How to Texture Any 3D Model With AI Using Hi3D

Got a white 3D model sitting on your hard drive just begging for some life? Hi3D's Stylized AI Texture feature is exactly what you need. Drop in your model and a reference photo — literally any image with a look you like — and the AI pulls the colors, surface properties, and style out of that image and wraps them across your model's geometry, generating a full set of PBR material maps in one shot. No manual UV painting, no shader tweaking. This tutorial walks you through the whole thing.

1. Hi3D account
2. A 3D white model in FBX, OBJ, GLB, or USDZ format
3. A style reference image — JPEG, PNG, or WEBP, under 20 MB

Log into Hi3D and look at the left-hand navigation bar. You'll see icons for General, Portrait, Texture, 3D Relief, and Segmentation. Click Texture — that's where you're headed. The panel that loads on the left is your control center for this whole workflow: Upload Model at the top, Upload Image just below it, and all your generation settings underneath.

In the Upload Model section, you have two options: Select From History (pulls from models you've previously imported) or Local Upload (grab a file directly from your computer). Once a model is loaded, you'll see a small preview thumbnail appear in the drop zone. The video demonstrates this using a white robot mech — a great test subject because it has plenty of surface detail and hard edges to show off what the texturing can do.

Click the Upload Image area below the model section — or just drag and drop your reference photo right into it. This image is the creative brief for your texture. The AI reads its colors, material properties, and overall aesthetic, then figures out how to apply all of that to your 3D model's surface. In the tutorial, a bold yellow-and-black mech illustration is used as the reference, and the result is a robot that looks like it rolled straight off an industrial assembly line. But the same workflow works just as well with a rusty metal photo, a marble texture, a neon cyberpunk illustration — whatever vibe you're going for.

Before you hit Generate, spend a moment on the settings panel. Three things to pay attention to:

1. Model Version: Make sure this is set to v2.0. It's the latest algorithm and produces noticeably better results than v1.5 — sharper material separation, more accurate color mapping, and proper PBR output. As of now, v2.1 is also available and delivers even sharper material separation and improved texture consistency — worth trying if you want the best possible output.
2. Texture Model: You'll see two options — Texture Mode and Vertex Color Mode. Stick with Texture Mode for UV-mapped PBR textures that work in any renderer or game engine. Vertex Color Mode is a faster, lower-fidelity option for specific workflows.
3. Reduce Shading Intensity: This slider (default 0.5) controls how much the original model's baked-in shadows affect the generated texture. If your reference image has strong lighting or shadows baked in, increase this value to filter them out — otherwise those lighting effects can bleed into the generated texture. Drop it down if you want the model's sculpted surface detail to show through more clearly.
4. PBR: Keep this toggled on. It tells the AI to generate a physically-based material — metallic, roughness, and normal maps alongside the albedo — so your model responds to lighting realistically in any PBR renderer.

Once your settings look good, click the green Generate button at the bottom of the panel. You'll see the credit cost displayed right on the button before you commit — the tutorial shows 15 points per generation at standard resolution. The AI gets to work, and a progress indicator runs while it processes. Go grab a coffee; it usually doesn't take long.