The Albedo map defines the color of a material.

• A. Albedo map defines color
• B. Normal map defines color
• C. Emission map defines color
• D. Metallic map defines color

Answer: (A)

Albedo represents the base color of a material. In a PBR workflow, it stores the intrinsic color information that the surface reflects under neutral lighting, forming the color you see as the material’s foundation. The shading and final appearance then also depend on lighting, normals, roughness, and metalness, but the albedo map is where the color data itself comes from.

The normal map changes how light interacts by adjusting the surface geometry—so it affects shading and highlights, not the color value. The emission map makes the surface glow, adding color and brightness from the material itself regardless of external lighting. The metallic map controls how metallic the surface behaves in reflections, influencing how the color is reflected and how light interacts, but it doesn’t directly define the base color.