Seamless Texture Generator
by Shawn Swift · in General Discussion · 03/23/2005 (11:14 pm) · 30 replies
Thought you guys would find this useful for creating games in the Torque engine:
Seamless Texture Generator Demo
Seamless Texture Generator is a tool for creating seamlessly tileable images from photographs. It can make most textures seamless in a way that looks great with a single click!
STG was created by a professional texture artist, with the professional texture artist in mind, and unlike a lot of other seamless texture tools, it doesn't use alpha blending, mirroring, or warping to blend the edges of the image. It uses a unique algorithm to that avoids the blurring and loss of contrast and color saturation that makes most automatic seamless image making programs fairly useless.
STG will save you hours of work. Not only does it make most textures seamless with a single click, it simultaneously corrects highlights and shadows. And for those textures which need a little extra TLC, STG has the ability to crop/rotate/and remove perspective simply by moving the corners of a selection region.
Seamless Texture Generator Demo
Seamless Texture Generator is a tool for creating seamlessly tileable images from photographs. It can make most textures seamless in a way that looks great with a single click!
STG was created by a professional texture artist, with the professional texture artist in mind, and unlike a lot of other seamless texture tools, it doesn't use alpha blending, mirroring, or warping to blend the edges of the image. It uses a unique algorithm to that avoids the blurring and loss of contrast and color saturation that makes most automatic seamless image making programs fairly useless.
STG will save you hours of work. Not only does it make most textures seamless with a single click, it simultaneously corrects highlights and shadows. And for those textures which need a little extra TLC, STG has the ability to crop/rotate/and remove perspective simply by moving the corners of a selection region.
#2
03/24/2005 (12:10 am)
That's pretty awesome... thanks for posting.
#3
Thanx so much, Max
03/24/2005 (12:43 am)
By god! thank you sooo much man, I have been waiting for something like this for a long while now, no more hours of creating seamless textures for me!Thanx so much, Max
#6
www.shareit.com/product.html?productid=300018902
If you would like to comment on the pricing, feel free to drop me an email.
03/24/2005 (1:12 pm)
Sorry... I didn't post the price, because it is subject to change. Here is a link to the order page which shows the prices for the different versions:www.shareit.com/product.html?productid=300018902
If you would like to comment on the pricing, feel free to drop me an email.
#7
03/24/2005 (4:12 pm)
WHAT IS THE PRICE RIGHT NOW, BONEHEAD?!?!?!!? IT LOOKS SO COOL!!!!!
#8
It's $45 for the "pro" version which allows textures of any size and can load PSD and DSS images, and it is $35 for the "basic" version which can render textures up to 512x512.
03/24/2005 (4:34 pm)
Geez, I posted a link to the page with the prices. :-)It's $45 for the "pro" version which allows textures of any size and can load PSD and DSS images, and it is $35 for the "basic" version which can render textures up to 512x512.
#9
03/24/2005 (4:45 pm)
Sorry bout that
#10
03/24/2005 (4:46 pm)
Hmm...i was saving $35 to buy a book that gives you the Unreal engine and how to use it.....maybe i need a job.
#12
03/24/2005 (7:46 pm)
How does this compare to Texture Maker www.texturemaker.com/? I know that software has a lot of features that can be a little confusing, but even just the basic texture extraction and rendering sampler can give some nice results for seamless environment textures.
#13
Texturemaker is flashy, and has tons of functions, but almost all of those functions are worthless for making game textures, and it is confusing as all hell to use as a result of all the options and buttons which are poorly labeled.
To compound things, it doesn't seem to have an undo function... At least one I was able to find.
My program also does not have an undo function, but because my program has so few options, it doesn't really need one. Texture Maker needs one because the only way to get good results with all those wacky functions is lots and lots of time consuming experimentation.
No word of a lie, it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to make a texture seamless, and you have to click three different things to do it.
I was not able to figure out how to adjust the effect either, other than to adjust the opacity of it which you would not want to do because anything less than 100% would reveal the seam. I couldn't find a width, parameter to adjust the size of the blend.
This is the texture I was finally able to output after 15 minutes using the only one of the many blending modes that actually seemed to make a texture seamless in a useful way. (Mirror blend? Add blend? If I wanted useless functions like those I'd use Kai's Power Tools!)
Someone else was able to get better results than this with the program, but they could not, or would not explain how they arrived at those results. They may have painted an "opacity map" which I see mention of in that screenshot above, but that would be cheating, and would defeat the purpouse of automating the process. Anyway, it still was not as good as the output of my program. Contrast was still lost, and that created bands in the image, though not nearly as much as you see here.
Here is the output from my program. As you can see, it's much better.
After I made these textures I spent a further 15 minutes trying to figure out with the help of the help file how to achieve better results with Texture Maker, but I could not.
Texture Maker may be able to do a better job than this, but if so the developer hasn't made it reasonably obvious. And anyway the interface is still much too complex. I also had to search a while to find the zoom function. The + and - on the texture window do that, but + and - in most programs I've used usually mean add or remove something. I was looking for "Zoom" or a magnifying glass. My program just requires you to hold shift and click the mouse. I wasn't able to find a mouse shortcut for zooming in Texture Maker.
The one thing Texture Maker seems to be particularly useful for, if you can figure the program out, is painting seamless textures manually. It allows you to paint from one side of the image to the other, and that is a nice feature, if you're painting textures by hand. If you want to spend a lot of time painting textures by hand, my program isn't intended for you though. My program is designed to make the process of making photographs seamless as quickly as possible with the best results possible. It's not a jack of all trades, and I consider that an advantage, not a handicap. I have Photoshop for painting.
03/24/2005 (9:19 pm)
I tried texturemaker because someone suggested it as an alternative to my program. And honeslty, I was completely unimpressed with it.Texturemaker is flashy, and has tons of functions, but almost all of those functions are worthless for making game textures, and it is confusing as all hell to use as a result of all the options and buttons which are poorly labeled.
To compound things, it doesn't seem to have an undo function... At least one I was able to find.
My program also does not have an undo function, but because my program has so few options, it doesn't really need one. Texture Maker needs one because the only way to get good results with all those wacky functions is lots and lots of time consuming experimentation.
No word of a lie, it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to make a texture seamless, and you have to click three different things to do it.
I was not able to figure out how to adjust the effect either, other than to adjust the opacity of it which you would not want to do because anything less than 100% would reveal the seam. I couldn't find a width, parameter to adjust the size of the blend.
This is the texture I was finally able to output after 15 minutes using the only one of the many blending modes that actually seemed to make a texture seamless in a useful way. (Mirror blend? Add blend? If I wanted useless functions like those I'd use Kai's Power Tools!)
Someone else was able to get better results than this with the program, but they could not, or would not explain how they arrived at those results. They may have painted an "opacity map" which I see mention of in that screenshot above, but that would be cheating, and would defeat the purpouse of automating the process. Anyway, it still was not as good as the output of my program. Contrast was still lost, and that created bands in the image, though not nearly as much as you see here.
Here is the output from my program. As you can see, it's much better.
After I made these textures I spent a further 15 minutes trying to figure out with the help of the help file how to achieve better results with Texture Maker, but I could not.
Texture Maker may be able to do a better job than this, but if so the developer hasn't made it reasonably obvious. And anyway the interface is still much too complex. I also had to search a while to find the zoom function. The + and - on the texture window do that, but + and - in most programs I've used usually mean add or remove something. I was looking for "Zoom" or a magnifying glass. My program just requires you to hold shift and click the mouse. I wasn't able to find a mouse shortcut for zooming in Texture Maker.
The one thing Texture Maker seems to be particularly useful for, if you can figure the program out, is painting seamless textures manually. It allows you to paint from one side of the image to the other, and that is a nice feature, if you're painting textures by hand. If you want to spend a lot of time painting textures by hand, my program isn't intended for you though. My program is designed to make the process of making photographs seamless as quickly as possible with the best results possible. It's not a jack of all trades, and I consider that an advantage, not a handicap. I have Photoshop for painting.
#14
would be nice to have a more realtime preview rather than having to build the texture each time. On the other hand there are few enough features that it doesn't matter too much :)
A mouse wheel zoom would be a nice feature, as well as perhaps a quick skale tool for the default selection tool for the perspective correction gizmo. Overall I think its really nice and would take a lot of the tedium out of preparing my digital photos for texturing.
03/24/2005 (11:08 pm)
I like it a lot, saves messing around with the high pass filter, and the layer effects, offest filter and a bunch of other clone/brush tools and does a remarkable job by itself :) I tried it on some pretty interesting grass/rock and bits of hoiday photo's from a recent trip to nevada. Was impressed with how well it handles quite tricky things. would be nice to have a more realtime preview rather than having to build the texture each time. On the other hand there are few enough features that it doesn't matter too much :)
A mouse wheel zoom would be a nice feature, as well as perhaps a quick skale tool for the default selection tool for the perspective correction gizmo. Overall I think its really nice and would take a lot of the tedium out of preparing my digital photos for texturing.
#15
03/27/2005 (3:33 pm)
I have reduced the price of Seamless Texture Generator. The basic version is now $19.99, and the pro version is $24.99.
#16
03/27/2005 (3:54 pm)
Price wise... thats pretty appealing. The results were quite nice to. Doesn't quite stand up feature wise to Texture Maker, but the results out of your program for the complex rock texture came out better.
#17
03/27/2005 (6:50 pm)
Shawn I just tried your program and I am very impressed! I haven't found a seemless program yet that really actually worked until yours! I do all my tiling in PhotoShop which is fine with handmade textures but as we all know once you start working with photographs then tiling becomes a large amount of time and work! Seems (hehe, no pun) I'll will be buying this tool! Great job! 
#18
I'm suddenly getting very interested.
03/27/2005 (9:23 pm)
Okay ... now can a guy with very little artistic talent manage to get halfway decent results out of this with a digital camera and this tool?I'm suddenly getting very interested.
#19
There's four sliders to work and one button to press. It ain't rocket science. :-)
03/27/2005 (10:48 pm)
Is that a question?There's four sliders to work and one button to press. It ain't rocket science. :-)
#20
I bought the 24.99 version.. I didnt read the liscense thru the whole thing.. {I didnt really see it at all} :)
I hope I can sell the texturesI make with the pro liscense.. it doesnt say in the liscense on the order form.. :)
03/28/2005 (11:19 am)
Hi shawn... awesome program.. just ordered it.. :)I bought the 24.99 version.. I didnt read the liscense thru the whole thing.. {I didnt really see it at all} :)
I hope I can sell the texturesI make with the pro liscense.. it doesnt say in the liscense on the order form.. :)
Torque Owner Adrian Tysoe
oh BTW I'm Evak from the BB forums :)