Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Transforming images into textures
Sometimes, Lumion doesn't have what we need in terms of materials. In some
projects, it is common for the client to provide a document where he or she chooses
the types of materials that need to be used in the building. And in some situations,
even the manufacturer is mentioned, giving us the responsibility to create a Lumion
project close to the reality.
There are some places on the Internet where we can find good images that can be
used, and maybe here we can find what we need:
• Flickr
• Stock.xchg
• iStockphoto
• deviantART
• CGTextures (probably one of the best ones)
Some of these websites are paid, some provide some free textures, and others have
a limit of textures to be downloaded daily. So, the best option is to start creating
your own library using a camera, and you don't need a very expensive camera to
take some photos to be used later. Companies that sell construction materials often
provide free samples that can be used to create excellent textures.
Irrespective of whether you are using images from your camera or a website, we
still need image-editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop, which is a paid or free
software like Gimp.
We need this software not only to correct some imperfections in the image, but also
to create seamless textures. What they are and how to create them is what we will see
in the next section.
Creating seamless textures
Firstly, we need to understand what a seamless texture is. A
seamless texture
is
an image that can be placed side by side with itself without creating a noticeable
boundary between the two copies. Seamless textures are relatively easy to make,
but making them look less repetitive is something else and this process can, in some
situations, be time-consuming. This is one of the reasons why CGTextures is such
a great place to look for images, because usually we can download tiled textures,
which are the same as seamless textures. Although this topic is not a texturing
topic, in the next section, we will have a quick overview of the basic steps to create
a seamless texture both in Photoshop and Gimp, but you need to have at least some
basic notions of where the tools are and what they do.
