Use tools like PureRef to organize images of real-world materials, wear patterns, and lighting styles.

Finally, the home stretch: You export your textures—Albedo, Roughness, Metallic, Normal—and bring everything back into a render engine or a Game Engine like Unity or Unreal. You hit "Play," and the object sits there, basking in the light, looking indistinguishable from reality. You have successfully created a .

Before touching any software, professional artists gather visual references to define the asset's silhouette and story.