Texture Patterns

[Tutorial]

category
Texture Creation

description
Taking a texture and tiling it using Photoshop.

keywords
texture, textures, pattern, patterns, tile, tiling.

Among the texture creation world, there is a feared and evil entity, which has already decimated thousands of maps, and which now I bring to you. Prepare to enter the dark and evil side of the PATTERN MAKER.

Now seriously, I’ll explain you how to use a tool, which is probably the fastest way to get textures directly from pictures, and it's a good solution to create organic materials.

NOTE: Photoshop 7.0+ needed, some steps may not be possible in older versions

First of all we will need an image, so I did a little google search and found this nice grass picture



Now open up you picture in Photoshop, and click two times over the background layer to unlock it. After doing this we are going to open the pattern maker either by going to the FILTER menu and then selecting the pattern maker, or by using the shortcut alt+shift+ctrl+x.
You will now see how easy it is to create a grass texture using this tool. You don't need to mess around with any settings, just going to say which ones i used here, this ones will for sure work in any type of texture:
Width: 256
Height: 256
Offset: none
Smoothness 1
Sample detail: 5
Tile Boundaries: unchecked

Select a good and interesting area from your picture, and make a square around it, and then press the GENERATE button, and after it generates you texture, press OK. This will bring you back to the Photoshop main area.
You have your texture ready, no need to make it tile, since the pattern maker, does that for you, Just need to resize, and tweak whatever you want, and there you have a grass texture made in 5 minutes.



-BaRRaKID-

[mad_ferrit]

Clever stuff

That's really very useful, thanks -BaRRaKID-

[skidz]

thanks for this, it should help me in the future

[YokaI]

This doesnt work for me, i keep getting some weird choppy image that looks nothing like my picture, what did i do wrong?
What i got:


Original:


Please help (i know the texture is bad. I just need something to test this on. )

Sorry about size, photobucket resized em XD they so tiny

[strait-2-the-point]

thanks allot, teh GoD you are!

EDIT* hope this is the same for photoshop cs2! also, this is a noob quistion, how to add bulk packs of textures into hammer, like a wad file in hammer 3.4 or 3.5?

[BaRRaKID]

2 s2tp- you dont

2 YokaI - the reason why that happens is because brick textures are kind of special, since we dont have much freedom to change their pattern. Basically to make good brick textures, you need a good brick picture, and you need to stay with that picture. This method is better for textures in wich the orientation of the diferent "pieces" isnt really important.
your using the techinique right, but you choose the wrong image to test it

[mendax]

EDIT: never mind, I figured it out.

[Gamercat]

Fantastic, I've always had problems making my textures tile. I could make textures, but not tilable ones.