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I have added a texture to a cube in the UV editor and it shows up fine in textured view enter image description here

But when I render it there is no texture enter image description here

What have I done wrong?

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2 Answers 2

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You need to add a material to your mesh to have it show in the render. Also, after adding a material, go to the Properties panel > Textures tab and add the texture. Don't forget to assign the UV map in Textures tab > Mapping dropdown.

See this screenshot for more details:

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ Woah, these are a little hard to find for a newb like me, Thanks for the attached screenshot! I am yet a bit confused on to how the properties menu items relate to one another. Materials seems to be a parent for texture or can be at some rate. $\endgroup$
    – ThorSummoner
    Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 8:22
  • $\begingroup$ yes, material is parent of texture. But in texture panel, 3 items are shown. first is world, material and text/brush. when you want to add texture to material, make sure, material is selectd, not world or texture. $\endgroup$
    – Ali Jibran
    Commented Apr 5, 2014 at 17:12
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    $\begingroup$ For Cycles or Eevee please check the other answer $\endgroup$
    – Nicola Sap
    Commented Dec 24, 2018 at 14:59
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The accepted answer applies to the soon discontinued "Blender Internal" renderer and has become obsolete. The concept however stays the same:

A texture, by itself, is just "information": an image whose coordinates are mapped to the surface of a 3D object.

This doesn't only apply to images representing the diffuse color of the object. A texture could be many things: color-coded density of hair, normal maps, bump maps, mixing factor between materials. The Texture view (removed in 2.80) or Texture Paint mode is used to display such textures as plain colors, whether or not they are supposed to be colors.

To become color, i.e. to be used by the renderer, the texture must be part of a Material specification.

Since the adoption of Cycles and Eevee, the material specification is done using Nodes. The most basic use of a Texture is to determine the "Color" of a BSDF Shader Node. Explained below.

How to use a texture as the object's material color

  1. In the Material tab, if not enabled, hit Use Nodes. A Diffuse (pre-2.79) or Principled (post-2.79) shader will appear.

  2. Use the little "o" button next to "Color" and insert a "Image Texture"

    Select the desired image with the little Image icon

  3. (optional) Select "Texture Coordinate > UV" for the "Vector" input

enter image description here

(P.S. this corresponds to creating this node setup in the Node/Shader Editor:

enter image description here )

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  • $\begingroup$ There is no "use nodes" under Surface anymore (I'm using 3.6.4). $\endgroup$
    – Oscar
    Commented Feb 29 at 20:59

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