Seamless pattern maker?

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Jmx
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Seamless pattern maker?

Postby Jmx » Fri Sep 28, 2012 6:41 pm

Hi,

Does anyone know if there's anything in the work to make seamless patterns easy?
I like the ease of Inkscape and use it as much as possible to make graphic and textures for Blender rather than doing it in pixel based programs so i can return and rescale and modify when needed.
But one thing that's very hard to do is seamless pattern textures. It would be such a great thing to have a tool for these things inside Inkscape.

Looking at this tutorial makes me jealous... imagine to have some kind of tool like this in Inkscape.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bgpIGEEEXs

Cheers

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brynn
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Re: Seamless pattern maker?

Postby brynn » Sat Sep 29, 2012 12:10 pm

I think the new renderer expected in version 0.49, and already available in development builds, will improve, if not eliminate the seam between tiles. Since I haven't tried the dev 0.49, I'm not sure how much it will improve it. But that's the story I've heard :D

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druban
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Re: Seamless pattern maker?

Postby druban » Sat Sep 29, 2012 3:39 pm

I don't think that's what OP means by 'seamless,' Brynn.
This might be a beginning ... In some ways tiling is easier in a vector program, depending on whether your pattern is made up of lots of objects (easy) or a texture (not so).
Your mind is what you think it is.

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brynn
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Re: Seamless pattern maker?

Postby brynn » Sun Sep 30, 2012 5:12 am

I guess I don't understand what kind of "seams" the op means. I do understand tiling, and Inkscape does have Tiled Clones (Edit menu > Clones > ...). It's not quite as easy to use as shown in the op's link, but I guess it depends on your perspective. The Illustrator technique shown in the video seems more visual, while Tiled Clones seems more mathematical.

Jmx
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Re: Seamless pattern maker?

Postby Jmx » Sun Sep 30, 2012 10:25 am

Thanks for the replies.

What i would like to have is an easier way to produce images that are tilable for using as 3D textures and large background images.
In the Illustrator video they make seamless patterns visually very easy and can change graphic around and get instant view of how their patterns will look.

Like this pattern, hard to make something like that tilable easy. It can be tiled to a huge background image or used as a texture for a wall in Blender.

Image

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druban
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Re: Seamless pattern maker?

Postby druban » Sun Sep 30, 2012 9:16 pm

Did you take a look at the link I provided to the tiling tutorial (vine)?
The tile you showed would be easy enough to poduce in Inkscape; the symmetry is PMM "Reflection and reflection".
Essentially this: (I have highlighted the tile itself and faded the clones for clarity).
rect838.png
rect838.png (5.3 KiB) Viewed 10822 times
Your mind is what you think it is.

Jmx
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Re: Seamless pattern maker?

Postby Jmx » Mon Oct 01, 2012 10:44 pm

Thanks druban,

But i don't see how this will be easy as in helping me doing for example an ornament like pattern like my previous posted image?
The tiled clones just makes copies of objects, it doesn't help put objects that are going outside the border to its corresponding place in the work area to keep things tilable.
If you follow this tutorial you are in for quite some work and it's just simple squares rotated, the above ornament image or other more complexed graphics like these would be hard wouldn't it?

In the first video link they seem to be able to move things around, rescale, add more objects, adjust everything and so on and it won't break the tiling.
Ok i know it's Illustrator $$$$$ but it would be fantastic to have something "like" than in Inkscape.
Imagine a split view, one with your graphic you work on and the other showing tiled preview.
And if you for an example move an object outside a border it should it should automatically turn up in the corresponding reflected corner so it is perfectly tilable.
Maybe this is way to much to dream for... but still, would be fantastic to have.

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druban
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Re: Seamless pattern maker?

Postby druban » Tue Oct 02, 2012 5:54 am

Sorry about your disappointment! It's one thing to be able to tell you that Inkscape can achieve the same - or better - result as AI but I can't assure you that the method and the tools and windows used used will look the same.
Jmx wrote:But i don't see how this will be easy as in helping me doing for example an ornament like pattern like my previous posted image?

Naturally I didn't want to recreate the ornament you posted, so I just showed 3 elements that take the place of the more elaborate drawing - red background (gray in your pic), blue triangle (black ornament) and yellow triangle (white ornament) that make up the minimal tile.
If you followed the vine tutorial, it would explain that drawing inside a tiled group will reproduce that drawing throughout as you describe.... But not in the same way as Illustrator, natch.
Inkscape does have duplicate windows so you can have two views as you mentioned.
The free vector patterns that you linked to - they seem to be simply several elements arranged randomly (but tastefully) in a rectangular frame, with a wraparound so objects getting cut off on one side reappear on the other. This is how raster programs tile things... In vector tiling as inkscape does the object is not in two parts that might show a seam but is just repeated at the right interval. You might usefully think of raster tiling as always in rectangular units, and of vector tiling as interlocking irregularly shaped tiles - impossible to do any other way....
sorry to go on with stuff that's probably of no use to you.
Your mind is what you think it is.

Jmx
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Re: Seamless pattern maker?

Postby Jmx » Tue Oct 02, 2012 10:37 pm

druban, thanks for explaning.

I did "try" to follow that (vine) tutorial but i did it all wrong first time.
Now i re did it and things went much better and in the direction i was hoping for :P
Ok It's not as fast n easy as it looks in the Illustrator video but still quite good when you know how to use it.

I made a quick test pattern and works fine!

tiles.jpg
tiles.jpg (79.48 KiB) Viewed 10707 times

bobdow
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Re: Seamless pattern maker?

Postby bobdow » Tue Dec 11, 2012 9:23 am

Hi,

I have been using Seamless Studio on my Mac, and have used Repper as well.

Seamless Studio makes SVG files and can import SVG files

http://www.colourlovers.com/seamless-studio

Repper makes seamless tiles out of jpegs and can make tiffs that look great if you start with a high resolution source

http://repperpatterns.com

If you make patterns for a living or really want to crank out some Illustrator patterns, Artlandia Symmetry Works is very good.

http://www.artlandia.com/products/SymmetryWorks/


- bob


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