Fabric from Photos

Creating fabric for textures can become a tedious job and starting from scratch sometimes is just too much. Luckily, Paint Shop Pro has an Effect that allows you create lots of different textures from one image or photo. It is a Reflection Effect and is called Pattern. It's not the only one you can use for fabrics but it's the one we'll cover here.

Experimentation with the Pattern Effect should give you many textures and even more ideas for textures.

I chose the photo below because of the colors.

Go to Effects>Reflection Effects>Pattern

The settings above give me the texture below. A neat side effect of this is that the textures are seamless automatically so you don't have to do any fiddling with them if you need them to be seamless.

The above texture would be great for a medieval type outfit.

Changing the Scale Factor and Number of Rows and Columns produces something similar.

Changing the offsets and shift moves the area that PSP takes it's pattern from.

Below is produces from the settings above.

Ok, but let's get something we need. I want a fabric for a skirt. I want a small pattern and I want it more geometric.

I applied the settings above to obtain the texture below from the original photo.

I'm going to be using this texture in Poser and I'd like to have a bump map for it. Using a duplicate of the image above (Go to Window>Duplicate) I go to Effects>Textures>Rough Leather and apply the settings below.

After clicking ok, I need to make the image grey scale.

I now have the fabric for my skirt and a bump map to go with it.

After opening the map for the skirt in Paint Shop Pro and filling it with the fabric using the flood fill tool, I create a duplicate of the map and fill it with the bump map image. After saving both, they can now be applied to my skirt in Poser.

Below is a render of the skirt with the fabric and bump map we just created.

This technique takes just minutes and creates many different looking textures from one image. It is only one way to quickly create fabrics for texturing clothing. Have fun!

Copyright Vikki Olds, All Rights Reserved