PLAYTEX Blog
Browse published PLAYTEX articles covering texture workflows, product updates, engine-specific guidance, and production learnings.
Why normal maps are purple, what their pixels actually encode, and how to diagnose inverted dents, crunchy highlights, and other normal-map mischief.
Create a Game Skybox: Cube Faces, HDRIs, Seams, and LightingChoose between six-face skyboxes and equirectangular HDR environments, then control seams, orientation, exposure, reflections, and engine import.
How to Make a Tileable Texture Without Obvious RepetitionFix border seams, repeated landmarks, scale drift, and mismatched PBR maps with a practical tiling and validation workflow.
Albedo, Diffuse, and Base Color: The Useful Difference for PBRUntangle three overlapping texture terms and learn what to remove from a color map, what metal changes, and how engines label the input.
AI Can Paint a Great Texture. Can It Produce Honest PBR Maps?A gorgeous material preview can hide baked light, contradictory channels, and imaginary geometry. Here is why—and the test bench that catches it before production does.
How to Create a Production-Ready PBR Texture SetA complete production workflow from material reference and physical scale through map authoring, engine import, compression, validation, and handoff.
Procedural Levels That Don’t Feel Like Oatmeal: A Designer’s PlaybookRandom rooms are easy. Memorable journeys are not. Build procedural levels with authored beats, readable landmarks, useful constraints, and seeds you can actually debug.
PBR Map Export Cheat Sheet: Blender, Unity 6, and Unreal Engine 5The same material can look perfect in Blender and wrong in-engine. Use this map-by-map reference for color space, roughness, smoothness, normals, packing, and import checks.
Emissive Surfaces in Roblox: Masks, Strength, Tint, and LightsUse current SurfaceAppearance emissive properties in Roblox, then separate the visible glow from bloom and nearby scene lighting.
PBR Texture Maps Explained: What Every File Actually ControlsA map-by-map reference for base color, normal, roughness, metallic, AO, height, opacity, and emission, including color-space and packing pitfalls.
Emission Maps for Games: Masks, Intensity, Bloom, and Real LightBuild emission maps that survive new lighting by separating the glow mask, emitted color, intensity, bloom, and actual scene illumination.
How to Choose an AI Texture Tool for Game Development in 2026A neutral decision guide for tile generators, photo-to-material tools, mesh texturing, node authoring, and hand painting, with a test you can run on your own asset.
Build a Game Screenshot Pipeline That Serves the Store PageTurn finished game art into honest, readable store screenshots and capsules with a repeatable capture, review, and export process.
Import PBR Textures into Roblox Studio with SurfaceAppearanceA current Roblox workflow for ColorMap, NormalMap, RoughnessMap, MetalnessMap, emissive controls, UV requirements, and device-quality testing.
From Photo to Game Material: Capture, De-light, Tile, and TestConvert a real surface photo into a reusable game material while controlling perspective, lighting, scale, tiling, map derivation, and engine import.
A Repeatable PBR Pipeline for Studios: Contracts, Presets, and TestsTurn material creation into a repeatable studio process with map contracts, source records, export presets, validation scenes, and useful review evidence.
AI Texture Generation for Games: Four Workflows That Hold UpUse AI for material ideation, image-to-material work, mesh texturing, and controlled variations without confusing a fast draft with a finished asset.
A PLAYTEX Material Workflow: From Source Image to Engine CheckA factual tour of the PLAYTEX material workflow, including source preparation, map generation, previewing, export, organization, and final engine checks.
Procedural Texturing Without the Mystery: A Practical Game-Asset PipelineA practical guide to parametric materials, repeatable variation, baking, validation, and the points where hand-authored work still wins.