A common problem of 3D is the excessive regularity of textures: tile after tile after tile.
This quick technique helps to break that regularity with very little effort.
Small texture map sizes can be chosen for a variety of reasons: legacy textures, speed constraints, etc.
Small maps cannot be made to cover too large an area to avoid pixellation or blurry textures in our renderings.
Thus, excessive tiling is a common problem of 3D and is illustrated in the image below.
A small texture map will get tiled and the “excessive regularity” spoils the scene.
What if we create a similar texture, with stencil holes in it and map it in such a way that the repetitions are less apparent?
For this exercise, we are using the Stone-Geode texture that comes installed in Strata Design 3D. That is the texture used in the ground plane square.
Let’s clone the texture and copy-paste the color map in the Bump and Stencil channels. In the Stencil channel, let’s set the Color Depth to 1-bit. That will give us a Stencil map with holes in the texture.
Now it is a matter of mapping the textures on the square.
The original texture has a planar mapping and the texture size is 2×2 in.
The second texture, layered on the square, also has planar mapping, and the texture size is set to 3×3 in.
The tiling is far less apparent.
Let’s go for a third layer.
The same cloned texture, set to a different size.
The result is a far less apparent tiling.
To further break the tiling, we can also rotate the textures.
Choosing the mapping size
Here, the texture size has been in numbers that are prime between them: 3, 4 and 7.
If we do the tiling using numbers that are multiples of each other –say 2, 4 and 8– we’ll get more tiling than if we use numbers that are not.
When using 2,4 and 8 inches, we get repeating elements in our texture.
If we use numbers that are not multiples of each other, we get larger patterns.
Other objects
Of course, this technique is not restricted to grounds. We can also use it to layer textures and map any kind of object.
The image above shows spherical and cubic mapping.
I hope you find this useful.
