What is the salary of a Texture Artist in India 2026?

A Texture Artist in India earns between ₹2.5L (entry-level) to ₹38.0L (senior-level) per annum as of 2026. Salaries vary based on location, skills, and company size. Top companies like Google, Amazon, and Flipkart pay 30-50% above market rates.

How do I become a Texture Artist?

To become a Texture Artist, focus on building core skills, gaining practical experience through projects or internships, and obtaining relevant certifications. Most people enter this field within 6-12 months of dedicated preparation.

Is Texture Artist a good career in 2026?

Texture Artist is a viable career choice in 2026. Pros include: Texture artists are a critical but often understaffed specialization — studios at DNEG, MPC India, and Lakshya Digital routinely have more senior-texture vacancies than they can fill, because the full skill stack (baking, UDIM layout, Substance, Mari, look-dev collaboration, ACES calibration) takes 3-4 years to develop and most artists don't complete it.. The demand for Design & Media professionals continues to grow with digital transformation across industries.

What is the work-life balance like for a Texture Artist?

Work-life balance as a Texture Artist varies by company and role. Many Design & Media jobs offer flexibility. Check specific job postings for work arrangements.

Career focus · Design & Media

Become a Texture Artist.

Q: What skills do I need to become a Texture Artist?

The essential skills for a Texture Artist include: PBR Material Authoring (Albedo, Roughness, Metalness, Normal), Color Theory & Composition, Reading Art Direction & Reference, Look Development & Shading, UV Mapping & Layout. Key tools used: Foundry Mari, Autodesk ShotGrid (asset tracking & dailies), Autodesk Maya. Both technical proficiency and soft skills like communication are important.

Texture Artists author the surface details that make 3D geometry look like real materials — painting albedo, roughness, metalness, normal, AO, and emissive maps in Substance Painter and Mari to PBR specifications that look correct under any lighting condition. In India, the role clusters at DNEG (Mumbai/Bengaluru/Chennai), MPC India, Prime Focus, Technicolor India, Lakshya Digital (Pune/Gurgaon), Ubisoft Pune, and EA Hyderabad — servicing film pipelines (Dune, Mission Impossible, Avengers) and AAA games (Far Cry, GTA, FIFA) from the same city hubs. The craft splits hard between game texturing (Substance Painter, strict VRAM budgets, UDIM workflows for hero assets, Unreal 5 master material compatibility) and film texturing (Mari multi-tile UDIM paint, ptex, ACES colour management, offline-render shader calibration in Arnold or V-Ray with the look-dev team). Both tracks require mastery of map-baking — normal, AO, curvature, height, and position maps baked from high-poly geometry in Marmoset Toolbag or Substance Painter — so the texturing pass starts from accurate, artefact-free baked data.

₹3L – ₹38LHybridMedium to enter

Take the 4-min fit check Find my best matches

4-minute fit check

Is this actually your fit?

Two short trait quizzes scored against this exact role. No signup, no card. Honest answer in 4 minutes.

Start fit check

01 · Fit signal

Who really thrives here

Every career on ClarUp carries a 6-trait blueprint scored from real practitioners. Take the 3-min DNA test to see your fit.

ConscientiousnessROLE 85

OpennessROLE 88

Structure preferenceROLE 72

Risk toleranceROLE 45

Analytical reasoningROLE 80

Verbal reasoningROLE 50

What it takes

High Openness88/100

The strongest signal for this role. People who score 70+ on this dimension report higher day-to-day satisfaction.

02 · The money

What this role actually pays.

India-first salary signal — fresh-grad to senior, the cities where it pays best, and what each level is worth on the open market.

India range · fresh to senior

₹3L – ₹38L

undefined–undefined yrs

undefined–undefined yrs in

undefined–undefined yrs

undefined–undefined yrs in

undefined–undefined yrs

undefined–undefined yrs in

How to read this

Numbers reflect open-market hires at the level shown.

Equity, bonuses, and overtime are not included. Senior-bracket numbers can rise 30–60% at top studios / tier-1 firms; smaller cities trend 20% lower than metros.

City-by-city

6 cities

Mumbai

₹5-38L

DNEG Mumbai, MPC India, Prime Focus, Framestore Mumbai — film-pipeline texture artists with ACES and Mari UDIM depth at DNEG senior level reach ₹22-38L; mid-level film pipeline ₹9-16L. Goregaon and Lower Parel are the main VFX cluster districts.

Bengaluru

₹6-30L

DNEG Bengaluru, Rockstar India (texture artist roles for GTA / RDR pipeline), ReDefine — Rockstar India mid-level texture artists with shipped AAA credits ₹16-25L; DNEG Bengaluru film pipeline mid ₹10-16L

Pune

₹5-22L

Ubisoft Pune (hero-asset texturing for Far Cry, AC, POP), Lakshya Digital Pune, Sumo Group India Pune — Ubisoft Pune mid ₹10-16L; Lakshya Digital mid ₹7-12L; outsource vendor senior ₹14-22L

Gurgaon / NCR

₹4-20L

Lakshya Digital HQ Gurgaon — the largest AAA-art outsource vendor in India; texture artist mid ₹7-13L; senior outsource texture leads ₹16-22L; international publisher credits are the key pay lever

Hyderabad

₹5-20L

EA Hyderabad, Technicolor Games India — game-pipeline texture artists mid ₹8-15L; Technicolor India film-pipeline mid ₹10-18L; strong overtime during milestone crunch

Chennai + Tier-2

₹4-14L (staff) / ₹18-50L (freelance stack)

Prime Focus Chennai, regional mid-tier VFX studios — staff texture artist mid ₹5-12L; senior Indian texture artists in tier-2 cities (Coimbatore, Trivandrum, Indore) frequently build USD ArtStation freelance books that dwarf local rates by year 5

03 · A day in this work

What the work actually feels like.

Not the brochure version. The actual block-by-block reality of the role on a typical Tuesday.

01
9:30 AM
Log in or arrive at DNEG Mumbai studio (Goregaon or Lower Parel). Open Shotgrid and check overnight notes from the London compositing team — two creature shots have roughness revision requests that arrived while India slept.
02
10:00 AM
Morning texture dailies with the lead and VFX supervisor. Yesterday's Mari UDIM paint on the creature shoulder zone is reviewed — feedback: skin roughness reads too glossy under the ACES ODT at the shot's lighting angle.
03
10:30 AM
Pull down roughness on UDIM tiles 1003-1006 in Mari, add a micro-surface height variation pass to break the uniform gloss, and export revised roughness EXR tiles to the look-dev TD's shader directory on the studio NAS.
04
11:30 AM
New high-poly prop delivered from modeling — a hero prop for a set-extension shot. Inspect the mesh UV layout for UDIM tile count and seam placement, validate the bake cage, then run normal/AO/curvature bakes in Marmoset Toolbag.
05
1:00 PM
Lunch — studio cafeteria at DNEG Goregaon or order to desk. Check ArtStation messages; a Berlin VFX studio is asking about freelance availability for a creature-texturing contract.
06
2:00 PM
Start Substance Painter texturing on the hero prop — import bake maps, define base material zones using material-ID mask, build smart material stack for aged brass: verdigris in cavity fills, edge wear via curvature, directional dust via position Y mask.
07
4:30 PM
Look-dev TD calls on Slack — creature skin SSS radius needs adjusting to match the approved reference look. Provide recommended albedo RGB values and scatter-colour targets based on skin micro-detail density; update the shader-calibration document in Confluence.
08
5:30 PM
Complete the hero prop texture export — all UDIM tiles as EXR linear, fill out the Shotgrid handoff form, notify the lighting lead. End of day at 6:30 PM on non-crunch weeks; during VFX milestone delivery windows, desks stay active until 9:30-10:30 PM pushing roughness and albedo revisions through multiple lighting-team feedback cycles.

04 · Routes in

Three honest paths in.

Cost, time, and what each path actually buys you in the hiring market.

Most common

Route 01

Formal degree

Cost: ₹2-12L total
Time: 3-4 years

Strongest signal · highest ceiling

Route 02

Bootcamp + Certification

Cost: ₹40k-2L
Time: 3-9 months

Fastest paid hire route

Route 03

Portfolio / Self-taught

Cost: ₹0-20k
Time: 6-18 months

Cheapest · portfolio is your degree

Typical credentials:Common path: Diploma or B.Sc. in Animation, VFX, or Fine Arts from MAAC, Arena Animation, Toonz Academy, Whistling Woods, or Picasso Animation College. Studios screen by texture reel quality first, degree second — an ArtStation portfolio demonstrating UDIM PBR workflow, bake accuracy, and material variety will out-rank any credential without a matching reel.Self-taught route: ~35% of working Indian texture artists learned primarily via Substance Painter tutorials (Adobe's official series, FlippedNormals), Mari courses (Foundry Learning Portal), and Gnomon / CGMA courses. Entry via ArtStation portfolio review is standard at Lakshya Digital, Prime Focus, and MPC India.Certifications that matter: Adobe Substance 3D Painter certification, Foundry Mari Essentials (official course), Marmoset Toolbag baking workshops, and Autodesk Maya Associate for UV layout and export pipeline knowledge. DNEG and Technicolor India list Substance and Mari fluency in JDs explicitly.Portfolio bar: a reel showing at minimum one game-spec PBR asset (full UDIM stack: albedo, roughness, metalness, normal, AO exported to Unreal 5 spec) and one film-pipeline asset (Mari UDIM paint, ACES-correct colour, Arnold or V-Ray shader hookup). Both tracks demand visible process — bake comparison, layer-stack screenshots, and a final lit turntable in Marmoset Toolbag or Unreal Engine 5.Master's / advanced track: MFA in Animation/VFX from Gnomon (LA), Vancouver Film School, or Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) unlocks senior look-dev TD and lead texturing roles at Hollywood-tier studios. Within India, senior texturing leads at DNEG Mumbai are increasingly running international UDIM and VFX supervisor discussions — a post-grad shading course from CGMA or Gnomon is the most direct credential for that track.

05 · Skills you'll actually use

The kit, not the resume.

Core skills you must own, the support skills you'll grow into, and the tools you'll have open all day.

Core skills · own these first

PBR Material Authoring (Albedo, Roughness, Metalness, Normal)Color Theory & CompositionReading Art Direction & ReferenceLook Development & ShadingUV Mapping & LayoutNormal / AO / Curvature / Height Map Baking

Helpful but not required

Pipeline Scripting (Python / MEL)Feedback & Revision DisciplineVersion Control (Perforce / Git LFS)Procedural Material Authoring (Substance Designer)

Tools open all day

FFoundry Mari

AAutodesk ShotGrid (asset tracking & dailies)

AAutodesk Maya

ZZBrush

SSubstance Designer

AAdobe Photoshop

SSubstance Painter

UUnreal Engine 5

06 · Faces and rooms

Who you'll learn from.

People already doing this work — and the rooms (subreddits, Discords, Slacks) where they hang out.

Practitioners worth following

DNEG Mumbai & Bengaluru Texturing Teams

Senior Texture Artists / Texturing Supervisors · DNEG India

DNEG India's texturing department has shipped creature, environment, and hero-prop texture work on Dune: Part Two, Avengers: Endgame, Mission Impossible, and multiple Netflix originals — among the highest-volume film-texture pipelines in Asia, running full ACES + Mari UDIM workflows. The India texturing supervisor track here is one of the highest-compensation routes in the country for VFX texture artists.

MPC India Texturing Pipeline

Texture Artists / Look-Dev TDs · MPC India (Mumbai / Bangalore)

MPC India has staffed creature and environment texturing on The Lion King, Aladdin, and various Marvel productions — the first Indian VFX studio to run a full UDIM film-pipeline at scale. Many of India's current senior texture supervisors at DNEG, Prime Focus, and Technicolor India trained at MPC India's Mumbai studio.

Lakshya Digital AAA Texture Pipeline

Texture Artists / PBR Material Leads · Lakshya Digital (Keywords Studios group)

Lakshya Digital has delivered PBR texture outsource work for EA Sports, Activision (Call of Duty), 2K Games, and Warner Bros. game franchises — the highest-volume game-texture outsource pipeline in India. The studio is the primary entry point for fresher texture artists targeting the AAA game track, with over 200 artists across Gurgaon and Pune at any given time.

Ubisoft Pune Texture Art Team

Texture Artists / Senior Environment Texture Artists · Ubisoft Pune

Ubisoft Pune's texture art team ships hero-asset and environment texture work on Far Cry, Assassin's Creed, and Prince of Persia titles — among the highest-credential AAA texture credits available to Indian artists without relocating abroad. Artists here work directly in Ubisoft's proprietary Snowdrop and AnvilNext engine pipelines alongside Substance Painter, making this a rare in-India opportunity to build shipped AAA credits at a Tier-1 publisher studio.

Rooms to join

ArtStation

Web

Mandatory portfolio platform for texture artists globally and in India. 'Open to Work' signals drive inbound from DNEG, Lakshya Digital, and international freelance studios. ArtStation Learning has official Substance Painter courses directly relevant to the Indian market.

Polycount

Web forum

Longest-running game-art community with dedicated baking, texturing, and PBR workflow threads. Senior members from Naughty Dog, Riot, and Ubisoft regularly contribute technical breakdowns — the most thorough public resource for bake artefact diagnosis and Substance Painter layer-stack best practices.

Substance 3D Community (Adobe)

Web + Discord

Adobe's official Substance community — material asset library, forum for Substance Painter and Designer troubleshooting, and monthly challenge showcasing Indian and global artist work. The community asset library is a direct reference for senior-quality smart material construction.

Foundry Learning Portal (Mari)

Web

Official Mari training platform from Foundry — UDIM workflow courses, ptex, projection painting, and ACES colour management tutorials written by film-pipeline artists. The primary learning resource for Indian texture artists targeting DNEG or MPC India's film pipeline.

DNEG Academy / MPC Academy India

Workshop + Online

DNEG and MPC India run periodic workshops at their Mumbai / Bengaluru studios on VFX pipeline, texturing, and look development — often a direct pipeline into junior hiring. Attending and performing well in a DNEG Academy workshop is among the fastest junior entry paths into DNEG's film-texturing department.

Reddit r/gamedev + r/VFX + r/learnart

Active subreddits for portfolio critique, baking troubleshooting, Substance Painter and Mari questions, and India-specific VFX hiring discussion. r/VFX has recurring threads on Indian studio salaries and working conditions at DNEG, MPC India, and Prime Focus.

07 · Pitfalls

What they don't tell you upfront.

The traps real practitioners wish someone had named for them in year one. Read these before you commit, not after.

Presenting polypaint from ZBrush as final texture work in the portfolio

Why:Polypaint is vertex-colour reference, not a UDIM texture set — studios at DNEG, MPC India, and Lakshya Digital are hiring for Substance Painter and Mari production workflow, not ZBrush paint experiments. A polypaint-only reel signals you don't know the production pipeline.

Instead:Always complete the full pipeline: polypaint reference (optional) → bake → UDIM layout → Substance Painter or Mari paint → final ACES-calibrated or Unreal 5 master-material validated render. Show the bake maps and layer stack, not just beauty renders.

Ignoring ACES colour management when targeting VFX studios

Why:DNEG, MPC India, Prime Focus, and Technicolor India all run ACES pipelines — textures calibrated in sRGB Substance Painter defaults will look blown out or desaturated in the ACES-lit shot environment. Textures submitted without ACES awareness generate immediate revision requests.

Instead:Configure Substance Painter's viewport colour management to match the studio's ACES ODT profile before starting the texture pass. Validate albedo values against the studio's reference sphere under ACES before handing off.

Building a single-tile UV portfolio when studios expect UDIM

Why:Single-tile UV layouts cap effective texel density on complex assets — any hero character or creature with more than one material zone should use multi-tile UDIM. Studios reject reels where hero-asset UVs are crammed into a single 0-1 space.

Instead:Restructure portfolio hero assets to use UDIM multi-tile layouts (even if the assets are personal projects). Document tile count and assignment in a UV diagram included in the reel breakdown.

Skipping Substance Designer, treating Substance Painter as the only Substance tool

Why:Substance Designer is the procedural material authoring tool — studio material libraries at Ubisoft Pune and Lakshya Digital are built in Designer, not Painter. Artists who only know Painter can execute existing smart materials but can't author new ones, blocking them from senior and lead roles.

Instead:Spend 80-100 hours learning Substance Designer's node graph: build at least three original tileable materials (a concrete, a metal, and an organic surface) and post them on ArtStation. It's the single most differentiated addition to a mid-level texture artist's reel.

Not self-reviewing bakes before texturing

Why:Bake artefacts (seam bleed, normal-direction flips, AO bleed between geometry pieces) multiply into the texture pass — every cavity fill, edge-wear layer, and roughness mask will inherit the bake error. Senior leads at DNEG and Lakshya Digital will reject textures with bake errors under 100% zoom review.

Instead:Review every bake at 100% zoom before importing into Substance or Mari. A 20-minute bake review session prevents 3-4 hours of texture rework. Keep a personal bake-error checklist (hard-edge seams, cage issues, mesh-name collisions) and run through it on every asset.

08 · Reading room

What people in this work actually read.

Books, longreads, and references practitioners come back to.

The Substance Painter Official Learning Series (Adobe)

by Adobe Substance Team

The most direct and up-to-date learning resource for Substance Painter's PBR workflow — covers bake setup, smart material authoring, UDIM workflows, and render export. Mandatory for any Indian texture artist targeting Lakshya Digital, Ubisoft Pune, or DNEG entry bands.

Tutorial series (free)

Foundry Mari: Complete Introduction

by Foundry Learning Portal

The official Mari introduction course covering UDIM tile painting, projection paint, layer and channel setup, and ACES colour management. Required before applying to DNEG Mumbai or MPC India's film-texturing department.

Online course

Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter

by James Gurney

Foundational reading on how light interacts with surfaces — directly applicable to calibrating albedo brightness, understanding roughness behaviour under different lighting temperatures, and distinguishing specular behaviour between material types. Senior DNEG and Ubisoft Pune texture artists consistently cite it as the non-technical book that most improved their material observation.

Book

80 Level — Texture & Material Breakdown articles

by Various senior VFX / game artists

Long-form Substance Painter, Mari, and look-dev pipeline breakdowns from senior artists at ILM, DNEG, Riot, and Naughty Dog. The clearest public window into how hero-asset textures are constructed at AAA quality bars — layer stack structure, bake-to-paint workflow, and ACES calibration methodology.

Web articles

Marmoset Toolbag Baking Guide

by Marmoset Team

The most thorough public resource on cage baking, hard-edge normal-map splitting, multi-channel bake workflow, and common bake artefact causes and fixes. Indian game artists at Lakshya Digital and Ubisoft Pune reference it for bake quality standards in outsource deliveries.

Official documentation

ACES Documentation (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)

by AMPAS ACES Project Team

Understanding ACES colour management at the documentation level — IDT, ODT, RRT transforms — is required to work productively in DNEG's and MPC India's film-pipeline texture departments. An ACES-unaware texture artist cannot reliably calibrate albedo for film shots.

Technical documentation (free)

Next move

Take the 4-minute fit check.

Two short trait quizzes scored against this exact role — see your fit % in 4 minutes. No signup, no card.

Start the fit check Find my best matches

₹149 launch · 40% off

3-min DNA test

7-day refund

600+ careers

Become a Texture Artist.

Who really thrives here

What this role actually pays.

City-by-city

What the work actually feels like.

Three honest paths in.

Formal degree

Bootcamp + Certification

Portfolio / Self-taught

The kit, not the resume.

Core skills · own these first

Helpful but not required

Tools open all day

Who you'll learn from.

Practitioners worth following

Rooms to join

What they don't tell you upfront.

What people in this work actually read.

Take the 4-minute fit check.

Test the fit for Texture Artist.

UX Designer

UX Writer

Storyboard Artist

Writer

Graphic Designer

Illustrator

Compositor (VFX)

VFX Artist

Film Editor

3D Game Artist

Sound Engineer (Film)

Become a Texture Artist.

Who really thrives here

What this role actually pays.

City-by-city

What the work actually feels like.

Three honest paths in.

Formal degree

Bootcamp + Certification

Portfolio / Self-taught

The kit, not the resume.

Core skills · own these first

Helpful but not required

Tools open all day

Who you'll learn from.

Practitioners worth following

Rooms to join

What they don't tell you upfront.

What people in this work actually read.

Take the 4-minute fit check.

Test the fit for Texture Artist.

People who looked at Texture Artist also liked these.

UX Designer

UX Writer

Storyboard Artist

Writer

Graphic Designer

Illustrator

Compositor (VFX)

VFX Artist

Film Editor

3D Game Artist

Sound Engineer (Film)