September 2013 Giveaway - The Dirty Dozen: 12 Grungy Seamless Tiling Textures

The Dirty Dozen – 12 Seamless Textures

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Call it an Autumn Harvest, or a celebration of the season, or a Cornucopia of Digital Media. Or call that all a load of rubbish! Gary has created and assembled a dozen earthy, visually intricate textures that can be used from anything to putting a hide on an elephant (so how do you hide an elephant?), to tiling pearls, to banded stone. They’re fun, they’re free this month; download the zip archive, direct the Fill Gallery to where you saved the files, and remember: Pride doesn’t goeth before the Fall. Textures do.

Get'um 12 seamless tiling textures, great for filling in vegetation or other outdoorsy areas in your fantastic Xara drawing

Cool! Thanks Gary :)

Those look nice Gare. :-bd

Cheers Gary, Ace textures :salute:

Stygg

Probably three or four times a year I'll resort to giving away seamless tiling textures if I can't think of a brush, font, or template!

I'll try to keep to a theme in the future, such as wood, or just organic stuff such as stones, grass, and so on. In addition to Filter Factory, I've got some legacy programs that produce nice stuff.

By the way, the Monthly tutorial, written not video, is being coded by the Admin right now and should be up in a few hours. Rik Datta is the star this month, and I'm providing a simple tips and tricks tutorial.

My Best,
Gary

Cool! I look forward to the new tutorials :)

I downloaded the textures then went to the fill gallery to point to them. Got a indexing message, said ok, then got a message that there was nothing to index in the files — using Designer Pro X9 — I'm sure I'm doing something wrong ... and ideas?

Thanks in advance!

Hi Mickie—

I have an idea that your browser dialog isn't "in" the target folder, that you're one folder up and therefore the program isn't indexing the intended textures folder but instead one level up in your hard drive directory.

Because I've done that several times!

1. Pop the zip archive into a unique folder. In the screen snag I'm going to show in this post, I have a folder called "for Xara Xone" inside a folder on my Desktop named "NuTextures".

2. In Xara Designer 9 (and previous versions), open the Fill Gallery (Shift+F11, I think). Click Disc Fills on the bottom row of wide buttons.


3. Now, find your folder and then double-click it so you're inside the folder, as I'm showing in this screen snag.

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4. Click Add, say "yeah, yeah" to the box that tells you a phenomenal amount of hard disk space will be used to create thumbnails (like 200K. Guys? Lose this box!).

5. Now, the entry should appear on the Fill Gallery list. You double-click the folder icon to expand its contents, life is good.


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Let me know how (or if) this works for you, okay? Because if not, we have a larger problem.


My Best,

Gary

It does work but it seems as if there are no files in there as per your screenshot Gary [which is wrong and weird ... has always done this] and it then produces a pop-up saying that there is no index and do you want one.

John, you got the gist of my post in your first sentence..."It does work". I'm answering a member's question, Mickie asked if he was doing anything wrong and I'm troubleshooting here. The useless Index d'box I listed as step 4, above.

I tried this again and deleted the XaraInfo files, and did this in version 6 as well as version 9, and there are no files listed within the target folder in either version, man.


I guess I have a special copy of Xara, huh? :)

My Best,

Gary

Worked fine for me. I even went off "Automatic Mode" and followed the written steps just to check.

Thanks, Gary!

That's what I meant, I was just emphasizing the point about the "empty" target folder ... confused me years ago :D

Yeah. I think the first time I hooked up a disc folder I was left scratching my head as to why Xara wouldn't just list the folder contents without the ability to actually select individual files.

But this issue is the least of what leaves me scratching my head with XDP at times...

@ Mickie—


After a group consensus :) , hopefully you're all set now.

Let me know if there's further problems, because more Bouton textures are in the pipeline, and we don't want to have to call Mr. Roto-Rooter.

My Best,

Gary

OK — I think I figured it out. I tried, through the fills gallery, to download the new fills to Xara. It couldn't find them. So I write to you for advice and you tell me to do exactly what I thought I had done. I went back and tried it again, exactly as I had before (at least I thought so) and it worked fine. Not being exactly new to Xara I have to assume the key to all of this was asking for your advice. So thanks mister Gary "voodoo" man. :)

Mickie

There's a wide difference between voodoo and an "educated guess", Mickie.

You can't straight download 3rd party textures through the Fill Gallery, nor other 3rd part and local content.

You always need to have the files on your hard drive—because Xara content is on its own internet server—and then use "Disc Fills" to populate a new folder.

I'll show you some actual "voodoo" ("White Magic", actually), when it's needed in the future.

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My Best,

Gary

Thank you for those Gare. I downloaded them the other day and put them in my textures folder and also link to them in my fills gallery.

Cool, Larry! I predict that the Giveaway for Jan 2014 will also be some more textures.

Hey.

They're free!

:)


—Gare

Sorry if the "voodoo" term offends. I do find it interesting when you try to do something you've done before, and it doesn't work, ask for advice, do the same thing again and it works. Obviously, I missed something on my earlier try, but for the life of me I couldn't say what.

Love the fills. Thanks

Mickie

The phrase "voodoo" doesn't offend me at all, Mickie. It might to others in the forum, but I'll leave them to that.

I was just riffing on the idea that there might be something supernatural about the program, or me in general.

I am available, by the way, to perform parlor tricks at birthday parties, though.

One thing I think I've always shied away from is the use of the term "trick". Similarly, "The Mysteries of Program X", "secrets", anything that might suggest that knowledge of a program is reserved for a select few.

I've worked hard for over 20 years writing books that ell the reader that there are no secrets, just truths you haven't figured out yet. I've seen people sell books of "secrets" and feel they're cheating the audience who could have figured out the "secret" themselve if they'd stopped and reflected for a moment.

I'm sure you missed a step or were in the wrong folder.

And Mickie, please don't use the phrase "for the life of me".

Because I'll bet you don't mean it!

:)

-g