Making hand drawn seamless tiles
Loopysue
ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
Every now and then I get asked how I make the textures - the seamless bitmap tiles I add to new styles.
For a long time now its been the same answer, and one that I've been increasingly troubled about giving because the main node-driven procedural texture generating software I've been using for the past 5 years now became abandonware probably about 2 years ago and shouldn't really be recommended because the image library is no longer available - and while you can add your own photos the image library is quite a big part of it.
The second bit of software I use is Krita, which is a free bitmap app that has a wraparound mode that allows you to hand draw seamless tiles. However, Krita brushes are remarkably complicated to create, so you tend to get a bit stuck with the default brushes (as I do), or have to buy brushes made by other artists which might not be what you want.
However, today I purchased the latest version of Artrage (Artrage Vitae) and discovered you can now hand draw seamless tiles by activating the two tile options available under the Advanced tab of the Canvas Settings dialog, from the View menu. I've told you these details because it took me 2 hours of really intensive googling to find out how to activate it. Apart from this little difficulty, once you've found it making hand painted seamless tiles in Artrage is a lot easier than in Krita - mainly because Artrage is better designed for casual use as a painting app and doesn't have a seriously complicated brush engine.
So here is a 5 minute example I did earlier with the tiling switched off.
With left and right tile activated...
And with top and bottom tile activated.
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Comments
I've told you these details because it took me 2 hours of really intensive googling to find out how to activate it.
This reminds me of the first time I opened GIMP - OK, I have the three (what? why?) windows open; NOW what do I do? And which of the three windows do I do what in?
Glad you've managed to source a better program for creating seamless textures though. I know this is something that keeps on coming back time after time for quite a number of folks here.
That reminds me to watch a tutorial of my most used art tool (that I still didn't master as far as I want), so I can try this.
Thank you, that's really interesting!
The seamless tile aspect is only available in the latest version, Vitae. It's not a free app, but it seems to be on sale at the moment. Not sure for how much longer.