The BULB metal

Just the Bulb metal.. notice the varying reflection...

Advanced VFSU tutorials coming soon.

VFSU Advanced Vray tutorial coming soon!

How to create seamless texture in Photoshop

Repeating textures could never create realistic render. This obvious tiling is cause by textures that are not seamless. So the question is how to create seamless texture.

Here is how its done in Photoshop

Step 1: Load the texture

Step 2: Go to Filter and click other. Select Offset in the options.

Step 3: Adjust horizontal and vertical offset until you see the noticeable seam.
Notice by doing this. The edges of original texture both vertically and horizontally were shifted. 

Step 4: Use Patch tool. 

Select the seamed area and drag it to another area. 

Step 5: Use Clone stamp tool.

You can also use the clone stamp tool by taking some sample and stamping in on the areas you need to correct.

Thats it!

Below shows the corrected texture. The obvious seam was corrected.

Below shows the effect of the seamless texture

Download the materials I did.

Diffuse map

Bonus. I also did some displacement and bump map.

Displacement/bump map

Specular map.

Basic VRAY SketchUp tutorial Series 2 and 3

I published my second and third series at SketchUp Vray Resources. Check them out.

Part 2 Saving Rendering passes LINK HERE

Part 3 Focusing on Materials LINK HERE

Basic Vray Sketchup Tutorial Series

I am doing another series at SVR. This one is about Basic Vray SketchUp. I plan to lead the newbies in this tutorial. I believe the tips, notes that I am putting in this series is equally applicable to everyone..

So visit my tutorials in the other blog.

Segment 1: http://www.sketchupvrayresources.blogspot.com/2012/02/basic-vray-sketchup-tutorial-series-1.html

Tutorial: Modeling Frame using SketchUp and Foto-Sketcher

Today I was playing with the new Foto-Sketcher 2.25 and I must say I always like it. I decided to play with the realistic frame that you can do using this software and use them as projected texture in SKetchUp. Here is how I did it.

Step1: Foto-Sketcher frames

First I open the Foto-Sketcher and loaded some of the photos I wanted to turn into digital art and then chosen "Add Frame". In the Frame Parameters, you can create your different types of frames. Once you are happy save your file. You can also do your photos in batch..

Step 2: Sketchup Workflow

Create a rectangular face in SketchUp. Now import the jpg texture and tick "use as texture".

Drag the texture to the face. It will automatically apply as texture. Adjust the size of your face based on the proportion of your image.

Next you need to right click on the face, select texture and tick "projected"

Next you need to use the offset tool and place the offset lines to the inside of the frame and pictures. Use push pull tool to give them depths. (See below image)

For the outside frame, you can add an arc closed face. (See below image)

Select the outside lines and use "Follow me tool"

Here is the completed model
.

Now reapply the texture (click+alt) to apply to the whole model at once.

Here is the textured model.

Do as many as you can and you can use them in your scene. The advantage of baked textures is its realistic and quick to render. The image was rendered less than 10 minutes.