Tutorial: Create Tileable Texutres

[Nysuatro]

But i cant do the things he says in the tutorial :s
So dont wont be a problem?

Oh btw: doylle, could you pleas upload your 3ds max scene with the lights ?

[doylle]

Of course i don't mind you guys asking questions. I gues i hoped you guys would recognise the save-menu from the pluging, but clearly i was wrong.

The extra menu you see is the one you get when you save to .dds with the nVidia plugin. There are some different settings, but the "normal map settings" in the save menu are almost identical to the ones in the accual filter.

I already hear you think, "then why not use the filter"? First reason is that when i save to a file, i can directly save to a file with DXT compression, which is nice when i want to import my normal map to game, like Swat4, etc. I can also use this map in 3dsMax.
Another reason is when i use the filter on my orriginal layer i lose that layer, it even gets worse when i have a stack of adjustmentlayers. I could "copy merged", and then use the filter on that layer, but in the end, i would have to save my file anyway, so it wouldn't realy save time/efford. It's not like we're adding small detials to an existing normal map. We're converting a whole image to a normal map. But like with the Offset filter, these are things one must experiment with, and by doing so find his own preferences. I'm sure you'll have very simular outcome by using the actual filter.

I tried to add my .max file, but for some reason i can't :S. But it realy is very simple. 2 omni lights, that's all. I'll see if i can attach it to a PM...

[gasherd]

using dodge & burn to remove shadows and highlights from your photo is certainly a good way. but I would also recommend using the high pass filter.

could somebody explain me the technique behind colored specular maps? is it that the colors of the specular map need be the opposite on the color wheel of the diffuse map? so green would become red, yellow would become violet and so on.

[chris holden]

gasherd: yes and no. It all depends on the type of material you're going for. Sometimes inverting the hue has a great effect because it negates color on highlights. Other materials may want no color, higher saturation same color, a small hue shift or light desaturation.

It's one of those questions where the final answer is: Depends. Experiment with materials, and test in game to see what looks the best. There's been a lot of questions about this around here lately, so I'll try and put together some information about speculars soon.

[dummy]

thanx doylle, this one would be very usefull for that schoolwork we have to make (we are in the same class )

[Jarnauga]

Thanks man, this was really nice! At first I thought "oh not another 'how to make tileable textures' tutorial" but you completely surprised me. This technique is new to me and I like it a lot! Thanks again.

[RedSuit]

Just newbie question; why do I have to split the image in quads and mix them?Seams are still seen

[Talon]

You offset them so that the seams that were on the edge of the image are now in the centre, sitting next to each other.

This makes the seams really obvious to you and easy to fix both sides at once, rather than having to judge one edge of the image against the other by eye alone.

You can now edit out the seams and see that they blend together well, then put the sections back to their original positions and have a nice, seamless texture.

[Pankake]

It exposes the seams so you can work on removing them.

EDIT: (Read Talon's post ^)

[Rick_D]

I always use offset, any particular reason for cutting them up?