Tiling texture program?

joe gracey · Mar 2008

Are there any programs that tile textures for you? There are normal, spec, ao generator programs, but I was just wondering if there was a program that tiled textures for you. I have no problems tiling most textures in Photoshop, but there are some high detailed textures like bark that cause me problems. It's probably the technique I'm using, but thought I would ask.

Michael Knubben · Mar 2008

There's one that comes with Modo (photosynth?), and a few others as well, but you really are better off doing it yourself, for game textures. For things that are difficult to tile from a photo, just paint in a rough of what you want it to look like, make *that tile well, and then paint in the photo-detail from another file with the clonebrush? You just can't rely on photos to do all the work for you, really. Try using multiple photos, as well.

aesir · Mar 2008

yea, photosynth was pretty amazing from the video I saw of it a while back.

Eric Chadwick · Mar 2008

This one also might float your boat.
http://www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com/

motives · Mar 2008

this is kinda OT but maybe you wanna share your technique for tiling your textures and maybe we can give you some tips to improve the process?

Eric Chadwick · Mar 2008

Good point, like if you're cloning with a big soft brush it's gonna look like a soft mess.

This is good tiling tut from way back when, covers a lot.
http://www.twisted-strand.com/ut_tutorials/text_tut/index.html

Tumerboy · Mar 2008

I've been dreaming about a Photoshop plugin similar to Offset, but instead it would fill the grey areas outside of your image with copies of your image, tiled around and leave your workspace with layers in the center. Then allow you to paint in the center workspace as it live updates the cloned copies.
It would make it super easy to make something tile, and would also make it easier to spot bad lines running through your tile.

So. . . anyone wanna write me a ps plugin?

Michael Knubben · Mar 2008

Tumerboy: that would be very nice, but alas, I know of nothing that exists. There's something called 3t though, that takes (i think) png's and tiles them. Far from perfect, but oh well.

joe gracey · Mar 2008

Thanks for all the great replies everyone!

My process for tiling goes something like this; I offset the texture so all four sides wrap around, and then I pick an area and use the clone stamp with a soft edge, use the patch tool, or I try and Ctrl copy the edges so they match each other using the selection tool or marquee tool, and then flip the edge.

I usually put my brushes on the softest settings because that way it doesn't leave a line.

Eric Chadwick · Mar 2008

When I use a soft edge this tends to cause a hazy mess around the edge of where I paint, quite noticeable when the image is tiled. To avoid this I use nearly the hardest brush, and clone small areas at a time. I also constantly re-pick the sampling point, so I'm not repeating the same pattern from elsewhere. A couple ideas.

3T is here...
http://www.lastchancemedia.com/3t/

TextureDesk is the same idea, supports PSD too.
http://www.spectralogue.com/texturedesk/

Daz · Mar 2008

[ QUOTE ]
I've been dreaming about a Photoshop plugin similar to Offset, but instead it would fill the grey areas outside of your image with copies of your image, tiled around and leave your workspace with layers in the center. Then allow you to paint in the center workspace as it live updates the cloned copies.
It would make it super easy to make something tile, and would also make it easier to spot bad lines running through your tile.

So. . . anyone wanna write me a ps plugin?

[/ QUOTE ]

Funny Nick, I was thinking the *EXACT* same thing a week ago. Something like this really would be invaluable in generating well tiling textures more quickly. I'm no programmer but it doesn't seem like *that* big a deal?
My quick hack solution at the time is below, and whilst not instantaneous, helped a lot, at least to fix tonal variation more than fine detail anyway:

http://www.daz-art.com/images/tiling.jpg

pior · Mar 2008

Wow Daz that's weird indeed. I was searching for/thinking about something earlier this week that might go along these lines.

I was wondering how to make photoshop work with live symetry. Then I realised that the symetry does not *have* to happen inside photoshop, it could very well just be a 'always on top' window behaving just like the Windows magnifying glass - ie cloning whatever happens on screen, somewhere else.

So if someone can create a clone of the magnifying glass tool, this program could very well focus on a specific part of the screen and clone-mirror it ... or ... clone the active area 8 times and scatter the clones around to simulate live texture tiling. Right?

The whole 3D desktop stuff in Vista makes me think it is very, very easy to do!

CODERS UNITE!

Michael Knubben · Mar 2008

I made the mistake of asking about this in pretty programmer-centric irc channel, and got a link to this: http://www.harmware.net/stile_examp/examples_1.htm

That's... frightening.

Eric Chadwick · Mar 2008

I think TextureDesk is easier to use than setting up a plane in a 3D app, especially since it lets you toggle always-on-top, you can increase/decrease # of tiles with hotkeys, etc. Pretty quick. Give it a try, it's pretty cool.

Eric Chadwick · Mar 2008

Also, as an alternative to Offset, I find these three filters easier/faster to use. I have em hotkeyed. They alway offset to the middle, no need to type in numbers.

HalfWrap
http://www.btinternet.com/~cateran/simple/#hw

LeftRightWrap and TopBottomWrap
http://www.btinternet.com/~cateran/simple/bonus.zip

joe gracey · Mar 2008

Dang MightyPea... those textures are crazy. Do you know how to make those or know where to go to learn?

Michael Knubben · Mar 2008

You're kidding, right?

If you're not, go to http://www.harmware.net/ and check out sTile.

doc rob · Mar 2008

AMP TILE VIEWER

http://www.ampsoft.net/utilities/TileViewer.php

But, yes, a tile view within the photoshop canvas would be best.

joe gracey · Mar 2008

Oops... I didn't realize that was a joke.

Unfortunately I wasn't kidding... I can't make textures like that let alone tile them like that, but thanks for the help though.

Jeremy Lindstrom · Mar 2008

yeah luxology's is called imagesynth it's a plugin for photoshop

http://www.luxology.com/whatismodo/imageSynth.aspx

it was free in last months 3d world too..

Michael Knubben · Mar 2008

Really? That might've been worth buying a shitty magazine for,

This is the 3d equivalent of Computer Arts Magazine, right? If not, ignore me.

edit: Eric, that texturedesk is pretty cool, actually.

Eric Chadwick · Mar 2008

Yeah, I thought the perspective view was handy, and in/decreasing the # of tiles with hotkeys.

[Deleted User] · Mar 2008

Up until today, I was using PS actions to do this. I had actions recorded for doing offsets of 64, 128, 256, etc. so I could pick the appropriate one to run to offset half the image size in both directions. And then to preview them, I had another action set up that would select all, copy merged, make a new document, paste, and save to a file called tiletest.png. Then I had an html doc bookmarked in Firefox that did nothing but reference that png as the background image of the page. So I'd keep both programs open and then rerun the preview action and reload the page to see changes.

But TextureDesk is way more efficient, so I don't do it that way anymore. (As of reading this thread)

Mark Dygert · Mar 2008

fly_soup, those are some handy tricks but wouldn't be easier to record an action that saves your image as a pattern then creates a new doc that is 4-16x bigger then your current, then fills the space with the tile pattern?

Anywho I guess texturedesk takes care of that...

IronHawk · Mar 2008

texturedesk looks cool and all but Crazybumps preview seems way better unless I'm missing something here.

Eric Chadwick · Mar 2008

I find it helpful when painting tiled textures in Photoshop. Crazy Bump doesn't dynamically reload external bitmaps AFAIK.

IronHawk · Mar 2008

CB doesn't update automatically but reloading the diffuse is pretty easy from the clipboard or after a save. CB defaults to the last save. It only tiles 4 levels up IIRC but that hasn't been a problem.

I still plan to check out texturedesk though when i get home.

Tiling texture program?

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