Tom Arah shows you the best way to bring some texture into your design work.

Long-term readers will know that I am a big fan and keen advocate of the use of seamless bitmap textures. Such textures play an essential role in the production of 3D work, as we saw again last month, but they can also prove just as useful within 2D bitmap and vector environments...

The transformation that applying a simple bitmap tile can achieve is extraordinary, instantly bringing an image to creative life. For maximum impact from minimal effort, nothing comes close – so long as you have the right tile ready to apply.
But this is the problem. You can build up a library of naturalistic and abstract bitmaps downloaded from the web and accumulated from the sample sets provided with creative applications (the true texture fan will download the free trials of programs such as Piranesi, SketchUp and Real-Draw Pro for this reason alone), but however big your collection you can never have enough. Say you want to apply a wood texture to a rectangular plane to create a realistic floor. If you’re very lucky you might have the perfect tile ready to go but, more often than not, it will be in the ball park but not quite right for the image in hand.
It might just be a question of tweaking the colours, which can be done in a bitmap editor, but there’s more to a realistic wood texture than its colour: different species of tree are defined by their varying grains, knots, density and so on and, if you’re talking about floor boards or parquet, there’s the length, width, depth, colour and placement of planks to take into account too. Worse, you might have the perfect image but its resolution is fixed and so might not be up to the job in hand. If you need to use it beyond its built-in resolution – close to the camera in a 3D image or when outputting a large 2D print – instead of making the image by bringing it to believable life, the soft or pixelated texture lets the image down and reveals its artificiality.

With generated textures you can create any number of variations at any resolution.

Perhaps surprisingly, the solution is to create your tiles yourself as that way you can set the desired resolution from the start and take complete control of the end result. So how can you go about creating a bitmap texture? This is a subject I looked at some time ago (see rw118) when I uncovered two real gems. As both applications have developed a great deal since and now offer even more functionality and value, including some extraordinary free power, it’s well-worth giving them a second look.

Texture Maker

The first program is Texture Maker (free trial from www.texturemaker.com). When you hit the File > New command in Texture Maker you define your tile’s end resolution so make sure that it will be more than enough for its intended use – but not dramatically so as that will just waste memory resources and processing time. In most bitmap applications once you’d created the canvas you’d start applying paint to it, but in Texture Maker you instead apply a “function”. Each function is a formula which mathematically determines the values that the bitmap’s pixels should take.
To get to grips with functions it makes sense to start with the simplest and these are provided in the Basic category of Texture Maker’s Function Selection panel. With the default preset of the simplest Solid function selected, for example, you can choose one of the shapes from the Masks panel to apply a flat colour. So far so good, but things soon get more powerful – and complicated. Select the Glow Fill preset for example and you’ll see that various changes have been made to the numerous panel parameters – the colour has been set to white, the mask mode to fill, the mixing mode to add and the modify procedure to “invert if > 0”. Now if you click on the coloured shape you added previously it is given a white border that shades off to give a bevelled glow effect. Other presets with equally different end effects include Drop Shadow, Darken Binary, Fire Ellipse, Colorize and Structurize - and that’s all with the simplest Basic > Solid function. Texture Maker’s real power is to be found in its more advanced functions of which there are no less than 130!

Texture Maker is built on its wide range of functions

Thankfully all functions are divided into clear categories and most offers presets (over 700 in total) so that you can quickly get an idea of just what effects are possible. So how would you go about producing a texture such as our sample wooden floor? Most textures begin life with one of Texture Maker’s vast array of Generator functions which include options as diverse as Blobs, Bricks, Flagstones, Grid, Marble, Scales, Star Field, Veins and Water. For our purposes there are two separate Wood functions both of which make use of a customisable perlin noise and gradient mapping to create the necessary ring-based grain. In addition both functions include a seed value which changes randomly by default so that simply re-applying the function automatically creates a new variation.
Once you’re happy with your base texture, further realism can be added by locally introducing whorls using one of the Distortion functions applied with an elliptical mask and by adding a little grain using one of the Noise functions applied globally. Each Texture Maker function has been specially designed to ensure that its results are seamless but, if that’s not the case (say you’ve started with an existing image), then the various Make Seamless functions will help remove obvious seams. You can then further fine-tune your image with the various Colour functions and add some apparent depth with the Bump functions. Finally, to turn the wood texture into a plank-based floor, you’d generate a new texture with the Tile function in the Generator category and then combine the two either with the Texturize function in the catch-all Special category or with Texture Maker’s dedicated interactive Multitexture Mixer tool.

Texture Maker’s excellent support tools include Extraction…

All this core power was already there in the version I looked at three years ago, so what new functionality has been added in the current 3.1 release? Important advances include a more attractive and customisable interface, wider output options, better control over colour selection and gradient handling and support for variable alpha transparency. In addition there are significant new functions such as Colour > Synchronize which matches the colours in one texture to those in another.
By far the most important new functions are grouped into the entirely new Brush category. As the name implies these functions aren’t applied via the usual shape-based masks but by a customisable interactive brush. The difference to painting in a normal bitmap editor is that, in Texture Maker, as your brush stroke goes over the bottom of the image it reappears at the top so that the tile automatically remains seamless (expand the window and you’ll see the repeated effect). This means that, using the Brush > Paint function, you can quickly paint up new textures from scratch. In addition, Texture Maker 3.1 offers a Brush > Stickers function which acts as an image hose letting you create tiles from multiple external bitmaps, say spraying on leaves and flowers. Using the Brush > Retouch functions you can then darken, lighten, sharpen and so on all without any danger of creating noticeable seams. Most useful of all is the new Brush > Clone function which again automatically wraps around the image and so is perfect for interactively converting texture-based bitmaps into true seamless tiles.
The new Clone function makes the ideal partner for Texture Maker’s dedicated Extraction tool which lets you pull out areas of texture from existing photos complete with perspective correction and now brightness correction for each corner. Additional stand-out support tools include the Resampler which can be used to generate multiple variations from the current texture and the new Arithmetic Combiner for mixing textures based on mathematical expressions. The real jaw-dropper is the completely rewritten Genetic Texture Generator which automatically, and extremely rapidly, generates over 150 new abstract textures to choose from every time you open the dialog. The results are now even more colourful and attractive and, with 2,251,799,813,685,248 variations to call upon, it will be a while till you’ve exhausted the possibilities.

… and the extraordinary Genetic Texture Generator.

With its mix of comprehensive mathematical underpinning, interactive hands-on tools and exceptional support utilities, Texture Maker is unique. Which makes it all the more extraordinary that the Basic version which offers all this functionality when creating textures up to 2046 x 2046 in size now costs just $38. If that’s too much for you – come on it isn’t – then Tobias Reichert, the creative mastermind responsible for developing Texture Maker, even offers the core texture creation capabilities for free with a limit on output of 400 x 400. On his site he also provides an older freeware version of the Genetic Texture Generator and a dedicated texture viewing utility.
For those looking for more power, the Advanced license for Texture Maker ($80) increases the maximum output size to 2048 x 2048, supports an additional processor and can directly apply third-party Photoshop-compatible filters alongside Texture Maker’s own filter functions (these can also be automated with Texture Maker’s in-built scripting language). The Professional version ($126) supports up to 16 CPUs, renders up to a massive 16,384 x 16,384, enables batch processing and pressure-sensitive brush handling and can be called directly from Photoshop which makes it one of the most powerful and best value Photoshop plug-ins available. Finally, for $380, design studios can buy the Enterprise level version of Texture Maker 3.1 which can be run on any number of systems within a single site.
Hopefully it’s clear that I’m a fan but, despite its extraordinary processing power, Texture Maker 3.1 has a major drawback. While the program is ideal for creating artistic abstract textures from scratch and now naturalistic textures from existing photos, it’s not great at producing naturalistic textures from scratch – results such as our wooden flooring are recognisable but not truly believable. Luckily there’s another program that fills this gap admirably – Genetica from Spiral Graphics (free trial on the cover CD or available from www.spiralgraphics.biz)

Genetica

Like Texture Maker, Genetica is built upon mathematical functions but at first sight its implementation seems completely underpowered. To begin with, compared to Texture Maker’s hundreds of functions and presets, Genetica only offers a couple of dozen of the simplest. Moreover, while Texture Maker offers exhaustive control over every conceivable aspect of each function, Genetica provides just a few key parameters. And while Texture Maker lets you apply functions locally and interactively via masks and now even brushes, with Genetica all functions are automatically applied globally to the entire image.
What really makes Genetica different however, and is the secret of its ultimate success, is the way that its few simple functions are combined. Each function is treated as a “node” which you can drag onto the workspace to create a branched tree with each node taking an input or inputs which it process and then passes on to the next node in the chain. Effectively you are building up a procedural recipe to create your end texture.
This recipe-based approach has massive advantages. To begin with, the resolution of the image isn’t hard-wired on creation so you can always render your texture at the optimum resolution for your project, with higher resolutions providing ever greater detail. In addition each step of the texture creation process remains live so that you can go back to tweak an early parameter to generate an entirely new texture – endless variations on tap. Best of all, there’s no limit on the number of nodes that you can group and combine so that you can fine-tune and fine-tune until your end results are as good as they can possibly be. And the results possible with Genetica can be astonishingly realistic – so much so that it’s hard to believe that they were mathematically constructed rather than taken from a photo.

Genetica builds up its photorealistic textures as complex trees of simple functions

So how exactly would you go about producing our test wood texture with Genetica? Things start off well as one of the eight Generator functions happens to be Wooden Rings while another, Noise, can be used to add some grain and a third, Bricks and Boards, is designed to create regular tiling patterns. Throw in the Colorize function from the Filter category and surely that’s all that we need? Well that’s the basics but the results of these few nodes on their own would be woeful. To create a truly believable wooden floor actually requires dozens and dozens of nodes all chipping in their small contribution to the final end result.

New Lab Nodes make the Genetica approach much simpler

This overwhelming complexity was the clear drawback of Genetica when I looked at its first incarnation three years ago and essentially ruled out its use beyond generating variations of the hundred or so presets that it came with. Since then though a lot has changed, starting with the release of Genetica 2. This built on exactly the same core texture engine but came with a much wider and more useful range of 500 customisable presets divided into categories such as Bricks, Marble, Metal, Plant and Animal and offering everything from African ebony through to zebra skin.
Even better, Genetica 2 introduced an entirely new type of node called a Lab which offers much more powerful and flexible functionality along with massively greater control. Double click on a Wood Lab node, for example, and a new dialog appears in which you can quickly set the compression, density, and irregularity of your rings, the strength of density of knots and the colour and apparent depth of the ring pattern. Drag on a copy of the Cut & Tile Lab below it and you can quickly convert your wood texture into realistic floorboards or parquet by selecting a pattern and controlling distortion, material orientation, the colour variation of blocks, the depth and shape of the bevel, the shading of edges and the width, colour and even the grittiness of the mortar material. The end result is that, rather than requiring a complex tree of 50 or so function-based nodes to produce a photo-realistic, wooden floor texture, Genetica 2 requires just two connected labs.
Each Lab seems to offer masses of new functionality, but in fact behind the scenes it does so by combining the same core functions available in the first release of Genetica. This became apparent in Spiral Graphics’ more advanced Genetica Pro release which lets you break each Lab back into its component nodes for absolute control. This Pro release also adds two additional Labs for quickly building up atmospheric and fibre-based textures, such as hair and grass, and a batch processor so that you can quickly turn the customisable, resolution-independent GTX textures into ready-to-go JPEG thumbnails
Genetica Pro costs $399 compared to the $129 of the Standard version with a site-wide license available for $1999. This might sound a lot, especially when compared to the cut-price Texture Maker, but when you remember that Genetica lets you create truly believable photo-realistic textures and generate any number of variations and at any desired resolution it’s another bargain, particularly for professional 3D users. It’s these 3D users who also benefit most from the recent free upgrade to Genetica 2.5 which, alongside new noise types and floating views, adds comprehensive support for “effect maps”. These are automatically-generated grayscale versions of the components of a texture which can be used in the various channels of a 3D material (bump, specular, luminance and so on) to greatly boost the believability and quality of the end render.
Further generosity for all users was shown in two other recent free launches. With the excellent Genetica Viewer 2.5 you can download GTX files from the Spiral Graphics site and then render them, and any associated effect maps, at any resolution! There are already hundreds of samples available with more to come and for all textures the Viewer provides in-built control over colour and scale and even a random seed to automatically generate variations. For greater control you’ll need Genetica or Genetica Pro – unless you’re wanting to produce wood-based textures in which case Spiral Graphics’ free Wood Workshop combines the power of both Genetica’s Wood and Cut & Tile Labs and over 120 presets to let you create a vast array of completely customisable textures.
In their different ways Texture Maker and Genetica are two of the most interesting and powerful creative applications available at any price. Thankfully, rather than simply cashing in on them, their respective developers are instead doing their best to spread that power as widely as possible. Once you’re bitten by the texture bug, you want others to be too.