Programs. Programs for creating continuous textures Program for painting textures for games

It is an indispensable tool for creating textures, in which you can create in seconds from normal maps to seamless textures, as well as Displacement, Specular.

The program is distributed in two versions: one as a Photoshop plug-in, and the other as a separate program with its own original interface. Further, the review will focus on the second option.

The program interface is simple and intuitive: it is not difficult to figure out all the menus and sliders. In literally five minutes you can get comfortable with this program, but there are also a couple of tricky features that I would like to tell you about.


And so let's get started.

The program interface is divided into two main working parts:

Texture 3D Material

Texture is the generator and main area for working with textures.

3D material - Displacement, Normals map, Specular maps are created on this tab. In order, how the texture generator works.

Click on the New Texture tab


Specify texture resolution! (For beginners, I remind you that textures must be multiples of two 128 ... 256 ... 512 ... 1024 ... 2048)!


Click Add Seed from file


And add textures to generate. They will be displayed horizontally and participate in the formation of the new texture. (You can upload one or two images to generate). And if necessary, you can select those areas that you do not want to participate in the generation.


Click on the button

And you should get a mixture of our two textures.


If suddenly you are not satisfied with the texture, then you can press the Generate button again. In principle, this manipulation can be repeated until you are satisfied with the result. This is how you can prepare a seamless texture in minutes. Without resorting to photoshop.

Here is the result of our manipulation.


Long ago I had an idea to create a list of useful programswhich can help you design. Some of them are simply irreplaceable for game creator, and some only complement and simplify life.
I have not found a universal list on the Internet, so I ask:

P.S. I did not write down the versions of the programs, somehow you yourself will figure out which version you like best.
Links do not always lead to file downloads.

To start: List of game engines

3D

  • Zbrush -program for three-dimensional modeling with simulation of "sculpting" of the 3d model
  • Mudbox -like Zbrush, only from Autodesk. Both are good in their own way.
  • Autodesk 3ds Max- everything is clear. Creation of 3D graphics, animation, etc.
  • Maya- ideal for creating animations. Also contains everything both for modeling and even for some simulations (liquids, smokes, flames, well, etc.)
  • Blender -a nice plus is that it's free, unlike Maya and 3ds Max. It also develops as an independent game (!) Engine.
  • TopoGun - a retopology program designed to build a low-poly model on a high-poly surface scanned with a 3D scanner or created in the Zbrush, Mudbox environment, and bake textures.
  • Keyshot -tool for interactive visualization of 3D scenes and models
  • Headus UVLayout -a program for fast and high-quality UV mapping on 3D models (used by many professionals (for example Gnomon) in the games and visual effects industry)
  • Unfold3D- an independent program for the automatic creation of texture coordinates for curved surfaces
  • World machine - a good generator of natural landscapes. The output gives a mesh, texture, heightmap,
  • Terragen -landscape generator. Creates photorealistic landscapes .
  • Vue- 3D modeling and rendering program
  • Speed \u200b\u200btree modeler -generator of various trees. Useful for everyone
  • Makehuman- program for generating humanoid 3d models
  • Marmoset Toolbag -a small, convenient and full-fledged material editor and tool for quickly presenting three-dimensional models in real time.
  • Marvelous designer -program for modeling and design of clothes. Offers built-in real-time fabric simulation and rendering engines, export functionality in common formats (Collada, OBJ / MTL).

2D

  • Adobe Photoshop -i personally paint in Photoshop, I am much more comfortable there, but this is a matter of taste.
  • Pixplant -a tool for creating seamless textures from photos
  • CorelDraw -a graphic editor, as for me, is more suitable for art art. Color mixing is good.
  • nDo2- plugin for Photoshop. Allows you to create displacement and shadow maps (ambient occlusion) in Photoshop using hand drawing tools. In addition, you can view a 3D preview of the resulting maps.
  • Alchemyis a very good sketching tool. It is possible to enable both horizontal and vertical symmetry.
  • ArtRage Studio -also an interesting program for drawing. For sketches / concepts, that's it.
  • Sketchbook pro(also available for tablets) - drawing from Autodesk. Good for all kinds of sketches
  • Substance Designer- a powerful program that is designed to create, edit and process complex textures
  • Filter forge - program and high quality plug-in for Photoshop with 4100 visual effects, 4400 textures. It also allows you to create your own filters, textures, effects, distortions.
  • xNormal -creating normal maps from Color Map.
  • CrazyBump- texture generator (displacement, normal, occlusion, and specmaps based on 2D images)
  • Knald -analogue of CrazyBump
  • Paint.NET - free bitmap graphics editor
  • Gimp - a raster graphics editor, a program for creating and processing raster graphics and partial support for working with vector graphics.
  • Inkscape- vector graphics editor, convenient for creating both artistic and technical illustrations
  • GraphicsGale - a free program focused on creating pixel art, including animated
  • Adobe Flash -adobe's multimedia platform for creating web applications or multimedia presentations

Voxel Editors | Voxel editors


Sound | Sound

  • is a free multi-platform audio editor for sound files, focused on working with multiple tracks.
  • GoldWaveis a pretty powerful audio editor. In terms of its functionality, it can compete with such well-known programs as Adobe Audition, Sound Forge, etc.
  • FL Studio - great for writing music, there are many plugins and different packs with sounds
  • Steinberg WaveLab - professional audio recording and editing software.
  • Steinberg cubase - software for creating, recording and mixing music
  • Rosegardenis a free MIDI sequencer, notation editor for Linux using ALSA and JACK, music creation and editing software like Apple Logic Pro, Cakewalk Sonar and Steinberg Cubase.
  • Sound forge is a professional digital audio production suite that includes everything you need from raw audio to finished product.
  • Adobe audition - Performs all necessary editing and audio mixing functions. It has a very convenient navigation and interface.
  • sfxr - utility for generating "eight-bit" sounds

Video | Video

Text Editors | Text editors

  • Notepad ++ -free text editor with syntax highlighting for a large number of programming languages \u200b\u200band markup.
  • JuffEd- text editor for Linux and Windows
  • PSPad- free text editor and editor of source codes of programs, can even work with files on a remote computer, via ftp, clouds
  • jEdit- a text editor, has an open source code and support for the syntax of many programming languages \u200b\u200band markup.
  • ConText - a good alternative to Notepad ++
  • Sublime text - fast cross-platform source code editor.

Development environment | IDE

  • Microsoft Visual Studio - a set of tools designed to help software developers, both beginners and professionals + GhostDoc- plugin for Visual Studio, auto-documentation Resharper- add-on to improve productivity in Microsoft Visual Studio
  • IntelliJ IDEA - commercial integrated software development environment in many programming languages, in particular Java, JavaScript, Python
  • Eclipse -free integrated development environment for modular cross-platform applications.
  • NetBeansis a free integrated development environment for applications in the programming languages \u200b\u200bJava, Python, PHP, JavaScript, C, C ++, Ada and a number of others.
  • Adobe Flash Builder - a software product from Adobe, is an IDE based on Eclipse for creating rich cross-platform Internet applications (RIA) using Flex
  • FlashDevelop - free analog of the builder with more modest features
  • Olly debugger - Win32 debugger with a huge number of necessary functions, plugins and settings.
  • Adobe Flash Professional Provides an environment for developing animated and multimedia content, allowing graphic designers to compose interactive interfaces that work in the same way on desktop computers and mobile devices. Native HTML5 support included.
  • Xcode- integrated software development environment for OS X and iOS

Decompiler | Decompiler

  • IDA- an interactive disassembler, which is widely used for reverse engineering (the study of a certain device or program, as well as its documentation in order to understand the principle of its operation) \\

Banner, billboard or whatever, background is used everywhere. The background is not only a wallpaper, but also a colorful base for the development of other designs. Backgrounds come in a variety of styles and colors, and are used by designers everywhere. There are several types of background patterns, for example, dotted, checkered, striped etc.

Today there are many graphic design services and tools that can make life easier for designers to a great extent. There are many online color palette generators, fonts, icons and other tools that are useful for designers working on various projects. Similarly, there are tools for creating background patterns and texturesthat can be useful to every designer. These web apps are pretty easy to use and will suit even beginners. So, get ready for this wonderful list 15 services for creating seamless background patterns and textures.

Stripe Generator

Stripe Generator is web-based tool for creating a solid striped pattern... The tool offers many features for creating custom striped tile patterns using different sizes, colors and orientations. The service allows you to use up to 5 colors, as well as customize the background, background style, indents and shadows. The striped tiles are easy to edit and you can check out the extensive collection of designs created by other contributors.

BG patterns

BG Patterns is a modern a tool for creating colorful patternsusing various built-in shapes or custom ones. The tool suggests for a variety of topics such as flowers, parties, animals and geometric shapes. You can choose from a variety of colors for the background and shapes. It also includes rotating and scaling custom images, setting the overlap to use multiple shapes. BG Patterns allows you to use pictures with a resolution higher than 300 × 300 pixels in PNG and SVG format.

Noise Texture Generator

Noise Texture Generator allows create a simple background texture using various colors and shades. The service allows you to set the dimensions of the texture, as well as the opacity and density. There is a preview of the tile and the ability to load it instantly.

Repper Patterns

Repper Patterns is a powerful pattern creation tool for web, print and graphics. The service allows create patterns from custom picturesthat can be used for book covers, mugs, newspapers, flyers, and for web design work such as banners, logos, website backgrounds. Repper Patterns is useful for beginners as it offers 14 built-in unique and beautiful styles.

Color lovers

Color Lovers is a modern application that allows create different patternsusing custom palettes, images and inline styles. The service also offers Seamless Lite, a Flash tool for designing new patterns using a variety of settings for creating and editing, such as adding shapes and text, rotating and transforming shapes, and more.

Patternizer

Patternizer - advanced online pattern generating app... You can easily choose a design from several built-in vibrant styles such as plaid and diamond patterns, and edit their position and colors. The Patternizer allows you to create custom styles using many stripes, setting width, rotation, opacity and background color.

Texture Generator

Texture Generator is a tool for fast texture generationusing different color shades and built-in texture styles. The tool allows you to use a variety of texture styles such as ground, clouds, wood, and tiles. In it you can edit texture styles using settings, generate pictures in JPG and PNG format.

Trianglify Generator

Free low poly background generator... It is possible to customize colors and gradients. After customization, you can download the image in vector SVG format or raster version in PNG format.

Trianglify Background Generator

One more low poly background generator, but unlike the previous one, this one has a different texture and more interesting color transition variations.

Background Image Generator

A great service for generating backgrounds for the site... Has many options for textures that are painted in the color we need.

Plaid Maker

Plaid Maker - Modern service for generating checkered patterns in a different style. You can choose a combination of colors to create a pattern, or simply edit the built-in pattern. Checkered patterns can be used in a blog, for a website background, or as a background for an application for or Android.

When creating 3d models, the question arises of how to color them, you can create a texture scan in the program in which we create the model, for example 3ds Max, apply textures in Photoshop, or another graphic editor, then apply a texture map to your model. But this is somewhat inconvenient, for a long time and to see the result you need to impose it on the model, and if the result is not satisfactory, redo it and reapply it on the model. And there is another option, to use special programs for this.

TOP programs for texturing (coloring) 3d models.

Autodesk Mudbox

  1. Autodesk Mudbox - professional program for texturing 3D models. Mudbox is widely used in the development of computer games, films, and also by designers. The advantages of this program include an intuitive and simple interface, many different templates, brushes and tools that allow you to create realistic 3d objects and scenes. With this program you can create bump maps, substitution maps and normal maps. Mudbox allows you to work with layers, blend them, set the transparency of individual layers, etc. Good compatibility with Photoshop, Softimage, Maya and 3ds Max programs. However, for all this variety, you must have a computer with a good video card, and in general, the system requirements of Mudbox cannot be called small (at the time of this writing, the current version of the program is Mudbox 2018).

3D-Coat

  1. 3D-Coat - this program is adapted to work with low poly 3d models. In its arsenal, 3D-Coat has a wide range of tools for texturing models, creating unfolded textures, importing, editing and exporting a model with ready-made textures to a 3D editor. With all this, this software works quite quickly and is not demanding on computer resources. Unlike Mudbox, the 3D-Coat interface will be a little more complicated, despite the fact that the possibilities are slightly less.

The foundry mari

  1. The foundry mari - a program developed by the New Zealand company Weta Digital specifically for texturing 3D models. You can watch the works made with the help of The Foundry Mari in such films as "Avatar", "District 9" and others. The program has a fairly flexible and customizable interface, which makes the workspace convenient for each user. Another disadvantage of this program is its special requirements for hardware. Considering the cost of The Foundry Mari (which is quite high), I think this is not the best choice, but since when writing this article I take into account the opinions of other users (and some of them consider this software to be well suited for "3D painting") , Mari in this article did not hit third place.

Zbrush

  1. Zbrush - one of a set of professional programs for editing 3D models. Feature of ZBrush is the ability to "clay modeling", this technology allows you to create high-poly 3D models. To make your work easier, the flexible interface allows you to customize the program as you like. If there are not enough brushes, it is possible to download additional ones. The demand for computer resources and the lack of reference information are the main disadvantages of this software.

Substance Designer

  1. Substance DesignerIs one of the most powerful programs in 3D modeling, but in turn, its resource requirements are enormous. Particle-based brushes let you paint whatever comes to your mind, the program is adapted to all existing game engines. Substance Designer allows you to create and edit the most complex textures (to some extent, you can even say that its possibilities in 3D modeling are endless). You have to pay for high performance in 3D graphics, and this applies not only to the price of the program itself, but also to its demands on the video card.

Conclusion

Of all the programs listed, my choice fell on the Autodesk Mudbox program, maybe someone will disagree with me (you can write in a comment), but I think this program is most suitable for texturing three-dimensional models, although if you do not need to work with high polygons, then 3D-Coat great too.


Long ago I had an idea to create a list of useful programswhich can help you design. Some of them are simply irreplaceable for game creator, and some only complement and simplify life.
I have not found a universal list on the Internet, so I ask:

P.S. I did not write down the versions of the programs, somehow you yourself will figure out which version you like best.
Links do not always lead to file downloads.

To start: List of game engines

3D

  • Zbrush -program for three-dimensional modeling with simulation of "sculpting" of the 3d model
  • Mudbox -like Zbrush, only from Autodesk. Both are good in their own way.
  • Autodesk 3ds Max- everything is clear. Creation of 3D graphics, animation, etc.
  • Maya- ideal for creating animations. Also contains everything both for modeling and even for some simulations (liquids, smokes, flames, well, etc.)
  • Blender -a nice plus is that it's free, unlike Maya and 3ds Max. It also develops as an independent game (!) Engine.
  • TopoGun - a retopology program designed to build a low-poly model on a high-poly surface scanned with a 3D scanner or created in the Zbrush, Mudbox environment, and bake textures.
  • Keyshot -tool for interactive visualization of 3D scenes and models
  • Headus UVLayout -a program for fast and high-quality UV mapping on 3D models (used by many professionals (for example Gnomon) in the games and visual effects industry)
  • Unfold3D- an independent program for the automatic creation of texture coordinates for curved surfaces
  • World machine - a good generator of natural landscapes. The output gives a mesh, texture, heightmap,
  • Terragen -landscape generator. Creates photorealistic landscapes .
  • Vue- 3D modeling and rendering program
  • Speed \u200b\u200btree modeler -generator of various trees. Useful for everyone
  • Makehuman- program for generating humanoid 3d models
  • Marmoset Toolbag -a small, convenient and full-fledged material editor and tool for quickly presenting three-dimensional models in real time.
  • Marvelous designer -program for modeling and design of clothes. Offers built-in real-time fabric simulation and rendering engines, export functionality in common formats (Collada, OBJ / MTL).

2D

  • Adobe Photoshop -i personally paint in Photoshop, I am much more comfortable there, but this is a matter of taste.
  • Pixplant -a tool for creating seamless textures from photos
  • CorelDraw -a graphic editor, as for me, is more suitable for art art. Color mixing is good.
  • nDo2- plugin for Photoshop. Allows you to create displacement and shadow maps (ambient occlusion) in Photoshop using hand drawing tools. In addition, you can view a 3D preview of the resulting maps.
  • Alchemyis a very good sketching tool. It is possible to enable both horizontal and vertical symmetry.
  • ArtRage Studio -also an interesting program for drawing. For sketches / concepts, that's it.
  • Sketchbook pro(also available for tablets) - drawing from Autodesk. Good for all kinds of sketches
  • Substance Designer- a powerful program that is designed to create, edit and process complex textures
  • Filter forge - program and high quality plug-in for Photoshop with 4100 visual effects, 4400 textures. It also allows you to create your own filters, textures, effects, distortions.
  • xNormal -creating normal maps from Color Map.
  • CrazyBump- texture generator (displacement, normal, occlusion, and specmaps based on 2D images)
  • Knald -analogue of CrazyBump
  • Paint.NET - free bitmap graphics editor
  • Gimp - a raster graphics editor, a program for creating and processing raster graphics and partial support for working with vector graphics.
  • Inkscape- vector graphics editor, convenient for creating both artistic and technical illustrations
  • GraphicsGale - a free program focused on creating pixel art, including animated
  • Adobe Flash -adobe's multimedia platform for creating web applications or multimedia presentations

Voxel Editors | Voxel editors


Sound | Sound

  • is a free multi-platform audio editor for sound files, focused on working with multiple tracks.
  • GoldWaveis a pretty powerful audio editor. In terms of its functionality, it can compete with such well-known programs as Adobe Audition, Sound Forge, etc.
  • FL Studio - great for writing music, there are many plugins and different packs with sounds
  • Steinberg WaveLab - professional audio recording and editing software.
  • Steinberg cubase - software for creating, recording and mixing music
  • Rosegardenis a free MIDI sequencer, notation editor for Linux using ALSA and JACK, music creation and editing software like Apple Logic Pro, Cakewalk Sonar and Steinberg Cubase.
  • Sound forge is a professional digital audio production suite that includes everything you need from raw audio to finished product.
  • Adobe audition - Performs all necessary editing and audio mixing functions. It has a very convenient navigation and interface.
  • sfxr - utility for generating "eight-bit" sounds

Video | Video

Text Editors | Text editors

  • Notepad ++ -free text editor with syntax highlighting for a large number of programming languages \u200b\u200band markup.
  • JuffEd- text editor for Linux and Windows
  • PSPad- free text editor and editor of source codes of programs, can even work with files on a remote computer, via ftp, clouds
  • jEdit- a text editor, has an open source code and support for the syntax of many programming languages \u200b\u200band markup.
  • ConText - a good alternative to Notepad ++
  • Sublime text - fast cross-platform source code editor.

Development environment | IDE

  • Microsoft Visual Studio - a set of tools designed to help software developers, both beginners and professionals + GhostDoc- plugin for Visual Studio, auto-documentation Resharper- add-on to improve productivity in Microsoft Visual Studio
  • IntelliJ IDEA - commercial integrated software development environment in many programming languages, in particular Java, JavaScript, Python
  • Eclipse -free integrated development environment for modular cross-platform applications.
  • NetBeansis a free integrated development environment for applications in the programming languages \u200b\u200bJava, Python, PHP, JavaScript, C, C ++, Ada and a number of others.
  • Adobe Flash Builder - a software product from Adobe, is an IDE based on Eclipse for creating rich cross-platform Internet applications (RIA) using Flex
  • FlashDevelop - free analog of the builder with more modest features
  • Olly debugger - Win32 debugger with a huge number of necessary functions, plugins and settings.
  • Adobe Flash Professional Provides an environment for developing animated and multimedia content, allowing graphic designers to compose interactive interfaces that work in the same way on desktop computers and mobile devices. Native HTML5 support included.
  • Xcode- integrated software development environment for OS X and iOS

Decompiler | Decompiler

  • IDA- an interactive disassembler, which is widely used for reverse engineering (the study of a certain device or program, as well as its documentation in order to understand the principle of its operation) \\
Did you like the article? To share with friends: