Creating Seamless Textures

[Lexie Linden]

Discuss and tips about creating seamless textures!

[Torley Linden]

I'm not professionally affiliated with http://www.filterforge.com but it's a remarkable tool to make seamless textures. It's like a Swiss army knife of texture-tastic goodness, thousands of user-created filters available. I suggest giving the trial a go.

[Chosen Few]

I'll second Torley's recommendation for FilterForge.  It's a wonderful program, well worth the investment, especially considering that it's available at three different price points ($149, $249, or $399), depending on what features you want/need.  Even the pro version isn't terribly expensive, as graphics software goes.

However, the recommendation comes with a couple of caveats:

First, be aware that FilterForge has no editing or painting tools of its own.  It's not a full fledged texturing tool.  In most cases, it will give you a great starting point for a texture, not a completed texture in and of itself.  So, be prepared to use it in conjunction with Photoshop or an equivalent image editor/paint program.

Second, realize that most, if not all, of the existing filters on the site are in very widespread use, which means you could easily end up making an image that is 100% identical to other images made by thousands of other FilterForge users.  So again, undestand that FilterForge is meant to be used in combination with other programs, not just by itself.  Any images you make with it should almost always be further refined in Photoshop (or whatever your image editor of choice happens to be) afterward, to add uniqueness.

 

 

As for the question of how to make a seamless texture by hand, there are about a thousand ways to go about it., of course, but here's one of the simplest methods, using Photoshop:

1.  Create or open an image file.

2.  Click Filter -> Other -> Offset, and offset the image by half its height and width.  The edges of the image will now be in the middle, so you can see how they butt up against each other.

3.  Use the clone stamp, healing brush, or spot healing brush to blend out the seams.

Depending on the complexity of the image, the blending should take you anywhere from just a few seconds to a several minutes.  Either way, it's pretty quick, and relatively painless.

[Clarissa Lowell]

ImageSynth2, available as a Photoshop plug in or a stand-alone. I think I downloaded both and could only get the plug in to work. It works pretty well but it could be more intuitive. Then again so could Photoshop. :womanhappy:

[Missy Restless]

I use ImageMagick to create seamless textures. The Bash script below can be run on Linux or under Cygwin on Windows or on Mac OS/X in a terminal window. It requires a PNG image, Vertical.png, in /usr/local/lib/ - the image is available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/missyrestless/5493745720/

This script and images from the Wikimedia Commons were used to create the seamless textures in my SL Marketplace store. I'm not familiar with Filterforge but I will give it a try and see if it produces better quality seamless textures.

 

 

#!/bin/bash

#

# mkseamless - make a texture seamless

# The Vertical.png image is available at

# http://www.flickr.com/photos/missyrestless/5493745720/

#

# Usage: mkseamless filename [filename ...]

#

# Places the output 512x512 seamless texture(s) in a subdirectory "Seamless"

#


# Where are the horizontal and vertical region files located ?

L=/usr/local/lib


usage() {

    echo "Usage: mkseamless filename [filename ...]"

    exit 1

}


endblur() {

    convert -blur 50 tmp3.png tmp3.png

    convert -resize 8x8 tmp3.png tmp4.png

    convert -blur 50 tmp4.png tmp4.png

    convert -extent 1x1+4+4 tmp4.png tmp4.png

    convert -resize 1024x1024 tmp4.png tmp4.png

    convert -resize 1024x1024 tmp3.png tmp3.png

    convert -blur 50 tmp3.png tmp3.png

    convert tmp3.png tmp4.png -compose minus -composite tmp5.png

    convert tmp4.png tmp3.png -compose minus -composite tmp6.png

    convert tmp2.png tmp5.png -compose plus -composite tmp7.png

    convert tmp6.png tmp7.png -compose minus -composite tmp2.png

    convert tmp2.png -resize 512x512! Seamless/${img_out}.png

}


[ "$1" ] || {

    usage

}


[ -r $L/Vertical.png ] || {

    echo "Missing file $L/Vertical.png"

    exit 2

}

cp $L/Vertical.png Vertical.png


[ -r Horizontal.png ] || {

    convert Vertical.png -rotate 90 Horizontal.png

}


[ -d Seamless ] || mkdir Seamless


for img in $*

do

    [ "$img" = "Thumbs.db" ] && continue

    [ -d $img ] && continue

    echo "Starting image tile for $img, this may take a short while ..."

    img_out=`echo $img | sed -e "s/\.jpg//" -e "s/\.JPG//" -e "s/\.png//" -e "s/\.gif//" -e "s/\.GIF//" -e "s/\.svg//"`

    convert $img -resize 1024x1024! tmp1.png

    montage tmp1.png tmp1.png tmp1.png tmp1.png -geometry +0+0 tmp2.png

    composite -compose CopyOpacity Vertical.png tmp1.png vert.png

    composite -compose CopyOpacity Horizontal.png tmp1.png horz.png

    composite -geometry +512+512 vert.png tmp2.png tmp2.png

    composite -geometry +512+512 horz.png tmp2.png tmp2.png

    convert -extent 1024x1024+512+512 tmp2.png tmp2.png

    montage tmp2.png tmp2.png tmp2.png tmp2.png -geometry +0+0 tmp2.png

    convert -extent 1024x1024+512+512 tmp2.png tmp2.png


    convert tmp2.png -resize 512x512! Seamless/${img_out}.png


    echo "Seamless/${img_out}.png created. Cleaning up."

    rm -f tmp1.png

    rm -f tmp2.png

    rm -f tmp3.png

    rm -f tmp4.png

    rm -f tmp5.png

    rm -f tmp6.png

    rm -f tmp7.png

    rm -f horz.png

    rm -f vert.png

done

rm -f Vertical.png Horizontal.png

echo "All Done !"

 

 

[Marianne McCann]

Here's a handy photoshop tutorial on doing seamless wood textures...

[Blot Brickworks]

I use Imagelys picture styles.It's a small free program and works well for me. just google it.

[Josh Susanto]

I'm using Lunapic online for free to create seamless textures.

Ask me how if you care.

[Missy Restless]

I probably should have pointed out the advantages of using ImageMagick in my previous posting of a bash script to create seamless textures from any images. So, here's a few reasons why ImageMagick is my tool of choice:

 

• It's free open source software that has been around for years and is very mature
• It includes a command line interface so it can be run in batch mode processing many images in one command
• Runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac platforms
• Can do just about everything - that is, very extensive list of features/commands/options

But, mostly ImageMagick is superior to other image editing and manipulation tools because of its command line interface. I can process hundreds of images in a few minutes and with only a few keystrokes. To do the same using Photoshop or other GUI interfaces would take thousands of clicks and a day or more of my time.

[Indigo Mertel]

Brick 'n Tiles is another seamless texture generator worth checking out. It can generate seamless textures from photos, cost is US$ 45.00

You can find more information on the MetaLibrary blog:

http://metalibrary.posterous.com/seamless-architectural-texture-generator-bric

[Josh Susanto]

Lunapic isn't even a file.

It's a website, so you can basically use it anywhere without loading anything to the computer.

[Clarissa Lowell]

 

---

Josh Susanto wrote:

I'm using Lunapic online for free to create seamless textures.

Ask me how if you care.

---

 

How?

The site doesn't require a membership or put any spyware on does it? I got burnt with that, recently (nothing to do with textures or SL.)

[Josh Susanto]

I run Ghosterys on Firefox, and Lunapic doesn't appear to be any more dodgy than its competitors.

I've been using it for years with no apparent problem, but I toss cookies and otherwise clean up my computer several times a day anyway, since the sites from which I have grabbed raw texture have often given me little problems.

As far as I can tell, it gets its revenue from advertisers.

There is no fee, but there is a slightly better premium version that the admin offered to let me use of a $10US donation, which I think is fair, although I have not used it yet.

Either way, they've been quite responsive to my suggestions, and I am making good use of the new skew feature which I had suggested.

 

[robin Meridoc]

Hi people!

I am certainly not a professional graphics artist or anything even close to that - but i use a simple technique with GIMP to create seamless textures.  I'm sure it can be used in Photoshop and other similar programs as well.  Its not general... its not meant to take some arbitray texture and make it seamless.  But it does let you create a nice seamless texture from scratch.  I describe the technique in my blog.... have a look.  

http://robin-makingstuff.blogspot.com/

I've used it to create fabrics, fish/lizard scales and a kind of simple mesh or lace for stockings and other clothing.  *blushes*

robin

[Josh Susanto]

That looks like a great technique for seamless frabrics and similar items.

My thing is mostly seamless rock and ceramic surfaces that are then use for RGB relief sculpting of seamless columns.

I lose some photorealism, but, OTOH, I also lose the seam.

[Indigo Mertel]

Robin,

I have filed a reference to your tutorial on MetaLibrary

[Andabata Thor]

A seamless texture in  Gimp: Filters -> Map -> Make Seamless