texturing-pipeline

Texturing Pipeline

Overview

Generate photo-realistic texture atlases for 3D meshes in Metashape. Covers UV mapping, texture generation, color calibration, and quality optimization. This skill is used AFTER mesh building and BEFORE export.

When to Use

• After mesh is built and cleaned, ready for texturing
• When choosing texture settings for a specific output (game engine, web viewer, print)
• When texture quality is poor (blurry, seams, ghosting, color shifts)
• When re-texturing after mesh edits

Prerequisites

• Mesh exists in chunk (get_model_stats() should return data)
• Cameras aligned with good reprojection error (<1.0 px)
• Mesh cleaned of artifacts (run clean_model first)

Standard Texture Pipeline

Step 1: Build UV Map

build_uv(
    mapping_mode="generic",
    texture_size=8192
)

UV mapping modes:

Mode	Best For	Trade-offs
generic	General purpose, arbitrary geometry	Good balance of distortion and coverage
adaptive_orthophoto	Terrain, aerial surveys	Optimized for top-down viewing
orthophoto	Flat surfaces, DEM overlay	Only works for near-planar geometry
camera	Single-camera texturing	Uses one camera's projection

For road corridors: generic is the right choice. The geometry is too complex (walls, overhangs, road surface) for orthophoto modes.

Step 2: Build Texture Atlas

build_texture(
    blending_mode="natural",
    texture_size=8192,
    ghosting_filter=True
)

You may also pass anti_aliasing, or if you are baking from another model (e.g. you decimated a high‑res mesh and want to reuse its texture) include source_model_key=<int>, transfer_texture=True, and source_data="model". When using a source model the blending mode must be "mosaic" to avoid assertion errors in Metashape 2.3+.

Step 3: (Optional) Color Calibration

If colors look inconsistent across the mesh:

calibrate_colors(
    source_data="model"
)