Using Marble in 3D Modeling and Texturing

📌 Textures used: Poly Marble Texture Collection

Image 1: A beautiful interior featuring lots of beautiful marble.

Picture a luxurious, elegant room — what do you see? There’s a good chance you’re seeing marble, a quintessentially high-end material that adds an air of refinement to any interior.

Marble is very versatile and is used by designers in a wide variety of decors. Thanks to its clean and abstract look, it’s a perfect choice for large surfaces, and it’s often used to create a widening effect in spaces.

For all the same reasons, marble is a popular material in 3D modeling and texturing. It gives your models a realistic look and feel, and it can be used in a variety of ways.

In this post, we’ll discuss some tips and tricks for using marble in your 3D projects. We’ll cover everything from choosing the right type of marble to working with texturing techniques.

AI-Generated Textures in 3D Modeling

There are two ways to create marble textures for use in 3D modeling: with traditional texture painting techniques or by using AI to generate textures.

1. Traditional Painting: Texture painting is the process of manually painting textures onto a 3D model. This can be done with any image-editing software, such as Photoshop or GIMP. This technique is time-consuming and requires a certain level of skill.
2. AI-Generated Textures: Using AI to generate textures is much faster and easier than traditional texture painting, and it can produce realistic results. Poly offers a wide range of customizable marble textures that allow you to generate stunning, natural-looking results in seconds.

Selecting a Marble Texture for Your Design

Different marble patterns are used to achieve different looks. The result you’re after will determine the type of marble texture you want to create

Popular types of marble include:

Carrara Marble: This type of marble is white or blue-gray in color. It is one of the most popular types of marble for use in interior design and has been used since ancient times.

Calacatta Marble: This high-quality white marble is characterized by its intense veining. It comes from Italy and is often used in luxury interiors — think hotel lobbies and high-end residences.

Statuario Marble: This pure white marble that has a flawless appearance and is very popular for use in high-end design projects.

Other popular types of marble include:

• Arabescato
• Nero Marquina
• Thassos
• Riviera Gold
• Emperador Light
• Crema Marfil

Showcase: Popular HD Seamless Marble PBR Textures

With Poly, it’s easy to create any marbled pattern or texture you can dream up: black marble with gold veins, impressionist or abstract marble, a weathered stone floor — the possibilities are nearly limitless. In this post, we will show you some of the most popular HD seamless marble PBR textures created with Poly.

Black Marble Texture	Scarlet Red Marble Texture	Gold Marble Texture	White Marble Texture	Brown Marble Texture

Pink Marble Texture	Yellow Marble Texture	Beige Marble Texture	Grey Marble Texture	Sapphire Marble Texture

Blue Marble Texture	Black and White Marble Texture	White Gray Marble Texture	Green Marble Texture	Cream Marble Texture

Verde Indio Marble Texture	Golden Portoro Marble Texture	Mykalissos Grey Marble Texture	Terazzo Marble Texture	Emerald Marble Texture

Travertine Marble Texture	Calacatta Marble Texture	Carrara Marble Texture	Statuario Marble Texture	French Marble Texture

Image 2: Poly offers many marble textures to work with.

The first thing to consider is the overall look you’re going for. Poly can generate a large variety of colors and patterns, so you’ll want to choose a texture that fits the overall concept of your design.

The second thing to keep in mind is the level of detail you need. Some textures are very detailed; others are more abstract. If you’re going for a realistic look, you’ll want to choose a texture with a lot of detail. If you’re going for something more stylized, you can get away with a less detailed texture.

The third thing to think about is the size of your project. Large models and surfaces require high-resolution textures to avoid pixelation.

With Poly Infinity, you can generate tons of high-quality and high-resolution marble textures, so you can create one that fits your project perfectly.

📌 Check out our entire Marble texture collection here.

Using Marble Textures in 3D Modeling

Poly’s 2D digital textures can be wrapped around any 3D model. Depending on the software engine used, there are different tools and techniques for adding a texture to a 3D model. The process of texturing within the 3D animation pipeline involves unwrapping, adding texture, correcting the shading, and rendering.

Once you’re familiar with it, this is a straightforward process, and textures are easy to use in any 3D modeling software — but the process is especially easy with programs that have parametric modeling capabilities. Compatible modeling engines include Unity, Unreal, Blender, 3ds Max, and SketchUp.

With this method, you can create intricate patterns and shapes that would be difficult to replicate with traditional methods. It’s important to mention that in the case of marble, placement is everything. Carefully placing the veiny structure is the key to having a realistic look.

When using marble on countertops or floors, you might want to add a few wear marks, too. These can be created by making a new layer on top and using a soft brush set to finish.

No matter how you choose to use marble in your 3D models, the important thing is to have fun and experiment. There are no rules when it comes to creativity!

Creating Marble Textures FAQs: Everything You Need to Know

1. Does using Poly to generate a marble texture require design skills? No, unlike with Adobe Photoshop, Substance 3D, or Illustrator, generating a marble texture in Poly is very intuitive and takes only seconds.
2. What sorts of marbled stone effects can I create? Poly allows you to quickly create any sort of marbled surface or rock texture, from a gray stone wall to a weathered tile floor texture, from golden veins in black marble to calacatta marble tiles.
3. How do I create a marble texture or background in Poly? As an example, these are the steps for creating a golden marble texture in Poly, follow these steps:
   1. Go to Poly’s Texture Editor.
   2. Click Make Patches and Enter “golden marble” into the text prompt. To create any marble pattern, being descriptive will help you get results closer to what you’re hoping to create. See our best practices for writing prompts here.
   3. From the gold marble patches that the AI generates, select one to Make Seamless.
   4. You can then Upscale the low-res seamless patch to high-res.
   5. Generate PBR maps.
   6. Download the texture in high resolution with 32-bit PBR maps.