[Award Winner] Tutorial on how to create seamless textures out of anything

[Redrobes]

I have written the script file now and I am including a zip below. To use this script you will need to put the contents of the zip in a fresh directory and ensure that you have a version of ImageMagick installed.

To run it, put an image to be tiled into that directory and call it start.png. Open up a command prompt and navigate to the directory. Type :-

GenTiled.bat 1 start.png

The first parameter is how much flattening you want. 0 is none, 1 is low, 2 is medium, 3 is high.

It should run for a while printing out a little status message now and again until it quits. You should get the image Final.png and Array.png which is a 3x3 tiled array of them to look at and see how well itd done it.

You can change the starting image filename to whatever you want and it can be of any size and aspect but the Final.png will always be of size 1024x1024 and of PNG type unless you modify the script.

It takes a little too long to run as a CGI script. I dont think my ISP would approve of the processing power consumed. If any of you are running a private web server then you could convert to a CGI script which would make an easy interface for the conversion.

Bugs and comments welcome as usual.

[RobA]

I tried it out and it works beautifully! The only think that would be nice is a resize back down to the original image size...

I'd offer to host it on my personal server, but it really doesn't have the horsepower

-Rob A>

[Redrobes]

I have seen a lot of people with tiling issues recently in maps and so I thought Id put a few demos of this automated seamless generator up. These textures come from www.CGTextures.com which is an excellent place to get a load of different types. Each set takes less than a minute to generate so theres no reason not to have them tiled any more. Some before and after images...

[Redrobes]

and a few more...

[Airith]

*snip*
To run it, put an image to be tiled into that directory and call it start.png. Open up a command prompt and navigate to the directory. Type :-

GenTiled.bat 1 start.png

*snip*

Just wanted to say, that you need the contents of the zip in the ImageMagick directory. Took me forever to figure this out, it worked though so I hope it's not just me xD btw: This worked great, now I'm looking for more pictures to make seamless

and if anyone isn't familiar with cmd prompt (ME ) then to get to the .bat, type "cd <directory of .bat>" and then just enter the code. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the really easy stuff

[Redrobes]

Just wanted to say, that you need the contents of the zip in the ImageMagick directory.

No you dont. BUT, you do need to ensure that the 'convert.exe' of imagemagick is the one that is used when you run it on the command line. By default you will get the Windows OS conversion utility - in typical MS lets call everything by its most generic name - syndrome (Although IM could have helped itself by calling its command IMConvert.exe too). So when you set up IM, go to the 'path' settings on the computer/advanced/environment vars and double check that IM is before sys32 and then it will be fine. You can test by running up cmd.exe, ensure that the current directory is not sys32 and type convert.exe. If you get a message about converting OS then thats bad. If you get a huge list of image conversion command options then thats good and it should be alright. I would recommend checking and changing the path anyway.

You should have pinged me if you were having trouble. Its good to know that you tried to have a go tho. Glad it worked ok - its not perfect but its not too bad at most stuff, esp where the pattern is pretty random.

[RobA]

Bit of a thread bump...

Attached is a Gimp script that makes a seamless tile using this method. It will work on any rectangular image, and creates a new seamless version.

It registers in the same menu as the default Make Seamless, as Filters->Map->RR Make Seamless...

The name is "RR Make seamless" (Thanks for the technique, RedRobes, I also credit you and your site in the script.)

The only parameter is a "Flatten" amount that lets you adjust the amount of high pass to apply. The default is good in most cases.

Here is an nice autumnal image from CG Texturess
LeavesFloor0025_S.jpg

And a random sized crop of the upper left hand corner:
seamless_cut.png

Run through the filter to make a seamless tile:
seamless_tile.png

And a sample of it tiled (1000x1000):
seamless_sample.jpg

A zip of the script is attached Just unzip and save into your Gimp script folder...

-Rob A>

[RobA]

Just to compare, here is the default GIMP make seamless result on the same cut out bit:
default make seamless.jpg

-Rob A>

[Steel General]

I dub the newly repped *bonk*

You've done it again oh master of the GIMP!

[Redrobes]

Cool ! I reckon the new RR filter is better than theirs ! In name and result

Well done Rob - I will really have to have another go at Gimp one day. I just don't use normal image editors as much as I used to.