A seamless texture question

[Eric Holbrook]

I have an interesting problem that I'm hoping to solve.

I have a great seamless texture I made of some dirt and grass that's about 3000x3000 pixels. Works great.

However, even at that res and if the camera is far enough away from the ground, there's an obvious "pattern" type feel to it when seen from a distance.

I was thinking that perhaps one way to overcome this was to throw another mixed layer on top of it, same material, but offset a bit and rotated, and showing through in pockets with a fractal map.

And of course, as I type... I think I just solved my problem and am going to give it a try now...

[Shawn Driscoll]

Seamless textures fool the eye once. But a grid soon reveals itself.
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[Eric Holbrook]

Basically my solution was to use two layers of the same seamless bitmap/photo, but rotate the one above about 57 degrees, and create and alpha channel so it shows through (or on top) in large patches.

This effectively breaks up the pattern effect. Gives it a totally random feel to it.

[Eric Holbrook]

Kind of hard to see but the entire ground cover is a photo I took this morning

[Shawn Driscoll]

Very clever, Mr. Bond.
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http://www.youtube.com/user/shawndriscollcg

[Blaine Dickman]

Glad I read this Great idea. We all deal with that I think.

[Eric Holbrook]

Yep, it actually works quite well. Just need to really rotate that 2nd identical material layer 45 degrees or more.

Then create an alpha map for it, but in hard edge patches (soft edge tends to make them blend too fuzzy).

The size of the patch effect should be just big enough to break up that grid feel from the underneath layer. Really depends on scene and material size.

Pretty easy though and looks great.

[Bruno Memain]

Or you can use the very old "Cycling" effect, form the effects tab of the material editor.

[Eric Holbrook]

Cycling distorts the bitmap.

This method keeps them clean.