April 2014 Giveaway - Ten Free Textures and a Tutorial on how to Use Them

Using These Free Textures in a Novel Way

Attachment 101621

This month, Gary Bouton (online Gare) has created 10 all-new textures and a tutorial to top it off so you have more than new wallpaper for the effort of coming here! The designs are seamless, most of them are unlike anything you’ve seen before, and the tutorial gets into 3D, shading, perspective, hand-rendering imperfections, the Brightness Level tool, and what color we’re thinking of painting the dining room this summer.

So go get the textures, read a nifty tutorial and then come back here and show us how you use textures and suggest a tasty color for our dining room.

Thanks for the interesting and enlightening tutorial, Gary.
I rarely work with bitmap fills, and this taught me a lot about using levels and fitting fills to irregular rectangles.
Good Fun.
Bob.

Bob, I hope you had fun in the process, and your wooden block looks very, very excellent, man. I hope the overall experience has made you a little more amenable to using bitmaps once in a while. Vectors and bitmaps together are a powerhouse in graphics!

And Barb and I had a ball coding and getting your tutorial up. Ball o' fire! :)

And everyone? Don't forget that you can begin with an extruded cube that's at any angle and degree of perspective and use THAT to make an completely different-looking 3D cube. I think I put two wood textures in the ten-pack this month.



It's all good!

My Best,

Gary

Gare thanks for the topic this month, basically I neither the fun of bitmap manipulations so there were things to learn of course from it.

This scene did not mean to be horror like, but looking back to it a little bit can associate that :) For the axe used the same wood pattern but that object finally is an extrude

Attachment 101630

Attachment 101631

Maybe you need a chicken on the block too. ;))

I didn't create a chicken texture for this month's giveaway, Larry.

I've bee sure t put it on my To Do List,

-g

Thought I'd see how the cube looked with the oak1 fill.

Stygg

I like how you split the shadow between cast (the ground) and drop shadow (the brick wall).

You're doing great, stygg. Want to try more distressing (chips missing) from the cube? You know, I did drop it on hard concrete a few times before getting it into the house to photograph...


g

Cheers for comments Gary, I'll get my toolbox and apply the hammer and chisel technique to the chip later :D

Stygg

Hi everyone I hope you had a happy Easter! I finally had some time to play with the textures!

That is a very bizarre composition, Frances, and I LOVE it!

By the way, you can use some of the textures, past and present, to make spheres with textures that conform to the curvature of the sphere by:

1. Use the Mould tool in Encelope mode and use the Circular setting.

2. Then use the Live Effect>Deformation>Fisheye lens.

Attachment 101670

It seems to take two applications of distortion to actually get a pattern to bulge at the centre and recede at the edges.. File's attached.

My Best,

Gary



P.S. I didn't bother to make the check pattern into a bitmap, the but steps will work with a group of vectors or bitmaps images.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gare

That is a very bizarre composition, Frances, and I LOVE it!

---

Yes that scene sure makes the viewer to think, for example how that dung beetle rolled his ball to the top of the cube and after why disappeared in the fog without that? :) It is very imaginative, maybe later once that ball will fall but exactly bouncing on those stones away from the scene.. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gare

I didn't create a chicken texture for this month's giveaway, Larry.

I've bee sure t put it on my To Do List,

-g

---

I know, I was just saying, because of the ax in the block.

Larry, the day you take me seriously, is the day you'll get in unimaginable trouble.

:)

Save your imagination for more productive, trouble-free endeavors.

-g

I used a different technique to sphereize my mud ball. I applied the texture to a circle and then I used the Dent/Bump deformation filter. Slide the the dent/bump slider all the way to left (-100) to fully bump the texture. You can also apply the filter more than once to enhance the spherical effect. The attached example has had the filter applied twice. (and a bit of work with the eraser tool)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wizard509

Maybe you need a chicken on the block too. ;))

---

Finally decided to not go with the horror scenario, let's have an artist with that axe and so a chicken should be maybe from the block and not on :D

Considering the cube dimensions maybe in such size could come out? :)

Attachment 101684

Attachment 101685

Thats a very good wood carving csehz considering you only used an axe ;))

Stygg

Yes and this artist orderly even cleared all the shavings :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by csehz

Yes and this artist orderly even cleared all the shavings :D

---

I just borrowed that axe and chipped out a new asteroid :D
I used the Dent/Bump method Francis used with a couple of transparencies.

Stygg

That's really novel, stygg.

Now can you do the phases of this planetoid?

I think it deserves a name, too.

How about "Planet X" ? It's where all the weird artists come from.

-g

Well if it is the planet where weird artists come from Gary then it must be named Planet Stygg :D

Stygg

Well yes that is also quite bizarre that The Little Stygg Prince forms his planet with axe :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by csehz

Well yes that is also quite bizarre that The Little Stygg Prince forms his planet with axe :D

---

Well I couldn't use Thor's Hammer so I borrowed your axe :D

Attachment 101690

Frances sorry not having already axe, I had to borrow your scene and continue that Dung Beetle ball somewhere :D



Attachment 101704

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gare

Attachment 101690

---

Ok I abdicate from that planet, don't want to argue with that rough,tough looking hombre :eek:

Stygg

Nice one csehz, glad I wasn't sat along side that box, I would have got covered in sh.. you know what :D

Stygg

No such danger Stygg, this artist cleans the scene carefully and so not only the shavings :D

Using Gary's suggested fish eye perspective.
All in all were just another bump in the wall (Pink Floyd) :D Yes I know it's brick but bump suites the image :D

Stygg

@stygg Very nice effect, but...

Please don't use the second verse...."We don't need no education", or I'll feel rejected.


And then toss my Dark Side of the Moon cassette in the sink's garbage disposal.

Now THAT would be noisier than my old Fender BandMaster amp!

:)

-g

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gare

...
And then toss my Dark Side of the Moon cassette in the sink's garbage disposal.

:)

-g

---

What's a cassette?!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rik

What's a cassette?!

---

Oh, Rik, Rik, Rik. You must have been a vinyl guy and listened to FM in your car.

Here, I made this just for you. When the little wheels spun, music used to come out of your speakers.




-g

Hey. I like that bit of animation. And the music is 'Money' from one of the greatest albums ever - Dark Side of The Moon.

Yes. I have to admit that I was a vinyl guy.

A short story!
We were not married at the time, and Lynn wanted to buy 'Out of The Blue' by ELO, which had just been released.
So ,we went to this shop, and asked the shopkeeper if they had 'Out of the Blue'?
The shopkeeper went to the back of the store, returned after quite a while and said, "We don't seem to have any copies left, apart from this one which is blue!"
So, there I was looking at the album, 'Out of The Blue' in blue vinyl.
Lynn said, "I'm not sure I want that."
I couldn't help but shout, "YES YOU DO."

I'm sure we've still got it. Probably in the loft, somewhere!

Rik, no, the soundtrack is not "Money" from Pink Floyd's album. That would be copyright infringement. I recorded and mixed down the soundtrack, being careful not to exactly duplicate the production or the notes exactly.

PM me if you want a link to a really grand-scale homage.

-g

Gary: Relax and forget about any copyright infringements. I know a lawyer who can defend you from any lawsuits!
I would think that Pink Floyd would be flattered.

With the 'cassette' thing. I forgot to say that I still have a splicer that I used to use to join broken tape, and take off any unwanted tape.
It was a magical thing that allowed you to clamp down both sides of the tape, cut off the unwanted parts, and join it all together with some special adhesive tape that was included.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gare

being careful not to exactly duplicate the.... notes

---

in this you succeeded; did you go modal or is it still diatonic :)

I would like to reminisce reel to reel tape and class A output amplifiers, but it would be so off topic.... <sigh>

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by handrawn

in this you succeeded; did you go modal or is it still diatonic :)

---

Eeek! Pink Floyd did some awesome bending of tempos (such as "Money", which is in 7/8 as opposed to a standard 4/4 tempo), and Dave Gilmour had an entire board (about the size of a coffin) with his stomp boxes affixed to them and one was a ring modulator that severely screwed up notes. But aside from certain Middle Ages songs and Asian music which are composed around a modal scale, we'll stick to diatonic scales until someone sneaks in and rearranges the keys on my piano.

:)

Hey, I have a TEAC large mastering reel to reel, bought it in 1977 so I could bring home mixdowns from a buddy's professional music studio in New York City...and the sucker still works, never had a repair on it, and the darned lights on the VU meters still light up.

I wish they made cars like this.

-g

just thought you might be considering a miles davis or herbie hancock style improvisation :p

I remember the old TEAC stuff, back in the day it was benchmark standard, we had one in the studio theatre [that is theatre as in thespians not movies]

Here's a photo I took this morning of this still-working TEAC. The tapes from almost 40 years ago are in pretty bad condition, there's particle drifting which causes noise, and that can be negated a little by taking a sample of the pure noise and then using something like Sony Sound Forge to set up negative waves to cancel (or try to) the hiss and noise.

Attachment 101751

My nephew, who was 11 when he first saw it in our living room thought is was very cool, and asked what it did. He thought he'd seen one on a science fiction /TV rerun and that it might be part of a computer.


Okay, I'd like to steer back on topic. Because the brick texture proved to be useful, here's a 5-pack of different brick tiles, some for walls, some for bathroom floors, attached.

Attachment 101752

My Best,

Gary

Thanks for the brick tiles Gary, those are really nice tiles and just what I've been trying to get, saved me a search.

Stygg