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I want to create a wrecking ball in Blender. As a first try I created a sphere, UV unwrapped that sphere with Sphere Projection and then tried to texture that sphere with a tiled texture. This is the material setup:

enter image description here

This is the texture I downloaded from textures.com

enter image description here

And this is the rendered image:

enter image description here

I tried scaling this image texture but this did not work I think. How can you texture a sphere with a tiled texture ? Perhaps this is easy with procedural textures but that is a skill I don't have at this moment. How to do it with an image texture or is it just not possible ?

P.S If I am taking the complete wrong direction by trying to texture this sphere with a tiled texture, please tell me. In the end I just want to texture this sphere in a way that it looks like a rusty wrecking ball

P.S I thought I had a tileable texture. But this not being the case this is not a good question. Sorry

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  • Cegaton, you are right. The reason I posted the question is that I thought I had downloaded a tileable / seamless texture. That is why I did not understand why I it would not work. But now I can learn how to create seamless textures myself. Thanks !! –  Jan 18 '17 at 16:52
  • Probably it is a duplicate but the answer of Josh really adds value !! –  Jan 18 '17 at 16:55
  • A relatively minor thing, but you should not use the same texture as color data and non-color data. The correct setting depends on the contents of the file, and not on your intentions. – lbalazscs Jan 18 '17 at 20:13
  • Also Sphere Projection is not necessarily the best UV for a sphere. In newer versions of Blender, you can generate an UV map for a new sphere by default, and this is for most purposes better than the Sphere Projection. – lbalazscs Jan 18 '17 at 20:16
  • @lbalazscs how's that ... just UV unwrap ? –  Jan 18 '17 at 22:24
  • No. Right after you created the sphere press F6 and along the other options there will be a checkbox named "Generate UVs". If you check it, there is no need to unwrap it later. – lbalazscs Jan 18 '17 at 22:34
  • I guess I should learn to make seamless textures, normal maps and specular maps. Tried to avoid that till now –  Jan 18 '17 at 22:47

1 Answers1

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Your texture is not tileable, that's why it doesn't scale well: to make it tileable you can import it in Photoshop or Gimp, apply the "offset" filter at half the resolution of both X and Y dimension (1120 x 787 in your case), and use the stamp and/or the healing tool to eliminate the seams crossing. Pay attention not to touch the border of the image, or you will have to redo the operation. When the texture is seamless you can generate the relative normal map (i.e. with the Nvidia free plugin for Photoshop, or free online sites), or use a black/white version to control a "bump" node.

In addition I suggest you, instead of fixing the ratio between Diffuse and Glossy (0.1) to plug a "Layer Weight" node (Fresnel output) and control the amount of glossiness with his control: this adds some Fresnel effect, more glossiness at the outer border of the sphere (relatively to the point of view), which helps beliavability of every material.

enter image description here

josh sanfelici
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  • hi Josh, so you say my texture is not a "tiled texture" ? –  Jan 18 '17 at 16:24
  • Exactly, if it were, applying the offset filter would give no evident seams. A real tileable texture will scale quite well on your sphere, expecially if the UV map is quite regular and the scaling is not extreme. – josh sanfelici Jan 18 '17 at 16:28
  • This NVIDIA plugin ... what it it's name ? Where to find ? –  Jan 18 '17 at 16:39
  • https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop – josh sanfelici Jan 18 '17 at 16:45
  • Hi Josh, I use Photoshop CC and it appears that this NVIDIA tool does not work for that –  Jan 19 '17 at 13:50
  • Hi. Try this, or Crazy Bump software. http://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/ – josh sanfelici Jan 19 '17 at 17:25
  • it seems that in Photoshop cc 2017 there are some features to generate normal maps in the 3D functionality. Also this Substance B2m might be a good possibility ? –  Jan 19 '17 at 22:34
  • Yes, but also using the original color texture via a color ramp (control) and a bump node do the same job: they all generate a normal map from a guess of what black and white images represent in term of bump height; only differences are in term of fine tuning, or orientation, or so. The only case in which a real normal map is superior is when it's created from a mesh (tipically a sculpted high poly mesh): in this case the "violet" normal map rappresent the true orientation of every part of the object. In all other cases I love bump map node! – josh sanfelici Jan 20 '17 at 08:38