The program for creating seamless textures in Russian. Blufftitler: Collection of programs for creating textures

Blufftitler DX9- a program for creating bright, original titles and slideshows, requires textures in its work. Textures create the background of the slide, color the fonts, and are themselves part of the slideshow composition. At the same time, the program itself is only a director and script performer, all components must make external utilities and third-party programs. This collection offers programs that are tested in work with Blufftitler and are fairly easy to learn. Although the ease of learning and management does not mean the simplicity of their capabilities - the textures are original, bright and exclusive.

The name of the program: Blufftitler: Collection of programs for creating textures
Interface language: eng
Treatment: included
Medication type: keygen
System requirements:
Windows XP, Vista, 7 (with limitations for XP programs)
The size: 260 MB

1. Bixorama:

A program for converting panoramic photographs. Supports 11 panoramic formats: QuickTime VR .MOV, DirectX .DDS, Latitiude Longitude, Horizontal Cross, Vertical Cross, Strip, Strip XYZ, Sphere Map, Mirror Ball, Heart Shaped. Bixorama is a program for those who are fond of photography, for those who want to make panoramic shots. Using the Bixorama utility, these panoramas can be "brought to life". For example, a still 360-degree panoramic shot saved in TIFF or JPG can be compressed into a vivid panorama in QuickTime VR .MOV or DirectX .DDS format. Bixorama can also parse dynamic footage into eye-pleasing widescreen pictures.

2. Crazy Bump:

A program for creating and working with textures. It is applicable not only for creating textures in TES4 "Oblivion", but also for other games using Normals, Displacement, Specular or Occlusion maps. Allows you to automatically generate several color maps based on one digital image, with the possibility of their subsequent editing. Here are some of its features:
1. Generation of Normals, Displacement, Specular, Occlusion, Diffuse + Editing
2. Possibility of both single and mass generation - for all textures located in the selected directory.
3. Ability to mix color cards to create additional visual effects.
4. Displaying textures, for clarity, on a simple 3d frame, as well as the ability to load models from games (OBJ, DAE, ASE, ASK, X formats are supported). Adjustable / relocatable light source.
5. The program supports 92 digital image formats, saves in 31, including Direct Draw Surfase (.dds - for Blufftitler).

3. Pixplant:

program and plugin for Adobe photoshop used to create high quality seamless textures from photos is a powerful and handy tool to create high quality seamless textures of any size from any images and photos. When creating a texture, you can specify whether it should be seamless horizontally and / or vertically, exclude some parts of the original image from the generation process, set repeatability, and so on. You can save a lot of time by using the technology used in the program, which will create a seamless texture in four clicks.

Features of the program:
Quickly create unique seamless textures
Based on real photos, the program creates realistic textures without any distortion
Allows you to generate non-repeating textures
Creating textures in high definition and quality from the original image
Create texture from almost any photo using advanced straightening technology
High task automation
Most textures are created in 1-4 clicks
Thoughtfully designed and easy-to-use interface with online help and full-screen previews.

4. Genetica 3.5:

Genetica is a program for creating seamless and animated textures,
almost any resolution and quality, also HDRI environment maps.
In this case, the entire created structural mesh can be saved in the file
very small and edited at any time. In a programme
you can work with several modules, one of which allows you to create
textures, the second is to add various effects to them and much more.
The program has automated the process of creating textures of different types - wood,
weaving, flooring, etc. The program includes more than 1000 ready-made presets for
creating seamless textures. Maps created in Genetica are automatically
are created seamless and can be rendered in any resolution.

Features of the program:

Color Only Render texture creation mode, where they are created without taking into account shadows and highlights
automation of repetitive tasks
new types of noise with settings to change their appearance.
the ability to include information about the author in the finished texture.

V latest version introduced a new technology for creating seamless textures based on photos, added a new texture library with more than a thousand elements, added new tools for removing distortions from textures, improved work with multiprocessor systems.

Treatment procedure:
Each program includes a keygen.
The only request is for the cleanliness of the process, during installation, disconnect from the Internet. And disallow updates.
Then you can turn on the Internet, the programs are simple and not confused with a complex copyright protection system.

Long ago I had an idea to create a list of useful programs which can help you design. Some of them are simply irreplaceable for game creator, and some only complement and simplify life.
I haven't found a universal list on the Internet, so I ask:

P.S. I did not write down the versions of the programs, somehow you yourself will figure out which version you like best.
Links do not always lead to file downloads.

To start: List of game engines

3D

• Zbrush - program for three-dimensional modeling with simulation of "sculpting" 3d-model
• Mudbox - like Zbrush, only from Autodesk. Both are good in their own way.
• Autodesk 3ds Max- everything is clear. Creation three-dimensional graphics, animation, etc.
• Maya- ideal for creating animations. It also contains everything both for modeling and even for some simulations (liquids, smokes, flames, well, etc.)
• Blender - a nice plus is that it's free, unlike Maya and 3ds Max. It also develops as an independent game (!) Engine.
• TopoGun- a retopology program designed to build a low-poly model on a high-poly surface scanned with a 3D scanner or created in the Zbrush, Mudbox environment, and bake textures.
• Keyshot - tool for interactive visualization of 3D scenes and models
• Headus UVLayout - program for fast and high-quality UV mapping on 3D models (used by many professionals (for example Gnomon) in the games and visual effects industry)
• Unfold3D- a standalone program for the automatic creation of texture coordinates for curved surfaces
• World machine- a good generator of natural landscapes. The output gives a mesh, texture, heightmap,
• Terragen - landscape generator. Creates photorealistic landscapes .
• Vue- 3D modeling and rendering program
• Speed ​​tree modeler - generator of various trees. Useful for everyone
• Makehuman- program for generating humanoid 3d models
• Marmoset Toolbag - a small, convenient and full-fledged material editor and tool for quickly presenting three-dimensional models in real time.
• Marvelous designer - program for modeling and design of clothes. Offers built-in real-time fabric simulation and rendering engines, export functionality in common formats (Collada, OBJ / MTL).

2D

• Adobe Photoshop - I personally paint in Photoshop, I am much more comfortable there, but this is a matter of taste.
• Pixplant - a tool for creating seamless textures from photos
• CorelDraw -graphics editor, as for me, this is more suitable for artistic art. Color mixing is good.
• nDo2- plugin for Photoshop. Allows you to create maps of displacement and shadows (ambient occlusion) in Photoshop using hand drawing tools. In addition, it is possible to view a 3D preview of the resulting maps.
• Alchemy is a very good program for creating sketches. It is possible to enable both horizontal and vertical symmetry.
• ArtRage Studio - also an interesting program for drawing. For sketches / concepts, that's it.
• Sketchbook pro(also available for tablets) - drawing from Autodesk. Good for making all kinds of sketches
• Substance Designer- powerful program, which is designed for creating, editing and processing complex textures
• Filter forge- program and high quality plug-in for Photoshop with 4100 visual effects, 4400 textures. It also allows you to create your own filters, textures, effects, distortions.
• xNormal - creating normal maps from Color Map.
• CrazyBump- texture generator (displacement, normal, occlusion, and specmaps based on 2D images)
• Knald - analogue of CrazyBump
• Paint.NET- free raster graphics editor
• Gimp- a raster graphics editor, a program for creating and processing raster graphics and partial support for working with vector graphics.
• Inkscape- vector graphics editor, convenient for creating both artistic and technical illustrations
• GraphicsGale - free program focused on creating pixel art, including animated
• Adobe Flash - multimedia platform Adobe for creating web applications or multimedia presentations

Voxel Editors | Voxel editors

Sound | Sound

• is a free multi-platform audio editor for sound files, focused on working with multiple tracks.
• GoldWave- enough powerful editor audio. In terms of its functionality, it can compete with such well-known programs as Adobe audition, Sound Forge, etc.
• FL Studio- great for writing music, there are many plugins and different packs with sounds
• Steinberg WaveLab- professional audio recording and editing software.
• Steinberg cubase- software for creating, recording and mixing music
• Rosegarden is a free MIDI sequencer, notation editor for Linux using ALSA and JACK, music creation and editing software like Apple Logic Pro, Cakewalk Sonar and Steinberg Cubase.
• Sound forge is a professional digital audio production software suite that includes everything you need from raw audio to finished product.
• Adobe audition- Performs all the necessary editing and audio mixing functions. It has a very convenient navigation and interface.
• sfxr - utility for generating "eight-bit" sounds

Video | Video

Text Editors | Text editors

• Notepad ++ - free text editor with syntax highlighting for a large number of programming languages ​​and markup.
• JuffEd- text editor for Linux and Windows
• PSPad- free text editor and source code editor, can even work with files on remote computer, via ftp, clouds
• jEdit- text editor, has an open source and syntax support for many programming languages ​​and markup.
• ConText - good alternative Notepad ++
• Sublime text- fast cross-platform source code editor.

Development environment | IDE

• Microsoft Visual Studio- a set of tools designed to help developers software, both for beginners and professionals + GhostDoc- plugin for Visual Studio, auto-documentation Resharper- add-on to improve productivity in Microsoft Visual Studio
• IntelliJ IDEA- commercial integrated software development environment in many programming languages, in particular Java, JavaScript, Python
• Eclipse - free integrated development environment for modular cross-platform applications.
• NetBeans- a free integrated development environment for applications in languages Java programming, Python, PHP, JavaScript, C, C ++, Ada and others.
• Adobe Flash Builder - software by Adobe, is an Eclipse-based IDE for building rich Internet middleware (RIA) applications using Flex
• FlashDevelop- a free analogue of the builder with more modest features
• Olly debugger- Win32 debugger with a huge number of necessary functions, plugins and settings.
• Adobe Flash Professional Provides an environment for developing animated and multimedia content, allowing graphic designers to compose interactive interfaces that work in the same way on desktops and mobile devices. Native HTML5 support included.
• Xcode- integrated software development environment for OS X and iOS

Decompiler | Decompiler

• IDA- an interactive disassembler, which is widely used for reverse engineering (the study of a certain device or program, as well as its documentation in order to understand the principle of its operation) \

Addition: An updated version of the program has been released - Genetica 4.0, full overview for new features and tools, see the link below.

Surprisingly, to my shame, until now I had never even heard of the existence of such a program as Genetica from company Spiral Graphics, although this product has existed on the market not just for a long time, but for a very long time - the first version of the Genetica seamless texture editor was released already in 2003. Of course, more sophisticated colleagues and sympathizers probably knew about the existence of this editor and used it (but for some reason I was not told xD), however, for me, a person not immersed in mass texturing of everything and everyone, this news was a discovery - and, frankly speaking , a very pleasant and unexpected discovery.

The time has come to correct this uniform disgrace and annoying omission. Coincidentally or not, but just today the official release took place Genetica 3.6- an updated version of the program that will delight users with the ability to create attractive text effects ... Oops! Stop stop stop. It is not worth starting to list all the features of the program, otherwise the introductory word will stretch out and miraculously turn into an introductory novel-ode. Everything in order, as they say. Actually, the purpose of this material is to acquaint the reader (and myself at the same time, since it happened) with Genetica, to tell what the program can do and where it can be successfully applied.

It should be noted that the company Spiral Graphics(or rather, keyboards) does not own one Genetica- besides it, two are available for use. free product: Wood Workshop, intended, as the name implies, for procedural generation and working with seamless textures of various kinds of wood, and Genetica Viewer- a viewer and visualizer of textures created in the main program (Genetica).

First Look

Let's go directly to the developers' site and see what they can offer us Genetica version 3.6... So, according to the developers themselves, Genetica- is the world's most powerful seamless texture, animated texture and HDRI editor ... The statement is loud, but, we must admit, fair - supplied as a separate application Genetica is no longer a plug-in, not an appendage to another program and not a modest utility - it is a full-fledged one software package with very rich possibilities. See for yourself:

• Text- the ability to create text for fast creation logos or detailing textures.
• Synthesis of textures- creating seamless textures from photos.
• Node-based workflow- Maya users will immediately understand what this means. So this is what everyone functionality programs are implemented in the form of "Nodes" - or functional units, in other words, each of which performs its own function. In other words, the program follows a modern, visual (visual) approach to image processing.
• Drawing tools- the necessary templates, patterns and outlines can be created right inside the editor.
• System "Laboratories"- some functional nodes are grouped into the so-called "Laboratories", which are designed to solve the necessary problem in the complex. So, for example, the laboratory "Weather Lab" is designed to apply the effect of damage, wear and tear to the created textures.
• Advanced lighting- Genetica is able to use environmental effects when creating textures, such as global illumination, ambient occlusion, shadows, etc., which allows you to create more realistic textures.
• Thousands of ready-made presets- doors, windows, boxes, wood floors, stone and concrete paths, earth surfaces, fabrics, metals and even planets - all of this can be found in the form of blanks that can be quickly changed at your discretion or used as is.
• Normal, Specular, Bump, Reflection textures- Genetica allows you to generate, in addition to color textures, additional textures that will make objects even more realistic.
• HDRI image creation- Genetica allows you to generate HDRI maps that can be used both internally and externally.
• Batch processing- the system allows you to apply the necessary effects to a large number of textures at once, or create a large number of images in turn - all this can seriously speed up the work.
• Animated textures- many of the parameters of the nodes involved in the generation of the texture can be animated, which allows you to create a variety of effects.

This is not a complete list of Genetica features, but I think few people are interested in just re-reading what is already available on the official website of the developers, so I will stop there and go directly to the program itself.

Crazy Pens - Feel Genetica 3.6 Studio Edition

Let's start with where to get Genetica. The program comes in three editions - Basic, Pro and Studio, which differ in a set of capabilities (functionality). Download demo version of the program and you can work for 30 days in all editions from the Spiral Graphics website.

The simplest and least burdensome version for the budget is Basic, which, nevertheless, offers quite extensive functionality, which will be enough for many. In the Basic version, in comparison with Pro and Studio, there is no possibility of working with HDRI images, Normal maps, you cannot use batch processing and create animated textures, and the maximum size of the created images is limited to a resolution of 3000x3000 pixels.

Pro the version has all the declared features of the program except for two - you cannot animate textures and use presets of animation effects. The maximum resolution of the generated images, as in the Studio edition, has been increased to 6000x6000 pixels.

And finally Genetica Studio Edition- the most complete and functional version of the program, which is also the most expensive. If you are used to getting everything at once, then the Studio edition will appeal to you, especially since the possibility of creating animated textures is very attractive, and the result is worth it.

Your humble servant is lucky and I have the opportunity to tell you about the most complete version of the program - Studio Edition. Although taking into account the fact that the demo version also provides an opportunity for everyone to feel like a small branch of someone's studio, luck is relatively. So, download the demo version Genetica 3.6 from the official site and run it in Studio mode.

We launch and see ... Oh, you hedgehog! The tenacious eye of an artist or game developer who is not spoiled by the abundance of available resources will immediately light up with lust - in the start section Category there is a whole scattering of texture classes to choose from, where in each category there are dozens of available presets (and these are they).

Here you will find atmospheric phenomena such as clouds, and boxes with barrels, and paradise for an architect - brickwork / concrete blocks / paving slabs / natural stones of all colors and sizes, walls, doors, windows, roofs, fences and just earth surfaces. Fabrics, metals, wood, marble, leather, plants, stone and even entire planets - and all this stuff with fully customizable parameters, as the images are generated procedurally and adjusted using parameters. A drop of imagination - and all this can turn into countless variations and completely new textures, which will surely be used in a variety of situations.

In itself, such a large number of essentially ready-to-use seamless textures makes Genetica a profitable acquisition and a must-have in the arsenal of any artist working with textures, and if you also take into account the fact that with a few mouse clicks they can be changed beyond recognition. ..

Next, I will try to acquaint you with the main features of the program - of course, there will be no deep consideration, since this goes far beyond of this review, but in general, I will try to formulate and convey to you an idea of ​​Genetica and its capabilities.

Seamless Textures and Animated Textures in Genetica 3.6

Let's take a closer look at the process of working in Genetica. Since the main profile of the program is the creation of seamless textures, for a start I decided to show exactly this aspect of its work. For our experiment, I chose a texture Magma in category Atmosphere- what can you do, she looks too attractive and fits my plan perfectly. Click on it with the left mouse button and get into the Genetica workspace, where our texture has already been loaded.

Our magma consists of three groups, in each of which nodes are added that create a certain part of the final image. That is, the process of creating a magma texture at the node level is logically divided into three stages-groups: the first group creates a base image (" Clouds"), the second group gives the desired color (" Color clouds"), the third group adds a glow (" Add glow The plot of construction (or connections between nodes) is read from top to bottom, where at the very bottom is the result of the work of all higher-level nodes. It is worth noting that groups are just a form of organization of nodes, by themselves they do not carry any functionality and serve only convenience user.

At the push of a button Enter displayed next to each group, you can go inside it to see what functional nodes it consists of, or even change some of their parameters. To leave the group (move one level up), press the button Out located at the bottom of the group.

Thus, upon closer examination of each group and their contents, you can understand the internal logic of the program, the principles of creating textures in Genetica and how to use each of the nodes.

The first group creates a base image - for example, a node Noise generates a noise texture, which then increases the contrast using a node Change BCL(Brightness, Contrast, Intensity), then node Atmosphere applies the illumination effect, the result of all these manipulations, together with two additional images obtained in a similar way, is reduced to a node Distort in which it is slightly distorted.

In the second group, the output image of the first group is colored with a brown gradient fill and mixed with the "matte", and as a result we get something that remotely resembles magma.

In the third group, at the final stage of creating the magma texture, the image of our "thing" is used twice - for the first time to create the glow of glowing magma (Glow effect) by highlighting "hot" spots by increasing the contrast and then blurring these "hot" spots and when the result of the blur is combined by the Combine node with the original image "something like magma". One more step (increasing contrast and brightness) - and voila! Before us is the most that neither is magma blazing with heat - among other things, completely seamless (below - 2 copies of one texture side by side, which allows you to appreciate the seamless texture).

Caution hot!

It looks very nice, and most importantly, the result is obtained in a matter of minutes. Let's try to take advantage of the ability to create an animated texture and animate our magma is a blessing, this texture is suitable for this task at an opportune moment. Let's try to make pulsating magma - for this you just need to animate the atribus Thickness factor Atmosphere nodes in the Clouds group. Genetica allows you to animate any attribute that has a clock icon next to it.

After clicking on it, a menu for editing animation curves is displayed, which allows you to set the minimum and maximum values ​​of the parameter during animation, select the profile and type of the curve (sinusoid, noise, wave, etc.), mix animation curves using layers, combine them, and so on. Further. With the help of this editor, you can get almost any desired effect - in our case, it is pulsating magma.

Upon completion of all manipulations, the animated texture needs to be rendered - you can do this as in RAM computer, and immediately to the hard disk. To the credit of the Spiral Graphics programmers, it is worth noting that the texture rendering process uses all available processor cores - for example, my old 4-core Q6600 worked one hundred percent, which pleased us with the final rendering speed. And the result of our work (although it was achieved again in a minute or two) can be seen below.

The pulsating magma still blows with heat

And even that is not all. Using the same parameter animation function, you can animate the X and Y shift of the base texture created by the Noise node in the Cloud- group and get pouring magma, with which you can easily create a magma waterfall.

The enchanting sight of a magma waterfall

It took an order of magnitude more time to write this material than to create the textures themselves. Well, as a demonstration of what can be done with Genetica in just 10 minutes in Maya, the following picture. Let me remind you that it took everything to create it 10 minutes- and only two textures from Genetica.

A magma lake splashes in the depths of the cave

HDRIs of the Environment in Genetica

Genetica does an excellent job of creating HDRI environment maps. So, for example, any photo using the Make Environment node can be turned into an HDRI image of any format - Light Probe, Horizontal or Vertical Cross, Mirrored Ball, etc. For example, from our image of the Magma Cave, you can get the following textures of the environment in HDR format:

The resulting environment texture can be immediately used for its intended purpose and rendered something shiny and round:

Text and Logos

V new version programs, Genetica 3.6, it became possible to work with text, which, in principle, allows you to quickly create various nice inscriptions, stylized or with special effects. The program provides several presets, from which you can choose the one you like and edit it to suit your needs, and, of course, no one forbids creating your own effect "from scratch", but it will be a little more difficult. Text effects like the following can be produced in a couple of minutes. More than 300 styles can be applied to the lettering. ...

Creating Seamless Textures from Photos in Genetica 3.6

Genetica has a very interesting ability to create seamless textures from photos. The algorithm of the program independently finds similar elements in the photograph and "glues" a seamless texture from them. The whole process is controlled by many parameters, so almost any photo that in theory can be seamless can be made by Genetica. Of course, the more the original photograph is suitable for such purposes, the better the result will be (it is obvious that photographs of surfaces such as concrete, sand, etc. are suitable for the role of seamless textures much better than a photograph of, say, a car. in the latter case, it will be possible to create a seamless texture of metal painted with automotive paint).

In order not to drag out the review even more, I will not demonstrate the process of creating seamless textures, but everyone can familiarize themselves with its essence using video demos on the Spiral Graphics website.

Normal Map, Specular Map and Company in Genetica 3.6 Studio Edition

And finally, about how Genetica handles the creation of additional texture maps. Here, things are just as good - if you enable the "Render Effect Maps" option before rendering the texture, then in addition to the color texture (the so-called Diffuse texture) will be created and others - Height Map, Specular Map, various maps of masks and others, depending on the algorithm by which the texture was created. Normal map and can be obtained at any time by pressing the corresponding button in the menu bar. This is, for example, the Diffuse, Normal and Specular maps for the texture of colored masonry:

Actually, on this, let me conclude the review of the program itself, since there is no point in describing in detail all its capabilities - for this there is an official site where you can find galleries, a forum, libraries of free textures, and most importantly, lessons on Genetica. Although, in general, the program is very simple and you can master it in just a couple of hours, and if you read the Help, then even that is faster. By the way, reading Help is a rule of good form, that's why they are written to be read. :)

Conclusion

Genetica Spiral Graphics made a strong impression on me - it's quite easy to learn, but at the same time very powerful program that will possibly radically change my approach to creating textures. In any case, it will definitely save a lot of time. The program in its field is in many respects revolutionary - although it is probably not entirely correct to speak of revolution in the context of the fact that Genetica has existed for 8 years, but still.

And it's not just about saving time - personally, for example, I mainly worked only with realistic textures, but if I needed to create a texture, say, a fantasy house or a stylized tree, this could be a problem. Genetica, in its essence, is a generator of "artificial" textures (which, of course, is not a drawback) - which means that such textures can easily be turned into stylized, "cartoonish" ones, or used in a non-100% photorealistic world, such as like video games of certain genres, for example.

Moreover, take, for example, the scene with a cave and magma, which was shown above. It's scary to imagine how much time it would take to create such a texture in Photoshop from scratch, especially if this texture is to be animated. But if you have Genetica at hand, a similar result can be achieved in just 10 minutes (!). Impressive.

And this is just one of the examples, of which there are in fact a huge number. Probably, I won't be mistaken if I say that in the case of Genetica the artist is not limited by anything - only his creative ability, and technology will allow to do, if not everything, then a lot.

Once again referring to the Spiral Graphics website, it is worth noting that in the section Gallery you can see who and how is already using Genetica in their projects. Here you can find movies, TV shows, architecture, advertising, design, and video games. I will dwell on the latter in more detail.

Game development- this is exactly the area in which the use of Genetica can be the most effective and profitable, from all points of view, both from the side of saving development time and from the side of the result (quality of graphics and art). It's no secret that good art is expensive, and for an independent developer or a small team, finding and hiring an artist who can create " beautiful picture"and it can become a difficult task at all. There is no need to talk about non-commercial projects - for such enthusiasts, Genetica can even become heavenly manna.

Take the same library of ready-made textures and presets that come with the program - by themselves, they can solve the lion's share of problems with textures in the game being developed, saving time and freeing up resources for other tasks. Textures of walls, ground surfaces, backgrounds, other objects - the use of Genetica can be extremely wide. For example, the game Shattered origins, of which Genetica became the main tool for creating 2D graphics.

In general, I will repeat once again: Genetica is a real treasure trove of graphic resources, which will come in handy for everyone who works with 2D graphics in one way or another. Great program, capable of making the life of an artist many times easier, and work many times more effective. There is nothing more to add to this, so let me bow to this sim. I hope you enjoyed my review as much as I enjoyed Genetica.

Useful links

Addition: Genetica 4.0 is out, read the full overview of the new features and tools at the link below.

Textures have become part of our lives. Designers use them to fill backgrounds or overlap objects. Textures are often used as background objects in web design. Here special requirements are imposed on them. On the one hand, to speed up loading, the HTML page together with the graphics should take up as little space as possible, on the other hand, the page often has a lot of text information, and if you use a texture the size of a page, then it will take up a huge volume. A compromise option is to use a small texture, placing it close to one another, but so that it is not noticeable. Therefore, in web design, repeating texture elements are used with smoothly flowing edges from one texture to another, i.e. so that the right edge of one texture element flows smoothly to the left edge of the other and the bottom edge to the top.

Many people use ready-made textures in their work. Have you ever wondered how they are created? After all, this is not just a set of similar items to create a background. It is important to achieve texture alignment. To do this, you need to initially create textures in such a way that you can make a continuous texture mosaic from one repeating element, or be able to transform existing graphic elements into continuous textures. For this, special programs have been created, which will be discussed in this review.

TextureWorkshop 1.5

TextureWorkshop allows you to quickly and easily convert almost any picture into a repeating texture. The program can also be used for simple texture editing and texture color manipulation. To work with graphic elements, the program has 7 tabs:

Tilize tab. Actually, this is the tab with which the program converts graphic elements into continuous textures. It sets the amount in pixels that will be smoothed from each edge of the editable element to create continuity.

The Color tab sets the color of the image from original to black and white.

The Color Balance tab allows you to change the color balance of the image.

The Brightness tab allows you to adjust the brightness of the image.

The Contrast tab allows you to adjust the contrast of the image.

The Gamma tab allows you to perform gamma correction of the image.

The Special tab allows you to invert colors as well as rotate, skew, and flip the image.

In the unregistered version of the program, the Gamma and Special tabs are not available.

As already mentioned, a unique feature of the program is to create a coherent background using repeating textures. You can take any picture with similar objects (leaves, stones, grains, etc.) and, by pressing one button, turn it into a version of virtual wallpaper. You can do the same with small chunks of pre-made marble, forest, water, or fabric textures to create smooth and limitless textures.

Let's take a picture for example:

As a texture it looks like this:

We open it in the program:

After the transformation, we get:

Not perfect, but obviously much better. If you use pictures with objects of the same type to create textures, as the author of the program advises, then the transition between texture "tiles" will be invisible.

Together with the program, several blanks are supplied with the same type of objects for creating ready-made textures, on which you can practice, which we, in fact, will do. On the left (or above) the original, on the right (or below) - the finished result:

The program works under operating systems Windows 95/98 / Me / NT / 2000 / XP. The author of the program is the Russian programmer Sergey Stolbov.

The cost of registering the program is $ 25.

After registration, you can:

Use the program for more than 10 days;

Perform gamma correction;

Use the functions of inverting colors, rotating, mirroring and tilting;

Create templates of transformations with the ability to save / read to apply to various textures.

I am not a specialist in complex graphic packages, and it would be interesting for me to hear the professional opinion of designers both about this program and about alternative ways creating background sets from repeating textures.

Download TextureWorkshop 1.5 (size 1.02Mb): link

Pattern Creator 1.0

Pattern is translated from English as drawing, model, pattern, stencil. Pattern Creator is a program for creating beautiful continuous patterns, consisting of separate identical pieces connected to each other. Because the main work you have to do, then this is an opportunity for you to show your creativity.

First, you need to choose the size of a single element, from which the overall pattern of the picture will then be formed. By default, the program offers a square of 100 by 100 points.

Then the program screen with a white rectangle appears in front of you, on which you, as an artist on a white canvas, can create your masterpieces. To simplify the work of novice artists, a grid showing the border is available individual elements.

The following tools are available to you: pen, straight lines. You can fill the picture with a color of your choice or randomly, as well as various textures in BMP and JPEG formats. You also have a full color palette and the ability to change the thickness of the applied lines. Any line drawn on one piece of mozaki is repeated many times on the rest, and when moving to the next piece, it also begins on the previous one and on the others.

The result is a mosaic consisting of a single, multiple repeating element. You have the option to write it in BMP format. You can also read ready-made BMP images. I'm certainly not an artist, so I ended up with a pretty simple mosaic.


I suggest you try your hand, especially since the program is absolutely free. You can freely redistribute it for non-commercial use without making any changes to it.

Download Pattern Creator 1.0 (size 2.24Mb): link

Textures Gallery Maker 1.2

Textures Gallery Maker is used to generate textures randomly. The program was born during the implementation of a quality improvement diploma project bitmaps by imposing various filters. As a result of the error, instead of an improved image, an incomprehensible pattern turned out. After adding a random number generator to it, a separate program, Textures Gallery Maker, appeared.

The program is very easy to use and does not require installation.

The Generate Texture tab contains all the necessary buttons for creating textures and setting generation parameters.

- the Generate button is used to create or generate a texture with given parameters;

- the Save button is used to save the created texture to a BMP, JPEG or GIF file;

- the Size button sets the size of the texture, by default 100 by 100 pixels (it is not necessary to use only square textures, try, for example, a size of 300 by 20 pixels.);

- the Color button sets the colors of the created texture;

- Smooth button sets or cancels smooth transitions between contrasting points in the created texture;

- button Tile (Mosaic) turns on the display of a mosaic consisting of many identical elements of the created texture or shows only one element.

The Contrast slider is designed to change the contrast of the texture.

The Preview HTML tab allows you to see how the created texture will look with the standard 16 HTML colors. Initially, the program description page acts as a test page.

- the Open HTML button is used to open the user's HTML page in the program against the background of the generated texture;

- button Text Clor (Text color) allows you to change the color of the text on the open HTML-page (do not be afraid, your page will not suffer, all changes take place in a temporary copy of the page);

- The Link Color button allows you to change the color of links on an open HTML page.

There is also a beta version of the program in development. You can see examples of textures generated by the program here.

The author will be interested to know your opinion about the program, if you want, you can vote for it at Email the author [email protected], indicating in the subject line "useful program" or, conversely, "useless program". You can also express your comments and wishes. In addition, the author asks for help with algorithms for various graphic effects and random generation algorithms. graphic images.

Textures Gallery Maker is free. The program is written in Borland C ++ Builder 5.0. Along with the program itself, its source code is also available.

Download Textures Gallery Maker 1.2 (size 352Kb): link

Source code for Textures Gallery Maker 1.2 (size 93Kb): link

Download beta version of Textures Gallery Maker (size 353Kb): link

Rect 2

There are also two effects, Water and Glass, which can be enabled additionally. The Glass effect turns an image into a kind of oil painting, as if "smears" adjacent points, creating something like diffusion. This is best seen when using textures with squares.

The Glass effect blurs the image. The same textures with squares are unrecognizably transformed, and the fact that these were once squares is no longer recognizable.

The Background button sets the background on which the textures will be generated, since they do not always occupy the entire surface area and sometimes the background appears in some places.

The Sizes button sets the size of the generated texture: Width and Height. If you check the "X = Y" checkbox, then the width and height will be the same. Parameter (Parameter) sets a certain parameter of the generated texture, which mainly affects the size of the elements of which it consists.

The Colors button controls the amount of red, green, and blue in the texture.

Buttons Many1 (Many1), Many2 (Many2) and One (One) set the modes of the program. In Many2 mode, the entire screen is filled with the created texture, in One mode, one created texture element is shown on a full-screen black background. Many1 mode is the most convenient - it shows the entire screen filled with the created texture, and on top - the program itself, in which you can create new textures that are dynamically displayed in full screen behind the program.

The Create button is used to generate a texture. The Save button is used to save the created texture to a BMP file. The button with a question mark calls up a description of the program in Russian and English. To exit the program, use the Exit button.

Random Background works under Windows 95/98 / ME / NT / 2000.

The program is distributed free of charge. You can also freely use the textures she generated for non-commercial purposes.

Download Random Background 1.0 (size 377Kb): link

Conclusion

This article reflects different ways creating repeating textures: smoothing the edges of ready-made graphic elements, drawing on the field from adjacent elements and generating textures using a computer. I am not a designer and it would be interesting for me to hear the opinions of designers both about these programs and about others. possible ways creating repeating textures.