[tutorial] Removing Seams from Rock Textures
Original: http://www.todome.de/tutorials/seamless_textures/rock/step1_theoriginal.jpg
Result: http://www.todome.de/tutorials/seamless_textures/rock/
Requirements:
I did the following tutorial with photoshop. I am sure that it is also possible to do this with other software, but this tutorial only takes care for photoshop. In this tutorial i won't explain how to use filters, brushes etc. I just explain the steps i do to achieve the result i want to have.
Notes:
This method does not work on all type of textures. It may work fine on any texture with non-symetric structures (not bricks etc).
I prefer using this instead of using some strange filters for photoshop which i can not fully control. These filters also can not be aware of details in the texture that i might want to keep.
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Okay let's go:
1. Get yourself a texture!
This tutorial is not about drawing, so we use a texture. I used this texture from sxc.hu.
There are many good and free textures or high qualtiy photos out there, just google a bit :)
So this is the orignal photo i used for the tutorial.
2. Select your texture area
My original image has a size of 1000x950px, but for the texture i want, it has to be a square. So i cut off 50px from the bottom. Not neccessary to tell, but here is how it should look like now.
3. Resizing and Editing
Okay the texture needed some little additions and fixes in color. You can do as you like at this point, but do not scale down the texture too much. Afterall the scaling is not neccessary, i just did it in combination with a filter to get a little sharping effect.
After you feel satified with the look of your texture, make a copy of the layer.
Here is how my edited texture looks like now.
4. Turning it inside out.
This step is very important, so read carefully!
We take the copy of our edited texture layer and select the complete right side of it. Then extract and move it to the left side. We do the same with the left side. So all we did is switching the right and left side. It should now look like this
Now merge the left and right side to 1 layer, let's call this layer "switch1". Keep in mind that we will need a copy of the layer how it was after step3 later! So save that original layer!
Next thing we have to do is taking our layer "switch1" and repeat the same procedure again, but this time we switch top and bottom.
Afterwards you should have something like this.
So what did we do? We just moved the seams of the texture from outside to inside. By doing this we removed the ouside seams, so all we need to do now is taking care of the inside.
5. Removing the inside seams
Remember i told you to keep the original layer from step 3?
We need it now!
Take your copy and put in top of all the other layers. Now create a mask for that layer and select the brush tool. You should take a brush that has some structure, not a simple round one.
We will now use the top layer (orignal step3 layer) to hide the seams. All you have to do is use the layer mask and hide everything around the seams. As a hint: I used help lines to remember where the seams are, because the top layer hides them..
In this picture I filled the top layer red to show you what i have hidden of the top layer. Red=Visible parts of the layer.
6. Layer Mask details
Most rock texture have some parts that are special and catch the eye. This step is just to remind you to work over you layer mask again to keep the results. There should be as much hidden from the top-layer as possible.
Here is my Final result!
ofcause you will have to scale it down to 512x512 or 256x256 in order to use it in Hammer Editor.
Btw.. here's a little example of this texture when using it as a background after downscaling to 512x512.
Seams are gone - Mission complete!
Tell me if you liked this tutorial and if you need more. (For other types of texture for example).
14/03/2009 20:49I don't think there's a tutorial like this on XJ yet. GJ!
The texture still looks repeating though, but maybe with some more wanking you can make it looks awesome :P
yep i know. I focused only on removing the seam lines in this tutorials. As I said.. if you guys liked this i can write more tutorials (some more advanced stuff too if u want :D)
i'm a photoshop user, but still amateur, so gogo, i'd like to see some stuff that may help me to get more textures :p
and gj with this :)
really good tutorial :x gj ... eMTI what about a cool water texture tutorial. Its really hard to seam for me :(
water textures are not easy to create. It depends alot the environment you are mapping.
Some simple waves can be done like this:
1. Foreground color=white
Background color=black
2. New layer
3. Filters -> Clouds
5. Filters -> Crome - play around with the values a bit
Now all you have to do is adjust gamma and contrasts by using the graph-tool or some of the other tools photoshop offers to adjust colors.
Then just color the layer you'll have some fine waves.
Ofcause this image now still will have seems, but you should be able to remove them with the method i described in the tutorial above.
I've got a question for you guys..
Would you like tutorials about creating an own texture (really advanced) or would you prefer tutorials about customizing a given texture (easy-med tutorial)?
Nice tutorial, well written with good pictures :)
You should do both, cause you know we're greedy :s
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