CompuServe Thread

FWIW, James, I find SXP's a great way to do this sort of thing. Kind of gets rid of the old tiling problems right off the bat. I think I used Speckle or Noise to get some pretty convincing asphalt. If you don't have the SXPs, you might try the old standard granite.cel as a bump map. I believe it tiles quite well. -Alan Iglesias

/* Is there a way to make a texture map, such as "asphalt", smaller on an object without creating a bunch of duplicate tiles? My parking lot looks strange with a bunch of similar looking squares all over it. If I make the map… */ Lots of ways to do this if you have Animator Pro. -dave

James, Basically what you need is to make the map tileable. There is a great technique covered in Inside 3D Studio that will show you exactly how to do it. If you don't have it, it basically involves taking a piece of the top edge flipping it 180 degrees vertically and pasting it over the bottom edge. You then use a smudge tool or something and blend the area where the pasted piece was ovelayed. You do the same thing with bringing the right side over to the left. It's actually a pretty simple operation and you should be able to figure it out even with my lame explanation. Good luck.

The problem with asphalt.jpg isn't that it doesn't tile – it does. THe problem is that the pattern has identifiable elements to it and has slightly different shading that is quite evident when it tiles. There aren't any "seams" but the pattern is noticable. So, to eliminate it you need to bring it into a paint program, record its original size, tile it, cut and paste irregular sections all over the place like mad until the field looks very average to your eye. Cut out a section (anywhere) the size of the original and tile it again to see how well you did, and keep doing it until it looks right. It's not that bad – I happened to have done it to this very bitmap last month in about 15 minutes total. – Phil