How Do You Make Seamless Textures for SL?

[Prokofy Neva]

How to you make seamless textures for SL? And with Paint.net, not PhotoShop, because I'm a beginner.

I got the extension for Paint.net to do seamless textures, I downloaded it correctly, got it working, but what it generates doesn't work in SL. But I may not be doing it right.

 

[Fritigern Gothly]

I use Gimp, click Filters => Map => Tile Seamless and that works well for me.

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I got the extension for Paint.net to do seamless textures, I downloaded it correctly, got it working, but what it generates doesn't work in SL. But I may not be doing it right.

If it looks good, you're doing it right.

There are lots of different techniques. Which is the best depends on the texture so could you give a little bit more details?

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

And with Paint.net

Open Paint.net, create a new image 1024 x 1024

in Irfanview or similar, crop the texture you would like to be seamless. (can be done in Paint.net but I find their square selection less easy to use)

Paste the cropped selection into a new image, resize it to 512 by 512

Select and copy this image, paste into the top left corner of your big image.

In the small image, choose "flip horizontal"

Select and copy, paste into the top right corner of the big image

In the small image, choose "flip vertical"

Select and copy, paste into the bottom right corner of the big image

In the small image, choose "flip horizontal"

Select and copy, paste into the bottom left corner of the big image.

Resize the big image to 512 x 512, save as png - no transparency (unless you have alphas)

Upload to SecondLife.

 

[ChinRey]

24 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

Open Paint.net, create a new image 1024 x 1024

in Irfanview or similar, crop the texture you would like to be seamless. (can be done in Paint.net but I find their square selection less easy to use)

Paste the cropped selection into a new image, resize it to 512 by 512

Select and copy this image, paste into the top left corner of your big image.

In the small image, choose "flip horizontal"

Select and copy, paste into the top right corner of the big image

In the small image, choose "flip vertical"

Select and copy, paste into the bottom right corner of the big image

In the small image, choose "flip horizontal"

Select and copy, paste into the bottom left corner of the big image.

Resize the big image to 512 x 512, save as png - no transparency (unless you have alphas)

Upload to SecondLife.

 

That's one of the original methods, patented by Pixar. (Their patent has expired now, so no worries.)

I've never been happy with that solution because the mirror effect tends to be very noticeable. Look at this for example:

This is actually one of the very best "mirrored seamless" textures I've seen and it's still not quite up to the standards I think we should aim for in SL today.

I'm not to happy about the automatic seamless functions included in many image editors either btw. since they tend to either blur parts of the texture or add noticeable artifacts or - as often as not - both.

(Edit: Yes, this texture is only seamless horizontally but it's the same principle anyway.)

Edited July 10, 2020 by ChinRey

[ChinRey]

Here's one of my favourite techniques. This is just a quick and dirty demonstration and the result is not good enough to keep but it should illustrate the principle.

Bark texture by DeviantArt artist afg81:

Copy, double the width of the image and paste into new layer:

Create a third layer, paste the texture into it and move roughly to the middle of the image. I've tinted the three layers differently here to show what is what:

 

Feather the edges of the third layer using a very large and soft brush:

Make a centered cut down to original width:

 

Merge layers.

Crop height to the same as width (I should have done that right at the start but I forgot), repeat process vertically:

And we end up with... well, as I said, not nearly good enough to keep this time but you get the idea.

It's actually quite quick work and it usually gives a much better result than both autogenerated and mirrored seamlessness. Of course, I tend to go on spending hours tweking the texture to eliminate artifacts and other annoying details but that's just me being me - you don't have to do that unless you are obsessed with details.

Edited July 10, 2020 by ChinRey

[Kyrah Abattoir]

The offset tool (photoshop) can be very useful as it allows you to "shift" the texture seam to the center of the image.

Then it is only a matter of making that big center cross "disappear"

Krita has an even more useful feature called the "wraparound mode" it essentially makes your work area repeat on itself infinitely. The tools will also work across the border as if it was the middle of the texture. Extremely handy.

Edited July 10, 2020 by Kyrah Abattoir
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