What is the albedo map?

• A. A texture that stores depth information
• B. A texture that controls metallic reflectivity
• C. Where you choose colors by dragging the crosshair to a specific color
• D. A texture that describes surface roughness

Answer: (C)

An albedo map is a texture that stores the base color information of a surface. In a PBR workflow, it provides the color data for each texel that the shader uses to color the material, independent of lighting details like shading or reflections. It’s the color texture the material looks like on the actual surface, and it can be a full-color image or a solid color laid out as a texture.

This isn’t about depth, which would be a depth map, nor about how metallic the surface is (metallic map) or how rough the surface is (roughness map). It also isn’t describing a color picker tool in a UI—the albedo map is the actual image data the renderer reads as the surface color.