FULLY TILEABLE TEXTURES TUTORIAL ( 8-sided textures)

hi all, here i share a pdf tutorial i've made for the community. Hope it'll be usefull for you in all your projects.
If you want some more information about that, just have a look at the "unity creative" (july-august 2010) from thomas pasieka

 

That's great. Will come in useful. Thanks man

 

To be honest, I don't understand what this would be used for.
To me it looks like a normal 4 sided tiled texture, that is tiled within its own borders. How is that new/useful ?
Maybe you could give a better example of how to use this ? I just don't understand when someone would need to use this instead of a standard 4-sided tiled texture, that tiles across each and every surface in each and every direction, anyways.

Also the way you wrote this, is extremely hard to understand. Reads like a chat conversation with a friend and not a tutorial

 

@acumen : indeed , the only difference between 4-sided and 8-sided are the borders. and if you've read all the tutorial i explain that if you want to rotate, a 4 sided textures ( that is tiled on a plane for example it will show seams and even much if you try to map a cube with a 4-sided map.
I've made this tutorial really quickly, but i think you're a bit "hard" when you say it looks llike a chat conversation.


Anyway, for those who understand my purpose i hope they'll do great job with that knowledge

 

thanks for the tutorial, rosor. Now I understand what you mean by 8 sided. A bit like a quad symmetrical pattern, but the center is not symmetrical. Clever way to get a texture wrapped around a cube as a base for modelling, too.

 

Yes I read it, but the images and text is just not too clear for me. That's why I asked.
If that is really useful, it sure deserves the love in detail, don't you think.

edit: I think I understand what it does, now
Still I don't see the practical use in a game. Why would I rotate a texture like that ? If I rotate a rock like that, it becomes all weird with the perspective of the cracks, doesn't it ?
That's why I need clear examples of a production use, to fully grasp this topic

 

@acumen : when you want to map a huge model or an environment which was made with "cube shape" primitive and you want to tile a map on it , rotating , mirroring, can break ( a bit) the pattern repetition effect. But the real advantage is that you can map " 3D" models or if you want plane like models ( such as terrain etc... which only need a 4 sided texture). With that kind of textures you can easilly creates rocks( very huge ), cavern corridors etc.... and you'll never have a seam

 

In The GIMP is a cool filter called "Make Seamless" (Filters -> Map -> Make Seamless) which does roughly the same job. And I do mean roughly. It works best on very noisy textures.

 

@Werewraith : are you sure it makes your texture full tile ???? here i'm scared i've got different type of texture extractor but they absolutely don't create 8 sided textures ( texture workshop, STGpro, or genetica ) if it's the cas please make a test : create a cube and apply a map coordinate by face then apply your texture. If indeed, there are no seams i'm really interested.
regards

 

8 sided doesn't exist cant be done, is physically impossible......... Think iv explained this before, you need to think of a different name for it, any 2d image only has 4 sides, regardless of the tiling or boarder tiling of said sides it cannot have more than 4 sides by definition it is 2dimensional!

You can map a cube seamlessly with a regular seamless, your all just lazy and don't bother to do your own uvmaps, regular cubes are set with a box uvmaping modifer, you want it to work with a regluar seamless u just need to flip 2 of the sides in the uvmaping as by default there the wrong way around, hence the need for the quad tiled seamless texture.... Though for creates and such a proper unwrap works better, and ur sides can then be all differnet and still seamless.

Doubling the internal tiling to 8 will reduce the tiled look somewhat but honestly the increase in size is barely worth the effort. If an object is overly large it shouldhave a multitude of layers that are offset from each other like terrain is handled, for Cliff edges and such proper uvmapping and a regular seamless works wonders.

It all in the mapping gents, theirs no magic tilled texture that works with everything, but seamless will work with any well made uvmap!

 

@MrSmive : making unwrap to create rocks is really a waste of time and RAM since for un unwrap ( assuming a 512 px texture for a rock of about 2,5 m is quite normal for the moment ) you will need a specific texture for all six faces. Wich means 2048x1024 with a waste of an area of 1024 x 512 ( well this could be used for really specific stones and place in that area of the map the rock's props ). Mapping a cube with a normal texture tiling in x and y can't fits correctly !!! seams will always appear. The flipping technic is only usefull to breack the pattern effect a little bit.
could you please make a cube, with a normal texture that can tile in x and y and then examine all edges and confirm me it really don't creates seams . if it's the case ( knowing that all of the technics you mentionned are useless on my side, maybe i'm missing something ... but since i fell into that issue a long time ago i was really pleased to have the solution in the unity creative. But i was on the right way the first ime i tried to solve that problem ) i would be glad to know how you did ... have you read the .pdf ??? try just to create a stone with a cube primitive and assign it a" 4 sided" textures ( tile x / y ) and you will fell into the same issue as me a long time ago.
just have try, as i did it 5 mn ago !!! and i have other things to do !!! LOL !!!! If you have the solution i wan't it !!!!

 

Mr Smive, there's some more info found in this thread on polycount:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80898

rosors example and writing style is just not the most effective one, also the naming is not too illustrative as well.
Basic premise in the polycount thread is, that it might come in handy on some mobile platforms, but for todays modern shader possbilities, it's kinda obsolete in the end.

 

@Acumen : sorry for my bad english ... the eight sided name is not from me ...

 

The filter does make the texture tile, because it creates four blended copies of the texture, offseting them so the center ends up in each corner. Technically it works, but artistically, not so much; it creates some artifacts, and isn't very useful to make textures tile in other directions (flipped, etc).

Example with your spider (What can I say, I just like that critter.).

 

@Werewraith : the image on the right is four sided ( tile x, y ) your example is good because my critter's Lair was made with " cube shape primitive" uv mapped by face with an " 8 sided" texture so that i don't have any seams at the end, in the corners ( since it's dead end . if it has been a tunnel i would have use a cylinder primitive and then simply apply a cylinder UV map on it and here a 4 sided texture fits )

 

Thanks for the tutorial, I was searching for a way to do this

 

Thanks for the tutorial, I made FilterForge filter that uses this method as basis, some new additions are made tho, so You can control how the edges blend to the center and so on.

Go download it if You are using FF : http://www.filterforge.com/filters/12001.html