Page: Guide.PnpGameDesignPageA06 - Last Modified : Tue, 24 Jul 18 - 9002 Visits

I remember when I was making maps for the Hexen video game, there was a lot of texture that was supplied with the game to be placed on wall and floors. In board games, textures are also very useful. They can be used in the back of a board or a card instead of using a plain color. It really enhance the look of the components.

But how do you get these texture? First, I was looking for archives or websites that cold have texture pack that can be used. Second, I tried to find software that could generate textures and third, I realized that it's not so hard to create your own textures, it just depends on it's complexity.

Note: Most of the texture on this page have been saved in 300x300 pixel but due to the page layout, the picture might have been shrunk to fit in the page. If you want to see a picture in full size, simply right click on the picture and click "View Image" (Firefox).

Random Texture generator

I tried to search on the internet for random texture generator. There are some online generator available:

http://www.grsites.com/generate/category/4/

This web site was designed for giving material for creating web sites. I also found a software called GenTex which is very interesting and easy to use. The problem is that it's hard to create intelligible texture. Here is some example of generated pictures.

I think only the old version of the software can be downloaded for free. It can be downloaded from that page:

http://www.texturemaker.com/download.php

The same company is making the "Texture Maker" software. I did not use it because it's not a free software. I don't know how much more powerful it is compared to regular graphic software.

Basics of texture creation

I will use for the rest of the document "The GIMP" as software because I am going to use filters with specific name which might not be available in all software. The concept is simple, You first feed your picture with contents, then you apply various combination of filters and blending mode until you get what you want. You will need to use your creativity and make many test until you get what you need.

• Feeding the texture: Most filters will modify the content of the picture. This means that if you currently have nothing in your picture, the filter will have no effect. This is why you need to feed your image with some content, normally generated randomly.
• Modify the texture: During this step, you will apply one of many filters to change what has been feed in the previous step. You will need to explore the various filters you software have to offer.
• Combine texture: Some texture cannot be achieved with a single texture, so you will to create separate textures and combine them together though various blending modes.

When your texture is ready, you should use the "Make Seamless" filter which will make your texture tillable.

Setting up the texture

The dimension of your texture depend on it's use. For printed texture, it could be useful to match the DPI you want. If for example, you want your texture to cover 1 inch of space and you want to print in 300 DPI, a 300x300 texture could do fine.

In video games, you want to use multiples of exponents 2 (ex: 128, 256, 512, 1024, etc). If I remember correctly, the texture will get rendered faster this way.

When you have your new texture, you want to start with a color. Chose a color that defines your texture globally. If you want an earth wall, you could start with a medium brown. Do not take something too dark or too bright. Some filters ignore the basic color.

Feeding the texture

To feed a texture, you can do it manually by using a brush and painting various things. But there are many filters that allows you to generate something out of nothing. Here are some examples:

HSVnoise: This is a basic filter that can do more wonder than you can think. The advantage of this filter is that it use the original color of the texture. So you do not lose your color.

RGBNoise: This is another noise filter that allows you to add noise of a certain color. In the example below, I have added green noise to the texture.

Cloud - Solid Noise: This is another filter which I use a lot. But there is always no colors in the cloud. So you need to color it afterward with a function like "Colorise".

Checkered: I do not use this often, but it could be useful to have a basic linear pattern that could be distorted afterward.

Sinus: This is a filter that could be interesting to distort it afterward.

Circuit: Another interesting filter for deformations.

Modify the texture

Once you get something to work with, there are tons of things you can do. In the example below, I'll use the noise and checkered texture used above to show you the filter effects. Of course, I will now show all filters

Gaussian Blur: This is a very useful filter. There are many types of blur and many parameters possible but the blur effects all look similar.

Cubisme: An artistic filter that creates cubes.

Oilify: This is a very interesting artistic filter. I used this once to create forest from an overhead view. It's useful to make an oil painting out of a picture.

HSV Noise		Gaussian Blur		Oilify

Gimpressionist: This is a very powerful filter that can do much more than what you see. It basically paint with a brush all over your picture. Usefull to make a painting out of picure. There are various kind of brushes and canvas available with tons of options and parameter.

Bumpmap: This is another very useful effect to create relief which is generally what you want in patterns. It is also used to engrave a shape into a texture. See my brick wall example at the end. The filter use a source picture and a bump picture. In the example below, the pciture and the bump are the same picture.

HSV Noise		Gaussian Blur		Bumpmap

Edge Detect: This is another interesting filter that can have various purpose. The idea is that it will try to trace the contour of the shape in the picture. The results will be completely different according to the content of your picture.

HSV Noise		Gaussian Blur		Edge Detect

Despeckle: This one creates a weird effect, it seems to inflate the shapes in the picture.

Mozaic: This is an interesting filter for making tiled floors.

Ripple: A simple deformation filter that ripples the picture.

Shift: This is a useful distort filter to create wood. It simply shift lines left or right,

Waves: Creates rippled waves on the picture.

Whirl and Pinch: Creates whirlpool that are useful to combine later with other pictures.

Spread: This filter could be considered as another type of blur or noise. It takes pixel and spread them away from their origin.

Apply Canvas: This filter takes a picture and apply a cloth bumpmap to it.

Combine textures

The next step consist in combining texture together. It might not always been useful for the texture you need, but sometimes you can achive a certain effect by combining texture. To combine texture, you need to have each texture on a separate layer. For our examples, we will use the following textures:

Then you can first adjust the alpha level. By default, the alpha level will adjust the transparency. In the example below, we have combined the texture by setting the transparency of the solid noise to 50%.

Besides the alpha, you can also adjust the type of blending mode. This will create completely new effects. For the example below, the alpha was fixed at 50% and we simply changed the blending modes.

Addition	Burn

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Darken Only	Difference

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Disolve	Divide

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Hard Light	Lighten Only

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Multiply	Normal

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Screen	Substract

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So there are many ways to blend textures together. Make various experiments and see the results you can get with what you have.

Example of textures

Here are a few examples that require many steps to achieve. It will give you some ideas on how you could create your own textures.

Water and Clouds

Blue Background		HSV Noise		Gaussian Blur

	Bumpmap		Adjust Brightness

	Cloud Solid Noise		Lighten Only 75%		Make Seamless

Wood

Brown Background		HSV Noise		Gaussian Blur

	Shift		Cloud Solid Noise		Colorize

	Shift		Normal Blend 30%		Make Seamless

Brick Wall

Brick: plain- noise - gaussian blur - bumpmap - brick - distorted brisk - gaussian blue - bump brick - seamless.

Brown Background		HSV Noise		Gaussian Blur

	Bumpmap		Import Brick		Iwarp manually

	Blur Brick		Bumpmap with brick		Make Seamless

Note: The Brick pattern has been done in inkscape and exported as bitmap.

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