40oz Posted November 14, 2009 I'm guessing with the lack of choices in types of vines and techy textures with wires and junk, some of you guys don't know an easy way to do this. I didn't even know for a pretty long time, but I found out a really simplified way to do it. Start with your blank white canvas, and create a type of grid pattern. Unless you want your texture to look very uniform (for vines or messy wires, i don't know why you would want do this) keep your parallel lines at varying distances Next, white out everything in the middle, leave only the pixels that are directly connected to outside borders of the image. Now draw squigly lines to connect any two of the dots. It doesn't matter which dots connect as long as you don't have more than one line connecting to the same border dot. Give these wires some depth so they don't look too flat. Now I'll put 4 together so you can see And as you can see, these wires tile without seams. Well I may need to make some minor adjustments to make em perfect but it's good for the most part. If I make 5 or 6 images using this same method, and stack em on top of each other, I should have a full tangly wirey mess of a texture :D 0 Share this post Link to post
DuckReconMajor Posted November 14, 2009 You give them depth with Paint? Anyway, this is neat. Thanks. 0 Share this post Link to post
40oz Posted November 14, 2009 Yeah. I draw the wires really dark at first with a large brush, then switch to a smaller brush, brighter color, and go over the lines again. Also if you want to create a texture much like TEKWALL4, make a lot more vertical lines than horizontal, and instead of squigly lines, make them only change direction at 45 degree angles. 0 Share this post Link to post
Chopkinsca Posted November 14, 2009 Nice technique. I used a different method for crating my vines. 0 Share this post Link to post
esselfortium Posted November 14, 2009 For seamless tiling, I just offset the image a bunch (to put the edges in the center) first horizontally, then vertically, then both, and either work on the relevant parts of it as I go, or modify and clean up the edges of what I've already created. 0 Share this post Link to post
Gez Posted November 14, 2009 esselfortium said:For seamless tiling, I just offset the image a bunch (to put the edges in the center) GIMP has a feature to make that faster, by the way. Shift+Ctrl+O gives the offset menu, with a very convenient X+half/Y+half button. Click it once, match the borders, then click it again to restore the original offsets. 0 Share this post Link to post
DaniJ Posted November 14, 2009 Alternatively you could just use a paint package that wraps your brush strokes around the canvas. 0 Share this post Link to post
Patrick Posted November 14, 2009 Seriously dude, spend the whole 1 minute it takes to get GIMP or Paint.net Otherwise, cool tutorial. 0 Share this post Link to post
40oz Posted November 14, 2009 I do have paint.net but the interface is way different than what I'm used to, I still use it for what I have to use it for but MS Paint is still my image editor of choice. I'm probably gonna use it to work on this finished product. 0 Share this post Link to post
esselfortium Posted November 15, 2009 Gez said:GIMP has a feature to make that faster, by the way. Shift+Ctrl+O gives the offset menu, with a very convenient X+half/Y+half button. Click it once, match the borders, then click it again to restore the original offsets. Yeah, I use Photoshop's similar "Offset" filter. Sometimes combined with the magic of Smart Layers. 0 Share this post Link to post
Ed Posted November 15, 2009 Copy/paste/flip-horizontal and soft erase all but the edge, clean up the rest. Do the same vertically. It's worked so far. Nice looking wire texture though, very clean, especially considering that you're using ms-paint. 0 Share this post Link to post
40oz Posted November 15, 2009 I should also mention that I use Irfanview a lot too (which is a handy photo editing tool) for converting images to different formats. I also use it for it's handy blur, explosion, and noise effects. Also for recolors as well. 0 Share this post Link to post
Ignis Affero Posted November 16, 2009 I would have never thought of doing that. I usually take the longer approach and end up trial-and-error-ing my way through it. Nice work, though! 0 Share this post Link to post
Macro11_1 Posted November 19, 2009 DaniJ said:Alternatively you could just use a paint package that wraps your brush strokes around the canvas. Really? like what? :D 0 Share this post Link to post
kristus Posted November 19, 2009 Imagesync by Luxology for instance. (Photoshop plugin) 0 Share this post Link to post
Mordeth Posted November 19, 2009 Hijacking the thread for a quick question of my own: anyone know of a free(ware) paint program that allows you to distort pictures? I'm specifically looking for something that can transform a square into a circle. 0 Share this post Link to post
40oz Posted November 19, 2009 Mordeth said:Hijacking the thread for a quick question of my own: anyone know of a free(ware) paint program that allows you to distort pictures? I'm specifically looking for something that can transform a square into a circle. 0 Share this post Link to post
DuckReconMajor Posted November 20, 2009 I think you missed the point, arrgh. He was simulating cutting a circle out of a square picture. 0 Share this post Link to post
arrrgh Posted November 20, 2009 Well I assumed that Mordeth meant a program to distort a square into a circle rather than cutting a cirle out of a square so 40oz missed the point too :P 0 Share this post Link to post
kristus Posted November 20, 2009 Mordeth said:Hijacking the thread for a quick question of my own: anyone know of a free(ware) paint program that allows you to distort pictures? I'm specifically looking for something that can transform a square into a circle. You could try this: http://www.pixlr.com/editor/ But for that it's really Photoshop CS that is king. 0 Share this post Link to post
darkreaver Posted November 20, 2009 Hey, check out sumo.fi/flash/sumopaint Its a flash-based online image editor so its no installation or download required. Kind of like Photoshop actually. Just a tip! Dunno if it can do whatever you need it to do, but anyway 0 Share this post Link to post
kristus Posted November 20, 2009 Well. it got Spherical and cylindrical mapping. 0 Share this post Link to post
Mordeth Posted November 20, 2009 Yes, I meant distorting a square into a circle, not cutting out a shape. Thanks for the two links! But, can't seem to find this "spherical and cylindrical mapping" option you mentioned? [EDIT] After a search I found it described as being present in its filter features, but I can't actually find it in the paint plugin itself..? Also, I'm not actually looking to wrap this texture so it looks like a ball... just a simple distortion from a 2D square texture to a 2D circle texture. 0 Share this post Link to post
Ralphis Posted November 20, 2009 Hey 40oz this looks pretty good. Good job buddy! 0 Share this post Link to post
PhilibusMo Posted November 29, 2009 Brilliant idea this, just tried it out earlier and it makes creating a tangle of wires or greenery so much easier. The demonstartion that 40oz showed was an extreme version of what is capable but it works well for less wires also. 0 Share this post Link to post