A material describes how a surface looks. A UV map tells a texture where to land on the model. Painting changes the texture itself. Keeping these three jobs distinct makes surface work much easier to diagnose.

Set the Material First

Use Materials to choose and adjust a supported surface. Color, roughness, metallic appearance, and available texture controls influence the result together with the scene's lighting.

Check the object in Material or Rendered Preview. If the whole scene looks too dark or washed out, review the environment and lights before repainting the texture. A lighting problem and a color problem can look similar from one view.

Understand the UV Map

UV Map opens a flat layout beside the model. Its islands are pieces of the model's surface arranged in texture space. Good placement gives important details enough room and avoids accidental stretching or overlap.

Existing usable coordinates open without being rewritten. If a supported mesh has a missing or unusable map, Poly can create a starting unwrap. You can deliberately choose another projection, including Planar, Box, Cylinder, Sphere, or Smart Unwrap.

A new projection replaces the layout. Decide on the layout before detailed painting, or the painted features may land on different parts of the model.

Inspect the model and its UV islands together before changing texture placement.

Refine Islands and Seams

Object selection in the UV workspace selects complete islands. Face, Edge, and Node postures select their corresponding components. Shift extends a selection, while Control or Command toggles it.

Move, rotate, and scale selected UV components to improve placement. Resize handles adjust a selection, with Shift preserving proportions and Alt available for shearing. Connected nodes stay connected until a deliberate seam separates them.

The layout tools serve different purposes:

With no component selection, the map's Move, Scale, Rotate, and Reset controls change the material's overall texture placement. That is different from moving individual UV nodes. Check the selection before choosing which kind of adjustment you need.

Paint with Canvas

Choose Paint and select an eligible object. A surface already connected to Canvas reconnects to its texture; an untextured surface offers create-or-choose actions in the panel. Each editable texture has its own Canvas document.

New square textures can use 512, 1K, 2K, or 4K resolution. The default is 1K. Choose enough resolution for the detail that will actually be visible; a tiny object rarely needs the largest canvas.

Brush, Pencil, and Eraser work in the Paint panel or directly on a ready model surface. Both views show live local feedback. The current Paint workspace autosaves, but seeing a stroke is not proof that the texture has finished saving. The Canvas source and the texture attached to Poly both need to finish; failed attachments remain pending even if Canvas saved successfully.

Use the save feedback as your checkpoint. If it asks you to save again, retry before leaving. Save and Reopen Your Work explains the difference between Saved, pending, and locally retained work.

Imported Surfaces

An imported model can keep its authored texture and UVs. When that source cannot be edited as a Canvas surface, Poly opens the usable original in UV Map instead. Choosing or removing a custom texture does not automatically erase the object's UV coordinates.

This makes it possible to inspect the original layout before deciding to replace anything. A custom texture and the imported source are separate choices; changing one does not require rebuilding the model.

Common Questions

Why does a brush mark appear in several places?

Check whether several faces share the same texture area. Change overlapping UVs only if you want those parts to receive different details.

Why does a texture change after sculpting?

Add and Excavate replace the UV layout. Complete those volume edits before committing to detailed texture placement.

Is an immediate paint preview already saved?

Not necessarily. Wait for Saved and resolve upload or attachment errors first.

Can I paint a texture in the spatial Quest editor?

Use the flat editor for the Canvas painting workflow. The spatial editor does not offer every surface-authoring tool.

Continue with Texture and Paint a Model.