INTRODUCTION

Hello again, it’s Leonardo with another tutorial. This time I want to teach you how to create a seamless texture from a photo and how to apply it to a surface in perspective.

For context, a seamless texture is an image that can be tile infinitely without creating a noticeable boundary between the tiles or stuck images. It’s used in 3D specially, but you can apply it to background paintings or for texturing props and characters.

CREATING A TEXTURE

In the following video I show my process for the creation of a seamless texture and how to apply the texture to a surface, for disclaimer I am not a native English speaker, so be aware that it going to sound bad, but I place subtitles if you have troubles understanding me. Down below this tutorial, I will create a different texture, and I’ll show a different method, from the one in the video, to obtain a seamless texture.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT TEXTURE

When you are choosing the texture you want to make, it’s important to follow these tips:

• Select a big texture, for example for a brick texture the image needs to show lots of bricks, you are not going to make a great texture using four brick, is going to be obvious the repetition, so if you want a rich texture with lots of details, the tile needs to be big.

• The texture most be evenly lit, this is not always possible, but you will need to fix it if you want a good texture, the lighting doesn’t need to be flat, but it needs to be homogenous around the entire image.

• When there are clear lines through the texture, this needs to be aligned from top to bottom and from right to left.

• Avoid specific imperfection in the texture, because there will be easy to spot all around the final texture, it's better if you place the imperfection after you apply the texture.

• Use big image files, because it’s easy to lower the resolution of the image, but very complex to increase it.

FIXING THE TEXTURE

This texture looks great, but there is an uneven illumination through the image

When you check the values of the image is more clear the difference of lights especially in the blue circle area.

To fix this I create a new bitmap layer and change the blending mode to multiply. Using a soft brush and a dark brown, I paint over the lighter areas until I get the texture uniformly lid. You can see the process in the YouTube video at the beginning of the tutorial.

This texture is not well aligned and in the green circle you can see a spot of the wall in a different coloration, this will be problematic for the seamless texture, but is not too hard to correct.

CREATING THE SEAMLESS TEXTURE

In order to fix the misalignment of this texture, I’ll use the Mesh Transform tool, in Edit/Transform/Mesh Transform, change the horizontal lattices at 2 and the verticals at 10. Them using some guides lines as reference, I correct the horizontal lines to proceed with the next step.

I copy the green area and then pasted it them Flip Vertical in Edit/Transform/ Flip Vertical, them move it to the bottom, the important thing is to be aware, the bricks are out of off-center, so when you select the area you must take into account that the top and bottom must be out of off-center too, otherwise, those rows will be in the same position and you will see a line of bricks on top of each other, finally merge the layers.

To create a perfect texture in the horizontal plane, copy around half of the texture, move the right part to the left and vice versa. Overlap at least one brick and traying to preserve the vertical lines aligned. Erase the overlap part traying to conserve a uniform texture, merge the layers when you finish.

Select the area of the texture, from the middle of the first brick to the middle of the last in the bottom, paste this in a new layer, erase the previous one.

To finalize the texture, select the layer of the texture, go to Edit/Register Material(J)/Image, and check the tiling option, name it, create some tags if you like, and find a folder for your new texture. That’s it, I hope you’ve learned something new. If you want to see how to apply the textures to different geometric shapes, please visit the video at the beginning of this tutorial.

 

PATTERNS CREATION

I want to guide you, in how to create your own pattern, this approach will give you more control over the final result, the giveaway is that you’ll spend more time creating the final image.

A pattern is just a shape that repeats infinitely and can be quite simple like a square when you repeat the shape it can be used as floor tiles. The main problem with this simple approach is that it is so perfect that the human brain finds the texture unrealistic and fake, so to create the illusion of reality the texture must vary enough to fool our perception. There are more complex shapes, like the ones used in wallpaper or textiles in which even when everything start with a single square image, the design is so well done that it is hard to recognize where the tile starts and finished.

The pattern I’m going to make is quite simple, but it shows the importance of the size of the initial image to reduce the tiling of the texture in the final result. An important factor to take into account is that it is very difficult to avoid repetition of the texture when the tile is used on a very small scale, so it is important that the variation or defects are made after the texture is applied and not on the texture tile.

 

Start by creating a vector layer in which I create a series of uneven horizontal lines.

In the same layer, I create two series of alternating vertical lines in color red and green.

With the vector eraser set to “erase until intersection” check, I erase the remaining lines to create the grid for the bricks.

Using the “Lasso Fill” tool you can find it in: Figure(U)/Direct Draw/Lasso Fill, I create the bricks freehand.

You must remember that the bricks are a continuation from right to left and from top to bottom, so copy the borders to achieve a perfect match.

This is the longest part because I paint each brick individually to avoid repetition, so the important part is to invest time and check that the textures do not repeat.

The final step is applying a shadow to create another level of depth in the texture.

This is the texture after I create the material.

Thank you, I hope this tutorial is easy to follow, if there is any doubt please let me know.