Modeling normal maps

Im modeling normal maps on a brick wall but the image that I’m using is not even with the rest of the model, I’d try xrepeat and yrepeat and that doesn’t work,
here is a better look

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Looks like the map you’re using isn’t tilable. There are tools in the Gimp or Photoshop you can use to modify the map to make it tilable. There are tutorials “out there” (no links, you’ll have to google) but the basic idea is to use ‘offset’ to move the seam at the edge of the image into the middle, then use the clone or stamp or cut and paste areas or painting tools to get rid of the seam.

Its a bit of work, and isn’t as effective on things such as bricks, works better on grunge and random textures.

Another thing people do is hide the seam in the render somehow: move it around to the back, attach a downspout or conduit to the column in front of it, plant a tree or grow some ivy on top of it, light your scene so it’s in the shadows… lots of creative ways to go.

Finally, wizard has a new procedural texture script that lets you create bricks procedurally.

Normal maps are not modeled, the correct workflow would be modeling the details in multires and extract the normal map from there, but, at the moment is not possible to get tangent normal maps you have to use an external software. More info on blender wiki.

For this case instead of normal maps i would use bump or displacement, depending on what are you looking for.

Thanks for the help guys - so you’re saying I should play with the file and make it tilable, is that the same as duplicating the image and make the background wider to cover more space on the model? :confused:

Nope. In Gimp, x is sideways and y is up and down (2d program.) Suppose you have a 200 x 200 image of bricks. The edges don’t match up: specifically, the pixels on x=1 don’t match the pixels on x=200. So it’s not tileable. You put copies of the image side by side, x=200 in one image is next to x=1 in the following image, and they don’t match.

Now, the Gimp has a tool called offset, which takes the image and slides it over so many pixels. Take the 200 x 200 brick image, and give it an offset in the x direction of 100. Now the image starts at x=100, goes to x=200 (in the middle of the image) followed by x=1 through x=99. Now when you put this new offset image side by side with itself, the right edge is x=99 and the left edge of the copy next to it is x=100! It tiles!

Unfortunately, we still have that x=200/x=1 seam, only now its in the middle of the image.

Fortunately, the Gimp gives us a lot of tools we can use to deal with a seam in the middle of an image. We can cut and paste complete bricks over the seam. We can use the clone tool to stamp new bricks over the seam. We can simply paint and smudge over the seam. In any event, the seam is in the middle, now, where we can do something about it, instead of at the edge, where we can’t.

Gimp also has a script that can do this for you automatically. It’s under Filters->Map->Make Seamless. Works good for grunge type images but I don’t know how well it would work for something like bricks.

Thanx for the help guys, I had tried the different ways, and I think depending of the image you can play around with it, I mean duplicate the image different times match the faces and make one single texture image :confused:

You could also try googling “tilable texture brick” or variations and see what’s already out there. There are also some texture creation programs that do bricks.

Yeah!! I found this website that has good ones, but they charge about 300$ for a set, thats crazy you know - but like you said - just get down with some graphics program like gimp, photoshop or any other, and I think everything depends on the skills because you can do all that with gimp or photoshop of course if you have the time. Anyways now I have a better idea how tilable images work, thanks a lot guys. :cool:

Heres a quick example of what I mean!
from this -------------------------------------------------------> to this one

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