Making Textures with Project Dogwaffle
for use in 3D Rendering & Animation


more:   part 1 / part 2 / next: part 3 / part 4 + 5
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Part 2 - Working with Existing Textures

We'll use a different approach now for making new textures: modify existing ones.


The Podium

For example, select the podium, then open the material editor.
Right-click on the color channel mini-icon and select one of the procedural shaders, such as a marble texture.
                
Resize the shader preview window to make it much larger, and click the preview area to switch to the plain square display mode. Set the parameters as desired if there are any (e.g. detail and colors).

click to enlarge >>>
The Clipboard and Dogwaffle

What we are doing now is essentially to transfer a copy of the image from TrueSpace into Dogwaffle, through the Clipboard, without saving the image to file.

Use the PrintScreen key on your keyboard. Windows will grab a copy of the screen image and copy it to the Clipboard.
Then, switch back to Dogwaffle. Select the menu:

Brush > Clipboard > Paste from Clipboard
This will have loaded the image from Clipboard into the brush (a custom brush with a very large image as captured by the printScreen key).

We can now paint with that brush, or just use a single click on the main buffer to stomp the brush there. Make sure the opacity slider is at the maximum value. (Opacity slider in Tools panel)
In this example the clipboard image is larger than the texture we wanted. It contains window background and decorations from TrueSpace. We don't want that part in the Dogwaffle buffer.

You can use the rectangular selection tool (second row of mini icons from top, second icon from left)
selection tools
to select the desired area containing the texture without the rest of the screen captured image. Then Invert the alpha to select the outside of the area:

menu: Alpha > Invert Alpha

and then clear the selected area to white by right-clicking on the erase icon and selecting the corresponding option.

click to enlarge >>>

We should now have the desired texture, surrounded by some amount of white space depending on the specifics of the texture and how big the main buffer was relative to the brush etc...

When done, be sure to clear the Alpha (from the Alpha menu).




Magic Wand Selection

We can use the Magic Wand selection tool to select and eliminate the whitespace around the texture. Click the magic wand tool. Then click on the white border area in the image.
You will see the 'marching ants' highlights of the selected areas.
We want to select the texture, i.e. anything other than the current selection of the outside white area. To that effect we can simply Invert the Alpha selection:

menu:  Alpha > Invert alpha
With the proper selection of the interior textured area in effect, crop to that selection:

menu:  Buffer > Crop to Selection
Once again, clear the Alpha when done.

menu:  Buffer > Clear alpha

Next we will make the buffer much lager and replicate (tile) the current texture in it several times. We will want to first make the texture seamless.
Making the brush Seamless

In v2 there's a tool in the Brush menu to make the image of the brush seamless. (in a recent update patch there's also a new seamless tool that can work from the image in the buffer).

Let's copy the image from the buffer into the brush. By default, the entire buffer is selected, even if no marching ants are showing a selection of the whole buffer. 

Use Control+C or the menu item at the top of the Brush menu.

Create a new buffer. This is the buffer into which we will tile the texture after we turn it seamless in the brush
Enter the new size. For example: 2048 pixels for width and height. The texture which is in the brush image will fit in there several times.
In the Brush menu, select 'Make seamless...'. (This is not available in the free version 1.2 of Dogwaffle)
Use the default trim range. Click OK.
We're almost ready to tile the image from the brush. We will use the fill tool, with a special mode in which the fill pattern is coming from the custom brush.

re-open the Gradient tool (shortcut: "p" )

Click the second icon from right  in the top row.
click to enlarge >>>
Now click the Fill tool (paint can) near the upper right corner of the Tools panel.
Then click in the main buffer area.

The fill tool will use the image from the current custom brush.

Note that the fill tool also uses the opacity value, set by the slider in the Tools panel. Make sure it's at the maximum value.

click to enlarge >>>
You may want to reduce the intensity of the effect.  Use the fader like before:

menu:  Filter > fade last action
Save this texture. This is the texture we've created. A 2048x2048 texture map - a variant from a texture which started as a procedural texture in TrueSpace.

click to enlarge and save >>>

more:   part 1 / top / next: part 3 / part 4 + 5