Tips for tiling wood textures

danshewan

So as I'm sure we all know, some of the more typical techniques for creating a tiling texture don't apply themselves as well to working with wood textures because of issues matching the flow of the natural grain, or avoiding obvious repetition.

Planks seem slightly easier to deal with, but larger, flat areas seem especially tricky - sure, it's not that tough to create a tiling texture, but my tests have ended up losing most of the grain that easily identifies the surface as wood and end up looking pretty bland and lacking any surface definition or interest.

Any tips or tricks for working with wood textures?

SHEPEIRO

keep your blends tight and be carefull to line stuff up appropriatly

Mark Dygert

Start off with a procedural texture as a template. They are easy to make, they tile perfectly, they are a good guide to start painting over. Because they're procedural you can iterate quickly and test out how the pattern tiles without a lot of middle work.

Both max and maya have procedural wood materials, you can also check out Filter Forge and Wood Workshop. These normally suck if its all you use but as far as getting a quick pattern that tiles it never hurts to get a jump start.

Calabi

Do you really need wood that long even? Wood cuts arent normally that long, they might not even look that bad when stretched in certain areas like the straight bits. Or you could make it obvious that they are two bits put together.

danshewan

Thanks Vig, I'll try that as a base to start from and go from there.

Farfarer

Surely you can't get a real piece of wood that's wider or taller than a tree can be? There's always going to be joins where planks are put together - use that to your advantage.

Mark Dygert

You can get a pattern wider than a standard plank you cut from a tree. They peal the tree on a giant lathe, like a roll of paper towels or toilet paper instead of cutting it up into boards. Very long very continuous.

As for needing a wood tile that is seamless... well that should be self explanatory in our industry. Stop thinking floor tile and start thinking wooden table legs or the posts in a wooden banister, and other things that don't need to be uniquely unwrapped but could benefit if the pattern doesn't repeat and planks that don't get in the way. Your options for displaying unique parts shoot up quite a bit if you're working on a tile and not restricted by staying inside the 0-1 space.