Land / Sea Fill Textures

[jaerdaph]

In reference to jaerdaph's recommendation of http://www.noctua-graphics.de/english/fraset_e.htm , I found a very nice foresty-type texture--take a look at Synthetic 08. For your convenience, I have converted it to png format.

Good eye -that was one of the textures I pulled for this project.

For the PNG fill styles I'm making, I've actually created four different files with file names ending in _vh, _hi, _lo, and _vl (very high, high, low and very low) so CC3 can display the proper size one when zooming in and zooming out. That's a really cool feature new to CC3 (in addtion to being able to use PNGs at all!)

The zip file will have all four versions for each fill style.

[ravells]

There are a vast amount of tiling textures on this site.
It's not particularly friendly to navigate, but this bit has some useful noise textures and some textures that might be handy for forests.

[ravells]

Here are 3 seamlessly tiling sea textures, created using the 'fur' filter using Eyecandy 4000 and psp. Each is 512 x 512 pixels.

[ravells]

And here are 4 of land/forest textures. 512 x 512 (seamless tile) (with a quick demo map of textures used, complete with clashing styles!)

[RPMiller]

Ravs, will you be posting a tutorial on how you make seamless tiles?

[ravells]

Eventually. But the nice thing about the filters that I use from Alien Skin software is that they have an option where they do it automatically. I can't recommend their products enough. If you've got the cash, just buy their entire Eyecandy, Xenoflex bundle.

[Midgardsormr]

Those sea textures are gorgeous! They're quite stark, though, and they tend to overwhelm the other features on a map. I dropped one into my Northlands map (CC3) to see how it looked. I got a pretty nice result by reducing the opacity to about 60% and giving it a 10 pixel blur.

You've got that mosaic land tile, and now this sea tile that looks oil-painted. Got anything in a watercolour? Actually, I think I have both of the plug-in bundles you mentioned; I think I'll reinstall them and see what I can come up with. Schedule permitting, of course.

[ravells]

Glad you like them! Yes they are quite overpowering, but if you have a William Blake type map which is all fire and brimstone, then they'd fit in quite well. The key to all of this (and one which I fail on every time) is consistency in elements. For a map to look good, IMO it must look like all the elements have been drawn by the same hand.

If you have the Alien Skinware bundle, reload them immediately! They are brilliant for mapmaking. Just don't read the titles of the filters as what they can only do. Fur can be sea, Clouds can be forests...etc. etc. just play with the effects. Run other filters on top of them, like a watercolour one on the sea.

But...keep it consistent!

Ravs

[ravells]

(Copied from the Software Discussion Section)

I found this texture making software (Texture Maker) on the web. It looks like the mummy and daddy of all seamless texture makers and is also supported as a plug in for photoshop.

Not cheap - 30 Euros, but maybe worth a look. There is a review of it here.

The review also mentions another texturemaker which it rates very highly- PhotoSEAM and it's about the same price US$ 35.



Ravs

[ravells]

Here are some more seamless tiles. Various shades of noise and a woodcut sea. All are 1024 pixel squares. Edit: All future textures in black and white so it's easy to tint in your own stuff when you import it. These can be used for forest / mountain fills or just to give a map a background grain texture. All made with alienware eyecandy / xenoflex filters in psp.