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Programs for creating continuous textures. Creating a Seamless Texture Using Texture Maker Texture Map Generation Program

Textures have become a part of our lives. Designers use them to fill backgrounds or overlay objects. Textures are often used in web design as a background object. Here they are subject to special requirements. On the one hand, to speed up loading, an HTML page along with 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 page-sized texture, it will take up a huge amount of space. 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 of one texture into another, i.e. so that the right edge of one texture element smoothly flows into the left edge of another and the bottom edge into 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 objects to create a background. It is important to achieve a combination of textures. 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. Created for this purpose special programs, which will be discussed in this review.

TextureWorkshop 1.5

TextureWorkshop allows you to quickly and easily transform almost any image into a repeating texture. The program can also be used for simple texture editing and working with texture color. 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 specifies the amount in pixels that will be smoothed from each edge of the edited 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 the creation of a holistic background using repeating textures. You can take any picture with similar objects (leaves, stones, grains, etc.) and with the click of one button make a variant out of it virtual wallpaper. The same can be done with small pieces of ready-made marble, forest, water or fabric textures to create smooth and borderless textures.

For example, let's take the picture:

As a texture it looks like this:

Open it in the program:

After transformation we get:

Although not perfect, it is 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.

Along with the program, several blanks with the same type of objects are supplied for creating ready-made textures on which you can practice, which is what we will actually do. On the left (or top) is the original, on the right (or bottom) is the finished result:

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

The cost of registering for the program is $25.

After registration you will be able:

Use the program for longer than 10 days;

Perform gamma correction;

Use the invert colors, rotate, mirror and tilt functions;

Create transformation templates with the ability to save/read for application to various textures.

I am not an expert in complex graphics packages, and I will be interested to hear the professional opinion of designers about both this program and alternative ways creating background sets of repeating textures.

Download TextureWorkshop 1.5 (size 1.02Mb): link

Pattern Creator 1.0

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

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

Then a program screen with a white rectangle appears in front of you, on which you, like an artist on a white canvas, can create your masterpieces. To make it easier for beginning artists, a grid is available to show the boundaries of individual elements.

The following tools are available to you: pen, straight lines. You can fill the picture with your chosen or random color, 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 mosaic 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, repeated element. You have the option to record it in BMP format. You can also read ready-made BMP images. Of course, I’m not an artist, so I ended up with a rather simple mosaic.

I suggest you try your hand, especially since the program is absolutely free. You may 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 a graduation project to improve the quality of raster images by applying various filters. As a result of the error, instead of an improved image, an incomprehensible pattern was obtained. 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 the specified parameters;

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

- 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.);

- Color button sets the colors of the created texture;

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

- the Tile button enables 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.

Preview HTML tab ( Preview HTML pages) allows you to see how the created texture will look with the standard 16 HTML colors. Initially, the program description page serves 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;

- the Text Clor button allows you to change the color of the text on the open HTML page (don’t be afraid, your page will not be affected, all changes occur in a temporary copy of the page);

- 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 author [email protected], indicating in the subject line " useful program"or, conversely, "useless program". You can also express your comments and suggestions. In addition, the author asks for help with algorithms for various graphic effects and algorithms random generation graphic images.

Textures Gallery Maker is distributed free of charge. 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 (Rectangle 2)

There are also two effects: Water and Glass, which can be enabled additionally. The Glass effect turns an image into something like an oil painting, as if it “smears” neighboring dots, 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 transformed beyond recognition, and the fact that they were once squares is no longer recognizable.

The Background button sets the background on which textures will be generated, because 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 specifies 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.

The Many1, Many2 and One buttons set the program operating modes. In Many2 mode, the entire screen is filled with the created texture; in One mode, one created texture element is shown on a black background that fills the entire screen. The 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 the texture. The Save button is intended 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 languages. To exit the program, use the Exit button.

Random Background runs on Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000.

The program is distributed free of charge. You are also free to use the textures it generates for non-commercial purposes.

Download Random Background 1.0 (size 377Kb): link

Conclusion

This article reflects various ways to create repeating textures: smoothing the edges of finished graphic elements, drawing on a field of adjacent elements, and generating textures using a computer. I am not a designer and I will be interested to hear the opinions of designers about both these programs and others possible ways creating repeating textures.

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

It’s an amazing thing - to my shame, until now I had never heard of the existence of such a program as Genetica from company Spiral Graphics, although this product has been 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 back in 2003. Of course, more sophisticated colleagues and sympathizers probably knew about the existence of this editor and used it (but for some reason they didn’t tell me xD), however, for me, a person not immersed in mass texturing of everything and everyone, this news was a revelation - and, frankly speaking, , a very pleasant and unexpected discovery.

The time has come to correct this disgrace and annoying omission. Coincidentally or not, the official release took place just today Genetica 3.6-an updated version of the program, which will delight users with the ability to create attractive text effects... Oops! Stop, stop, stop. You shouldn’t start listing all the features of the program, otherwise the introductory word will stretch out and miraculously turn into an introductory novel-ode. First things first, as they say. Actually, the purpose of this material is to introduce the reader (and myself, too, since it so happens) to Genetica, to tell what the program can do and where it can be successfully applied.

It is worth noting that the company Spiral Graphics(or rather, keyboards) belong to more than one Genetica; in addition to it, two free products are available for use: Wood Workshop, designed, as the name suggests, for procedural generation and work with seamless textures of various types of wood, and Genetica Viewer- a viewer and visualizer for textures created in the main program (Genetica).

First Look

Let’s go directly to the developers’ website and see what it has to 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, admittedly, fair - delivered in the form separate application Genetica is no longer a plugin, not an add-on to another program, and not a modest utility - it’s a full-fledged software package with very rich possibilities. See for yourself:

Text- the ability to create text for quick creation logos or texture detailing.
Texture synthesis- creating seamless textures from photographs.
Node-based workflow- Maya users will immediately understand what this means. Which means that's all functionality programs are implemented in the form of “Nodes”—or functional nodes, to put it differently, each of which performs its own function. In other words, the program professes a modern, visual (visual) approach to image processing.
Drawing Tools- the necessary templates, patterns and contours can be created directly inside the editor.
"Laboratory" system- Some functional nodes are grouped into so-called “Laboratory”, which are designed to solve the required problem in a complex. For example, the Weather Lab is designed to apply the effects of damage, wear and age to the created textures.
Advanced Lighting- Genetica can 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, drawers, wooden floors, stone and concrete paths, earth surfaces, fabrics, metals and even planets - all 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.
Creating HDRI images- Genetica allows you to generate HDRI maps that can be used both inside and outside the program.
Batch Processing- the system allows you to apply the necessary effects to a large number of textures at once, or create them in order a large number of images - all this can seriously speed up your work.
Animated textures- Many parameters of the nodes involved in texture generation can be animated, which allows you to create a variety of effects.

This is far from full list capabilities of Genetica, but I think few people are interested in simply re-reading what is already available on the official website of the developers, so I’ll stop here and go directly to the program itself.

Crazy Hands - Feeling Genetica 3.6 Studio Edition

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

The simplest and most budget-friendly version is Basic, which, nevertheless, offers quite extensive functionality, which will be sufficient for many. In the Basic version, compared to Pro and Studio, there is no ability to work with HDRI images, Normal maps, you cannot use batch processing and create animated textures, as well as maximum size created images limited to a resolution of 3000x3000 pixels.

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

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

Your humble servant is lucky and I have the opportunity to talk about the most full version programs - 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 relative. So, download the demo version Genetica 3.6 from the official website and launch it in Studio mode.

We launch and see... Oh, you hedgehog! The tenacious eye of an artist or game developer who has not been spoiled by the abundance of available resources will immediately light up with lust - in the starting section Category There is a whole scattering of texture classes to choose from, where in each category the number of available presets (and that’s exactly what they are) goes into the dozens.

Here you will find atmospheric phenomena such as clouds, and boxes with barrels, and an architect’s paradise - brickwork/concrete blocks/paving slabs/natural stones of all colors and sizes, walls, doors, windows, roofs, fences and simply earthen surfaces. Fabrics, metals, wood, marble, leather, plants, stone and even entire planets - and all this stuff with fully customizable parameters, since the images are procedurally generated and adjusted using parameters. A little bit of imagination - and all this can turn into countless variations and completely new textures, which can certainly find their application 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 just a few mouse clicks they can be changed beyond recognition. ..

Next, I will try to introduce you to the main features of the program - of course, there will be no in-depth consideration, since this goes far beyond the scope of this review, but in general I will try to get an idea of Genetica and its capabilities and convey it to you.

Seamless Textures and Animated Textures in Genetica 3.6

Let's look at the process of working in Genetica in a little more detail. Since the main profile of the program is the creation of seamless textures, to begin with I decided to show exactly this aspect of its work. For our experiment I chose the texture Magma in category Atmosphere- “Well, what can you do, she looks very attractive and suits my plan perfectly. We left-click on it and get into the Genetica workspace, where our texture is already loaded.

Our magma consists of three groups, each of which contains nodes 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 the base image (" Clouds"), the second group gives the desired color (" Color Clouds"), the third group adds a glow (" Add Glow"). The construction graph (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 only a form of organization of nodes; in themselves they do not carry any functionality and serve only convenience user.

At the click 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 (go up a level) you need to press the button Out, located at the bottom of the group.

Thus, by taking a closer look at each group and their contents, you can understand the internal logic of the program, the principles of creating textures in Genetica and how each of the nodes is used.

The first group creates a base image - for example, a node Noise generates a noise texture, which is then increased in contrast using a node Change BCL(Brightness, Contrast, Intensity), then node Atmosphere applies a lighting 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 using a brown gradient fill and mixed with the “base”, and as a result we get something that vaguely resembles magma.

In the third group, at the final stage of creating the magma texture, the image of our “something” is used twice - the first time to create the effect of glowing hot magma (Glow effect) by highlighting “hot” points by increasing the contrast and then blurring these “hot” points , and when the result of the blur is combined by the Combine node with the original image of “something like magma”. One more step (increasing contrast and brightness) - and voila! Before us is the most blazing hot magma - among other things, completely seamless (below are 2 copies of the same texture side by side, which allows us to evaluate the seamlessness of the texture).

Caution - it's hot!

It looks very nice, and most importantly, the result is obtained in a matter of minutes. Let's try to use the ability to create an animated texture and animate our magma - fortunately, this texture is perfect for this task. Let's try to make pulsating magma - for this we just need to animate the attribute 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 appears, allowing you to set the minimum and maximum values of the parameter during animation, select the profile and type of curve (sine wave, noise, wave, etc.), mix animation curves using layers, combine them, etc. Further. Using 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 - this can be done as in RAM computer, and immediately on HDD. 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 4-core old Q6600 worked at its best, which pleased me with the final rendering speed. And the result of our labors (although it was achieved, again, in just a minute or two) can be seen below.

The pulsating magma is so hot

And even that's 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

Writing this material took an order of magnitude longer than creating the textures themselves. Well, as a demonstration of what can be done using Genetica in just 10 minutes in Maya, see the following picture. Let me remind you that it took only 10 minutes- and in the scene only two textures from Genetica.

A lake of magma splashes in the depths of the cave

HDRI Environment Images in Genetica

Genetica does a great job of creating HDRI environment maps. So, for example, using the Make Environment node, any photo 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 a Caves with Magma, you can get the following environmental textures in HDR format:

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

Text and Logos

IN 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 you to create your own effect from scratch, but this will be a little more complicated. Text effects like the following can be achieved in a couple of minutes. In addition, over 300 styles can be applied to labels. .

Creating Seamless Textures from Photos in Genetica 3.6

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

In order not to delay the review even further, I will not demonstrate the process of creating seamless textures, but everyone can get acquainted with its essence using video demonstrations on the Spiral Graphics website.

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

And finally, about how Genetica copes with 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) others will be created - Height Map, Specular Map, various mask maps and others - depending on the algorithm by which the texture was created. Normal map and you can get it at any time by clicking the corresponding button in the menu bar. For example, this is what the Diffuse, Normal and Specular maps look like for a colored masonry texture:

Actually, let me complete the review of the program itself here, since there is no point in describing in detail all its capabilities - for this there is an official website where you can find galleries, a forum, libraries of free textures, and most importantly, tutorials 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 Help, then even faster. By the way, reading Help is a rule of good manners; that’s why they are written to be read. :)

Conclusion

Genetica from Spiral Graphics made a strong impression on me - it is quite easy to learn, but at the same time very powerful program that will probably radically change my approach to creating textures. In any case, it will definitely save a lot of time. The program in its field is revolutionary in many ways - although it is probably not entirely correct to talk about a 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 mostly worked only with realistic textures, but if I needed to create a texture for, say, a fantasy house or a stylized tree, this could become a problem. Genetica, at its core, is a generator of “artificial” textures (which, of course, is not a drawback) - which means that such textures can easily be turned into stylized, “cartoon” ones, or used in a not 100% photorealistic world - such as for example, like video games of certain genres.

Moreover, take, for example, the scene with the 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 should 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 example, of which there are actually a huge number. I probably won’t be mistaken if I say that in the case of Genetica, nothing limits the artist - only his creative ability, and technology will allow him to do, if not everything, then very, very much.

Turning again to the Spiral Graphics website, it is worth noting that in the section Gallery you can see who is already using Genetica in their projects and how. Here you will find cinema, television 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 in terms of saving development time and in terms of the result (quality of graphics and art). It's no secret that good art is expensive, and for an independent single developer or a small team, finding and hiring an artist who can create a “beautiful picture” can become a difficult task. There is no need to talk about non-commercial projects - for this kind of enthusiasts, Genetica can become manna from heaven.

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. Wall textures, ground surfaces, backgrounds, and other objects—the applications of Genetica can be extremely wide. So, for example, a great practical example would be the game Shattered Origins, the main tool for creating 2D graphics of which was Genetica.

In general, I will repeat once again: Genetica is a real storehouse of graphic resources, which will come in handy for everyone who works with 2D graphics in one way or another. An excellent program that can make an artist’s life much easier and his work much more efficient. There is nothing more to add to this, so let me take my leave. 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 new features and tools at the link below.

Banner, billboard or anything else, the background is used everywhere. The background is not only wallpaper, but also a colorful basis for the development of other designs. Backgrounds come in a variety of styles and colors and are used by designers everywhere. There are several types of background patterns, for example, dotted, checkered, striped etc.

Today, there are many graphic design services and tools that can greatly simplify the lives of designers. There are many online generators for color palettes, fonts, icons and other tools that are useful for designers working on various projects. Similarly, there are tools for creating background patterns and textures, which can be useful to every designer. These web applications are quite easy to use and are suitable even for beginners. So, get ready for this awesome list. 15 services for creating seamless background patterns and textures.

Stripe Generator

Stripe Generator is web tool for creating a seamless striped pattern. The tool offers many features for creating custom striped patterns on tiles using different sizes, colors and orientations. The service allows you to use up to 5 colors, as well as customize the background, background style, padding and shadows. Striped tiles are easy to edit, and you can check out a vast collection of designs created by other members.

BG Patterns

BG Patterns represents a modern tool for creating colorful patterns using various built-in shapes or custom ones. The tool offers for various themes such as flowers, parties, animals and geometric shapes. You can choose many colors for the background and shapes. It also includes rotating and scaling custom images, and adjusting overlap to accommodate multiple shapes. BG Patterns allows you to use images with a resolution higher than 300 × 300 pixels in PNG format and SVG.

Noise Texture Generator

Noise Texture Generator allows create a simple background texture using different colors and shades. The service allows you to set texture sizes, as well as opacity and density. There is a preview of the tile and the ability to download it instantly.

Repper Patterns

Repper Patterns is a powerful pattern creation tool for web, print and graphics projects. The service allows create patterns from custom pictures, which can be used for book covers, mugs, newspapers, flyers and for web design work such as banners, logos, website backgrounds. Repper Patterns is useful for beginners as it offers 14 built-in unique and beautiful styles.

Color Lovers

Color Lovers is a modern application that allows create different patterns using custom palettes, images and built-in styles. The service also offers Seamless Lite, a Flash tool for designing new patterns using various settings for creating and editing, such as adding shapes and text, rotating and transforming shapes, and much more.

Patternizer

Patternizer - advanced online pattern generation app. You can easily choose a design from several built-in vibrant styles, such as plaid and diamond patterns, and edit their position and colors. Patternizer allows you to create custom styles using a variety of stripes, setting width, rotation, transparency and background color.

Texture Generator

Texture Generator is tool for fast texture generation, using different color shades and built-in texture styles. The tool allows you to use different texture styles, such as earth, clouds, wood and checkered patterns. In it you can edit texture styles using the settings, generate images in JPG and PNG format.

Trianglify Generator

Free low poly background generator. It is possible to customize colors and gradients. Once configured, you can download the image in vector SVG format or raster version in PNG format.

Trianglify Background Generator

Another low poly background generator, but unlike the previous one, this one has a different texture and more interesting variations of color transitions.

Background Image Generator

Great service for generating backgrounds for a website. It has many texture options that can be painted in the color we need.

Plaid Maker

Plaid Maker – modern service for generating checkered patterns in different styles. You can choose a combination of colors to create a pattern or simply edit the built-in pattern. Checkered patterns can be used on a blog, for a website background, or as a background for an Android or Android application.

When creating 3d models, the question arises of how to color them, you can create a texture scan in the program in which we create the model, for example 3ds Max, apply textures in Photoshop, or another graphic editor, then apply a texture map to your model. But this is somewhat inconvenient, takes a long time, and in order to see the result you need to apply it to the model, and if the result is not satisfactory, redo it and apply it again to the model. And there is another option, to use special programs for this.

TOP programs for texturing (coloring) 3dmodels.

Autodesk Mudbox

Autodesk Mudbox is a professional program for texturing a 3D model. Mudbox is widely used in development computer games, films, as well as designers. The advantages of this program include an intuitive and simple interface, many different templates, brushes and tools that allow you to create realistic 3D objects and scenes. Using this program you can create bump maps, displacement maps and normal maps. Mudbox allows you to work with layers, mix them, set the transparency of individual layers, etc. Good compatibility with Photoshop programs, Softimage, Maya and 3ds Max. However, for all this variety you need to have a computer with a good video card, and in general system requirements Mudbox cannot be called small (at the time of writing, the current version of the program is Mudbox 2018).

3D Coat

3D Coat– this program is adapted for working with low-polygon 3D models. In its arsenal, 3D-Coat has a wide range of tools for texturing models, creating texture scans, importing, editing and exporting back a model with ready-made textures to a 3D editor. With all this, this software works quite quickly and is not demanding on computer resources. Unlike Mudbox, the 3D-Coat interface will be somewhat more complicated, despite the fact that there are slightly fewer possibilities.

The Foundry Marie

The Foundry Marie is a program developed by the New Zealand company Weta Digital specifically for texturing 3D models. You can see the work done with the help of The Foundry Mari in such films as “Avatar”, “District No. 9” and others. The program has a fairly flexible and customizable interface, which makes the workspace convenient for each user. Another disadvantage of this program is its particular demands on hardware. Considering the cost of The Foundry Mari (which is quite high), I believe that this is not the best choice, but since writing this article I take into account the opinions of other users (and some of them consider this software well suited for “3D coloring”) , Mari did not come third in this article.

ZBrush

ZBrush- one of the set professional programs for editing 3D models. A special feature of ZBrush is the ability to “clay sculpt”; this technology allows you to create high-poly 3D models. To make your work easier, the flexible interface allows you to customize the program as you see fit. If there are not enough brushes, you can download additional ones. Requirement for computer resources and lack of reference information are the main disadvantages of this software.

Substance Designer

Substance Designer is one of the most powerful programs in 3D modeling, but in turn it also has enormous resource requirements. Particle-based brushes allow you to draw whatever comes to your mind, the program is adapted to all existing game engines. Substance Designer allows you to create and edit the most complex textures (to some extent, one can even say that its possibilities in 3D modeling are limitless). You have to pay for high performance in 3D graphics, and this applies not only to the price of the program itself, but also to its demands on the video card.

Conclusion

Of all the programs listed, my choice fell on Autodesk program Mudbox, maybe someone will disagree with me (you can write in a comment), but I think this program is the most suitable for texturing 3D models, although if you don’t need to work with high-polygon ones, then 3D-Coat is also great.

A little about the program for creating seamless textures - Texture Maker.

With this program you can create high-quality textures for working in Photoshop, as well as for designing your website or further processing in other graphic editors.

Program features

Texture Maker allows you to create seamless textures both from source images and generate new ones. You can create a wide variety of textures - sky, brick, clouds, abstract, stones and many others. The program is equipped with scripts, tools, plugins that facilitate the process of generating seamless textures. You can create a form from an existing background:

convert the image into an outline:

or get a pseudofractal image:

create a seamless text texture:

As well as basic photo editing tools, such as cropping, editing the color tone of the texture (Color Adjustments), adjusting the lighting, or the angle of incidence of light (Shader), an area cloning tool similar to the Stamp tool in Photoshop (clone), painting with a brush (brushes), both regular and textured. With the texture brush you can create texture on any background very easily.

And also in the program you will find an arsenal of masks, gradients, stickers, etc.

The Texture Maker program interface is in English. However, despite this, it is not difficult to understand.

The interface consists of a work area, a command bar and a toolbar.

Translation of basic Texture Maker commands:

File – file,
Edit - editing,
Image – image,
Tool - tools,
Functions – functions,
Scripts - scripts,
Configurations – configurations,
Windows - windows,
Help – help.

You will find ready-made textures for the program through the menu commands –> Scriptes –> Textures.

Creating seamless textures from images

You can create a texture from a finished image as follows. Open the image in File –> Open…

Then apply the commands Tools -> Kaleidoscope. Move the polygon in the left window, and in the right window watch the resulting seamless texture results. Change the settings as you wish. When you like the result, click on the “render” button.

In the new window, click “Render” again

Save the result on your computer after rendering (image processing) by clicking the “save” button or make changes to the original image in the program by approving with the “accept” button.

We created such seamless textures using the Kaleidoscope tool.

You can also mix textures with each other using the Multitexture mixer tool, create matrices from several textures or colors using the Neighbor Texture Transitions tool, discretize (compile textures consisting of small sections of the original image) - the Tool Resamples command and many other tools for creating seamless texture.