How to create seamless textures /tileable /repeated textures in GIMP

welcome to digital exposure TV today I'm gonna show you how you can make your own repeated textures using an existing image you have or one at one that you've taken or one that you've just taken off the internet or whatever so today it's very very simple this process the first thing you need to do is use a software called so if you don't have it's completely free and it's essentially like a free version of Photoshop so go and download that now it's a small file it's very widely used loads of people use this it's not something you need to worry about downloading and once you've got open in fact don't open click on the picture you want to open in right click on it and then go to open with and then what will happen is will open er up with all the correct settings without you having to open a new project and change the the canvas size and all that kind of thing you can just right click on that image and open it straight in so then once you've opened it you will have a screen like this and today I'm just going to use a basic picture I took of a wall of ages ago and I thought it'd be a good example to show you how to make some repeated textures so the first step once you've got your image into is if you come over to these tools on the left here we see this tool with the up down left and right that basically means you can grab something and move it like that I'm just gonna undo that it's always best to have that at the beginning because if you've got say this which is usually like your standard first tool which is like a kind of spray brush if you press the wrong button at the wrong time you might accidentally draw on your image in a small place and you won't notice it until it's too late and you finish doing your work so it's always best to have that tool open first and the second thing we're going to do is we're just going to go over to the column on the left here where we've got all of these increments where basically shows you how you can measure the length and the width and you just click inside that column and you drag the line out and you want it to be about that much across so you can use the increments at the top there to just measure it I'm gonna go for what's in the middle there yeah between 500 and 750 and then you'll see a little blue dotted line comes down if you highlight it it turns red and would you same from the top and we want about the same distance so you can see the same increments on the left-hand side so I'm gonna go in between 500 and 750 again and then we've got like a nice margin on the left and on the top there so the next thing we need to do is go over to this box icon that shows you a boxed dotted line and we're going to access that tool and then we're just going to drag this box until it's perfectly in line with our blue dotted line on the side there and just make sure when you do this that you kind of test it a little bit and you'll feel there's resistance you'll drag it and it won't quite go crush it because it snaps to that line and you want to always make sure that your snapped to the line so that we can try and get this as accurate as possible so I'm just gonna make sure I've done mine properly and then start again and there we go snap to the line okay so now all gonna do is we're gonna press command X and that is gonna cut that right out and then command V which is going to paste it straight back only this time if you come to the layers tab on the right here you'll see that now it's a floating selection so that bit that we've just cut out is now just a floating piece of imagery which has no home as it were so we're just going to right click on that and go to new layer which means that floating piece that we've cut out is now a separate layer from the rest and what we're going to do is go over to this tool which essentially selects things and moves them to the boundaries of the image so the far right far left far top far bottom what have you so then we want to insert to that tool we're going to click on this piece we've just cut out which is on a separate layer and once we've clicked on it these options appear on the left and we want it to go to the right so we're going to use this the arrow to the right and it will throw it right over here onto the right-hand side of the image and now before we do anything else we're gonna get our eraser out and I tend to use this brush which is kind of half fuzzy edged if you want to go it be really technical and what we're gonna do is very simple I'm gonna make this this is just personal preference by the way you can make this as long as large or small as you like and imagine that now at our I'll turn off the layer below so I can explain this properly so you can see that our top layer is this piece we cut out on the left and moved over to the right and what we want to do and you can you can turn off the layer below if you like all you need to do is just press the little eye button to show that it's visible so we want our top layer selected and all we're gonna do with the eraser is just cut a line all the way down there so we need to make sure before we do anything that this line is firmly in place so that it blends together properly so now that we've done that we're going to visualize the layer below so that we can see and if you look carefully you'll see that this doesn't look great it looks like you've basically faded the edges of the piece on the right which is correct but what we're gonna do and this is the best way to do it so that it the texture doesn't look stupid basically so that actually blends together properly is we're going to use the eraser and we're basically just gonna paint out the the left the right hand side layer so that it matches with the one underneath and we're just going to go in between things and you just gotta use your discretion for this you see how I'm painting this in now so essentially what I'm doing is I'm just erasing the top layer to reveal the bottom layer so just show you when it decides to load its a high-resolution image so you can see how I've just painted out this section here and then underneath it just blends again we'll wait for the little magic computer fairies to load that it will just blend these two together so you just kind of go around the pieces it doesn't really matter what the image is it you just kind of have to find the seams as it were so with walls and things it's a little easier and you can see how I'm just very simply doing this I mean if you've got a lot of textures to do you can do this a lot quicker I'm I'm kind of going at a fair pace just for the purpose of this demonstration so that you don't get bored to tears if you're not bored to tears already and I'm just literally going around the edges of these these rocks so that it kind of makes sense to your eye where all of these little sort of I don't want you to call them a raised marks are so that all blends together as one and in a second what I'll do is I will visualize just the top layer so that you can see everything that I've rubbed out and you can see how it all kind of blends together so now with any look that's a bit close to the edge there that's just now it looks the way it should do it kind of all matches you can't really see the seam if you go if you look at this piece of rock here you just can't really see the seams which is exactly the point so I will just erase well not a race but I will just hide the layer on the bottom there so you can see what I've actually done I've literally just cut out around some of the rocks until it made sense and then once we've done that all we need to do is let the computer fairies do their work first there we go and we go to this top layer the piece on the right-hand side we just go merge down and what that does is it'll take this piece on the right and it will just make it all one image it will merge it down to the bottom layer so this is all one image now and now all we're gonna do is repeat the process on the top so if I just drag out the little dotted square and make sure it snaps to that and again I'm gonna go command X and then that basically cuts it out and command V to paste it back in and then on this top layer there where it's floating I am gonna go to new layer so that now this floating piece at the top is a new layer and then we're gonna go back over to this symbol here and then click onto this top layer again only this time we want it to go to the bottom so we're just going to click on that arrow that point to the bottom and it shall vanish at the top and the computer fairies are going to put it on the bottom there so you see the process that we're going through now this is basically making all of the edges merge together so that when it's one piece we can repeat the pattern so we'll go back over to our eraser and we're gonna start just going over that one line all the way across first because that's always the best first step so that we don't miss anything on the actual seam so now I'm gonna paint around this rock here I say paint you know what you are I mean I'm a raising around the rock so that it blends with the lower layer and let's just have a look at it now without the lower layer doesn't it emptied our computer fairies working and there you go you get the idea of what we're trying to achieve so I'm not happy with this bit in the corner so what I'm gonna do is just like before we're going to merge this this piece on the bottom down to the main layer so that all becomes one layer and then I'm gonna fix it and that's the next part of the stuff that I'm going to explain to you so we're just going to right click on that and we'll go down to merge down and then it all becomes one image so this bits the the problem child at the moment and the way to fix that is you see this what looks like a little old-fashioned joystick from like an Atari or something we're gonna use that that's basically the cloning tool and you hold down command in an area that you want to clone so for example this piece is quite dark and large so I'm gonna actually go for this corner here and I'm gonna hold down command and click and that's taken our reference points so whenever we paint somewhere with this now it's going to start from this area copying this area say if I wanted to put it here it would put it here so we're gonna try and merge this together a little bit by using the clone tool and try and just finish off edges so I want a little bit of that trying get this stuff going there we go so I've kind of fixed that now and our last final step before we sort of cut this out and export it is we want to get rid of anything that stands out so you'll notice that all of these rocks the majority of them are gray but you'll notice there's like one here that's brown and another one there that's brownie orange and they're gonna stand out so when you repeat the texture they just it's gonna look like you've got big repeated brown spots everywhere and you really want to make it as mundane as humanly possible you want everything to look very samey because if you get one piece that stands out it's really gonna stand out when it repeats so what you need to do is use the clone tool and I'm just gonna show you as an example here so I'm gonna take this corner and I'm gonna start painting out this this Brown rock here so that it fits with the rest there we go now it looks way more mundane and it just kind of blends in with everything else it's like this corner here is brownie orange and this one isn't so we'll copy that and just kind of paint over this one so they're all blend in together and let's just try and go one further and we'll take this grey one and try and cover up this orange and because we're just kind of rushing through this to show you as an example this might be good because when we put it together as a repeated texture you might actually start to see these anomalies these things that stand out as singularities that repeat and then you'll get a better understanding of what I'm talking about so we'll just finish this off here right that'll do okay so our final step before we put it into another software and I can show you what I mean about the repeating aspects is we go to this knife tool and you have to be very very careful when you do this so as you can see on the top here we've got this missing piece on the left here we've got this white piece and it depends whether your image had an alpha layer to start with if it did it was gonna be like this with the missing pieces if it didn't it had white on the top there so if I drag this knife out because this is what we're gonna cut out you have to be really careful to make sure that you again it kind of snaps to the grid and you want to make sure it snaps to that grid because what will happen is once you've cut this out if you haven't got this line perfect on the left or the top and you've got say a little thin slither of this top transparent layer or a little thin sliver of this white layer you will get a line like a seam between your texture which completely defeats the purpose of having a repeated texture so I'm just gonna zoom in here for a second we'll go to a hundred percent and we'll just shuffle over and you can actually see there is a white line just there which is ruining our repeated texture so if I just move this box over slightly in fact I actually need to move this blue line so that it's in line with the image there so my blue line is now in line with my image which means when i zoom out and this is something you might not have to worry about you your texture might be lined up perfectly but it does happen and it's a pain in the ass if you get it wrong because it basically undoes all the work you've just done because you're trying to make a repeated texture so it looks as though this should be okay so this is only for demonstration purposes anyway you can spend a lot of time getting this right so once you've created that box with the knife tool just press return and it will basically crop it and then we'll export this and I will put it into blender in a second and I will show you how it works as a repeated texture and I'll show you if there's any standout anomalies like this rock here for examples I very yellowy orange that might look like an orangey spot that keeps repeating in the texture so I'll see you in blender in a second here we are in blender and don't worry you don't need this software or anything if you've never used it before this is just a demonstration of how the pattern repeats and the issue that I told you about where if you have something that's very significant or unique it stands out when the pattern repeats so if you just look at this orange piece here and a few other little unique pieces in the image this is exactly what I'm talking about so I'm going to repeat the image now and you will see straight away it repeats brilliantly however you've got this orange bit here and this orange bit has been repeated there there there and there so there's four big orange pieces that stand out like a sore thumb now fortunately the more you repeat the texture sometimes it kind of vanishes in the mist however for this demonstration I wanted to really point out how this stands out so you can see this big orange little oblong shape and it's just repeated all the way across everywhere now if I had just simply used the clone tool to clone that away and a few of the other more prominent sort of repeated patterns then everything would look very bland but it would all fit really well together and we're sort of 90% of the way there at the moment I just wanted to show you how it comes out when it's not perfect and I have to be really aware of the sort of really unique parts of your image that are going to stand out because they will stand out ten times more when you've repeated the texture so there you go guys that's how you make a repeated texture for your 3d work or graphics or whatever you're using it for and I hope this has been helpful if it has please give me a thumbs up and please share this video because that really really helps out the channel and thank you very much for watching please subscribe for more videos

Channel: DigitalExposureTV

Views: 10,391

Keywords: how to, make, create, seamless textures, tillable textures, repeatedtextures, using gimp, in gimp, pattern, easy, tutorial, tilable textures, seamless textures concrete, seamless textures wood, seamless textures free, photoshop seamless texture plugin, properly, seamless textures in photoshop, how to make seamless cube, how to make seamless textures, how to make repeated pattern, how to make tileable textures in photoshop, how to make tileable patterns, How to create seamless textures

Id: d50MMmIHKow

Length: 19min 16sec (1156 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 02 2017