly smooth surface (like a mirror), resulting in sharp, clear reflections. A white value (1.0) represents a very rough surface (like concrete), resulting in diffuse, scattered reflections.

⛰️ Height Map (Displacement)

This grayscale map provides information about the surface's height. Black areas are low, and white areas are high. It can be used for parallax effects or, with adaptive subdivision, to physically displace the geometry of your mesh, creating real shadows and silhouettes.

🌑 Ambient Occlusion (AO)

This map simulates the soft, ambient shadows that appear in crevices, corners, and areas where objects are close together. It adds a subtle sense of depth and realism by darkening areas that ambient light would have trouble reaching.

📐 Curvature Map

A grayscale map that highlights the edges and cavities of a surface. Convex edges are typically lighter, while concave crevices are darker. It's extremely useful in procedural texturing workflows for adding effects like edge wear, dirt accumulation, or rust. It is generated from the Normal Map.

5.1. AI Upscaling

The upscaler uses an ESRGAN model to increase the resolution of an image by 2x or 4x. It's more intelligent than a standard resize, as it tries to predict and generate new detail. This is useful for improving the quality of lower-resolution source textures.

5.2. AI Inpainting

Inpainting is the process of filling in a selected part of an image. Texturology uses a texture synthesis method that analyzes the surrounding pixels and generates new content to fill the masked area.

This feature works best on textures with repeating or uniform patterns (like fabric, sand, or asphalt), as the algorithm can more easily find source information to create a seamless patch.

📊 Result Quality

The materials generated by Texturology are AI interpretations and are not a substitute for professionally scanned textures from photogrammetry workflows. The results are very good but may not reach the fidelity of dedicated scanning hardware and software.

🖼️ Input Image Quality (Upscaling)

Often, a texture that has been upscaled can become blurry and lose detail, which results in lower quality PBR maps. We strongly recommend using images at their original resolution (directly from a camera or AI generation). If you need to increase the resolution, use an upscaling tool that enhances details rather than blurring them, such as Magnific AI.

🎨 Base Color Map

The AI model for the Base Color map is designed to remove lighting and shadow information. However, if your original input image is already a high-quality albedo (flatly lit), the AI might misinterpret it. In some cases, your original input image may be a better Base Color map than the generated one. Always compare them.

🚫 Unsupported Materials

The addon is not designed to work with materials that are translucent, transparent, or require an alpha channel (like glass, water, or leaves on a plane). If you need an alpha channel, you must create it manually in an external program like Photoshop and combine it with your material in Blender's Shader Editor.

⚡ Performance

The time it takes to generate materials is directly proportional to the resolution of your input image and the power of your hardware. A 4096x4096 image will take significantly longer than a 1024x1024 image.

⚠️ Normal Map I (Photo2Normal) Caveat

The AI model for Normal Map I was trained on a broad dataset and may produce inverted or unnatural results for certain materials, particularly those with strong directional lighting or clear height differences like stone walls. For most cases, we strongly recommend using Normal Map II (DeepBump), which is the default selection, as it often provides more accurate and physically correct results.