Brand identity + product + 3D

Texel: a brand for an API that turns a typed material into the four texture maps a game artist needs

Texel is a material API for game and film studios. A technical artist types a material, such as wet river clay, and gets the four maps that make it: albedo, normal, roughness and height, at 2,048 px, tiled and applied to the mesh inside their editor. We built it from scratch: the name, a world where one test object wears a different material in every piece, the editor panel, a logo that grows moss, and the launch on posters, a street hoarding, an artist's jacket and a box of material samples.

Project: An Alterra Studio project: we built the company's brand, product and launch from scratch
Stage: Generative 3D, Series A stage
Services: Naming, world and key art, lockup and 3D logo, editor panel UI, material set, posters, out-of-home and merch, animated board
Tools: Imagine (our in-house design app), Nano Banana Pro, Seedance, Blender, HyperFrames

Brief

The problem and the brief

Ten funded generative 3D homepages, and none shows the texture maps a technical artist checks before a material goes into a game.

The brief, in a founder's words: "Our API turns a typed material into a texture set that tiles and holds up in-engine, but our homepage shows a finished render and says 'in seconds', so the technical art director who checks us before a call never sees the maps they would judge us on."

How game artists see generative AI

The research

64%

of visual and technical artists in games hold unfavourable views of generative AI, more than any other discipline.

Source: GDC State of the Game Industry, 2026

52%

of game industry professionals think generative AI is hurting the industry, up from 18% two years earlier.

Source: GDC State of the Game Industry, 2026

30%

of people at game studios use generative AI tools at work, against 58% at publishers, support and marketing firms.

Source: GDC State of the Game Industry, 2026

Three doubts a studio's art team brings to the first call

Technical art directorIt will look good in a render and fall apart in-engine, with seams the moment it tiles.
Head of artMy artists will refuse to use it, and I'll have bought a tool nobody opens.
Lead artistEverything it makes will look the same, and our game will look like every other AI game.

Logic

The strategy: show the maps, on the mesh, in the artist's editor

Every 3D artist judges a material on a shader ball. Texel's world is that ball, a sphere with one square cut out, in a different material in every piece. The product is the panel where a material arrives as four maps and lands on the mesh. Colour only ever comes from a material.

Doubt 1 · Seams?It will look good in a render and fall apart in-engine, with seams the moment it tiles.
Four maps, and the tiling checked
The panel returns the whole set at 2,048 px: albedo, normal, roughness and height, each labelled, with "Tiles seamlessly" under them. Tiled two by two, the clay albedo shows no seam.
64% of visual and technical artists in games view generative AI unfavourably. They judge a material by its maps, so the screen leads with the maps.
Doubt 2 · Will they use it?My artists will refuse to use it, and I'll have bought a tool nobody opens.
Docked in the editor they already use
Texel is a panel beside the viewport, in the editor the artist works in all day. The artist writes the material, looks at the maps and decides. The mesh only changes when they click Apply to mesh.
Only 30% of people at game studios use generative AI tools at work. A tool that sits in their own editor and waits for their click asks the least of them.
Doubt 3 · Same look?Everything it makes will look the same, and our game will look like every other AI game.
One form, any material
Each piece wears a different surface. One test object wears wet river clay, verdigris copper, glacial ice, glyph terracotta, rattan and lava, each from one typed line, so the look comes from what the artist writes.
Art direction belongs to the studio. Showing range on a single object proves the material follows the description, with no house style of its own.

System

The design system

Black for the ground, viewport grey for a mesh before its material, bone for type. Every other colour belongs to a material.

Black #050505The ground
Viewport grey #8A8A8AThe untextured mesh, before every material
Bone #EDEDEAType and the lockup
Living moss #5D6933The key art and the 3D logo
Glyph terracotta #C58355The board's material cycle
Glacial ice #4B6D82The ice poster

The world. One form, any material. Every 3D artist previews a material on a shader ball, so Texel's own test object, a sphere with one square cut out on a squat plinth, wears a different surface in every piece: moss, river clay, terracotta, ice, verdigris copper, lava.

Lockup and mark. Two curved strokes wrap an empty oval: a material wrapped around a form. The 3D version grows moss, flowers and glass bubbles, and in the wordmark each letter turns into a different material.

Type. Hanken Grotesk for every word, on the posters, the board and the editor panel, so the brand and the product read as one.

What we left out. 6 of 10 competitors open on a finished model, and 7 of 10 promise seconds or say no 3D skills are needed. None shows a texture set, and none takes its colour from a material.

Texel key art: a grey shader ball with a square cut out, moss growing across it and into the cut

The 10-second board, made for LinkedIn and X.

The same shader ball in eight materials: river clay, verdigris copper, ice, terracotta, rattan, ink in glass, lava and chrome voxels — One form, any material: the same test object in eight materials, each from one typed line.

Moss spreads across the untextured grey ball.

The 3D logo starts as a grey mark and grows moss, flowers and glass bubbles.

The Texel lockup in bone on black and in black on bone — Two curved strokes wrap an empty oval: a material wrapped around a form. Traced to vectors exactly as drawn.

The wordmark types on, then each letter turns into a material.

Poster: tiling PBR materials from a text prompt, over a shader ball in clear ice

Poster: split lava rock, over a shader ball in porous lava with a molten seam

Poster: one sentence in, four maps out, the living mark in a field of moss

The palette as a texture set: albedo, roughness and height under one moving light.

The river clay albedo tiled two by two, with no visible seam — The clay albedo tiled two by two: no seam shows.

A Texel poster on a black plywood hoarding at dusk: type verdigris copper, get the PBR set

A game artist at her desk in a black chore jacket with the Texel mark on the pocket, a moss shader ball beside her

An open black box of physical material samples with the Texel lockup on the lid

Method

The category audit

We scored 10 funded generative 3D companies on our startup homepage benchmark. Their sites are better than most, and none shows the texture maps behind its models.

Each homepage was scored on 12 criteria, 0 to 2 each, at 1440 and 390 pixels wide. The group averages 15.5 out of 24, above the 14.1 of our wider benchmark: 5 of 10 say what they do in five seconds at both widths, and 4 of 10 show the product on the first screen.

The gaps are the buyer and the material. Only 2 of 10 name the buyer on the first screen, 7 of 10 promise seconds or say no 3D skills are needed, and none shows a texture set. Those are the gaps Texel's homepage is designed to close.

Homepage score out of 100 (12 criteria, 0 to 2 each): 10 funded generative 3D companies, October 2026

Company A79
Company B79
Company C71
Company D71
Company E67
Company F58
Company G58
Company H58
Company I58
Company J46
Benchmark average, 100 startups59

Alterra Studio startup website benchmark 2026. Companies are anonymised.

The offer

What we'd ship

For a real generative 3D material company, this is a Brand + Website Build.

Brand: Name check, world and key art, lockup and 3D logo, palette and type, and the rule that colour only comes from a material
Website: A homepage that opens on a material arriving as four labelled maps and landing on a mesh, with the buyer and the next step on the first screen, at desktop and phone width
Product: The editor panel, its four states and the material history in the brand
Launch: The animated board, the 3D logo and wordmark films, posters, a street hoarding, apparel and a material sample box

After this

What's next

Build the homepage opening on the panel run at 1440 and 390, and score it on the same benchmark.
Answer the head of art on rights a page that says what the model was trained on and who owns what it makes.
Show a studio's own mesh the panel applying a material to a production asset in the engine, beyond the shader ball.