Presumebly most of you know about making you own materials. I started this about the same time as I got my first copy of SkecthUp (7 I think it was?) Any way, if you have a camera (or come to that a smartphone) and access to a photo editing program such as PhotoShop (or I use Pixelater (from Apps Store) and Affinity Photo (again from Apps Store…£35 I seem to remember?)) You can manipulate any shot of a wall, pattern or roof styles and tiles and Strech them in Distort tool (on PhotoShop) and make sure to clone the edges of two sides - this is normally at the top and the lefthand side - so that when you “import” them onto a model , the pattern lines up correctly and there is no dark edge or mismatch. Just make sure that the subject that you photographing is well lit and flaton to your camera/smartphone. You can save them as jpegs/png/or pdf’s, the jpegs are the best in my experience, as they accept shadows and hold thier resolution better at a distance. (pdf’s don’t always show or accept shadows).
Gimp is free, and handles the process pretty well for most of what I work with.
Good point AirWindSolar!
I make a lot of wood grain materials from full length images of boards, typically 8 to 14 feet long and 3 to 6 boards from a single log, and I’ve found that PaintDOTNet is more than powerful enough for my use. It’s free and opens instantly when I need it. I can open it, edit an image and save it before PhotoShop Elephants even gets open.
I use Krita wich is also free, and when I open the image I press W and immediatelly see it tiling on screen to the infinite.
Then it’s just the matter of a 5 minute cloning.
However, I’d recommend you take some time cancelling shadows and light balance by duplicating the original layer, bluring the duplicate, greyscaling it, and applying a grain extract blending mode to the new, blurred and greyedo out layer.
Many thanks guys! Will look at these apps…