How To Make Decent Wood Textures (Large Images)

Garry's Mod mapping
#1

Ive recently figured out a way to make a decent looking wood texture, and I thought I should post it here so there won’t be as many low quality fake-looking wood textures in maps.

NOTE: This is only teaching you the making of the texture in GIMP/Photoshop, not how to make the VTF/VMT textures.

What You Need:

  • GIMP or Photoshop

Ok, lets start.

First, create a 128x128 - 512x512 canvas.

http://img709.imageshack.us/img709/7056/1newimage.png

Next, create your background color. This will be the base color that the texture will be colored to. Im using a dark tan.

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/8748/2basecol.png

Duplicate the colored layer, and select the dodge/burn tool.

http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/5323/4doge.png

Switch back and forth and just draw around on the top layer.

You should have something like this;

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/8708/5burn.png

I don’t know exactly where this filter is on Photoshop, but on GIMP, go to Filters/Noise/HSV Noise.

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/5863/6noise.png

Click it and play around with the properties. Make sure to have “Holdness” On “1” and “Hue” on “0”.

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/68/7hhsv.png

Make sure you don’t go too crazy, all you want is some speckles all over the texture, not extremely distorted.

Remember the first layer we had? Repeat the HSV noise on that layer.

Now, go to Filters/Distort/Ripple, and select it. Remember to switch back to the top layer.

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/6619/9ripple.png

Play around with it until you have something you like. Remember to have “Retain Tilability” Checked and to have “Period” at around 10. You can have it going vertical or horizontal, It depends on what way you want the grain to be going.

http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/6488/910riplled.png

Hit OK, and then lower the opacity on the top layer. This will make it blend with the bottom layer and make the grain less vibrant.

http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/6094/911opacity.png

You are now done! Just merge the two layers and save the texture.

The Created Texture;

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/8861/examplez.png

A Different One I Made:

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/778/wood.png

#2

That looks nothing like wood. :S

#3

This,

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/778/wood.png

is wood.
This,

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/8861/examplez.png

is not.

#4

If you were to use an image of a wood floor and then use this tutorial to tile it, it would probably turn out 5x better.

http://www.freeseamlesstextures.com/texture_tutorials/index.htm

Generated textures are okay for some things but I don’t think wood is one of them.

Good effort though.

#5

Made this in 30 seconds, and it’s not perfect but it looks better than yours.

  1. Fill a brown color on the canvas.
  2. Filter > Noise > Add Noise
  3. Filter > Blur > Motion Blur
  4. Re-size to cut off the ugly top and bottom.

Yeah, whoever disagreed, go have fun trying to tile his texture.

#6

Anyone else seeing a face?

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/8708/5burn.png

#7

No.

#8

I see coolfrog

#9

I admit, the example texture doesn’t look like wood, but I think the problem is that I had too much burn/dodge going on.

The texture at the bottom I made as the tutorial states.

#10

To backup my point here, I find taking actual photographs and photoshopping them turns out a lot better than a generated one, the only hard part is tiling it, but that can be done simply by
filter > other > offset (half of image height, and half of image width)
filter > other > High Pass
Use the clone tool to patch up seams and voila.

http://imageflock.com/img/1260487920.jpg

#11

How about…

Just download a nice wood texture off the internet?

#12

Nothing feels more satisfying than making one yourself

#13

Quality for the map users over self-achievement

#14

I feel satisfied enough when I take a randomly-sized photo into photoshop, resize it, tile it, run it through crazybump, and convert it to VTF.

But what feels really satisfying is going out with you own camera, taking pictures of surfaces, then doing everything above with your own photo. (Lsat time I had time to do this I was an idiot and ISO was up at 800, all my textures had RGB noise which messed up my textures)

#15

Sorry but you can’t make textures using filters… It just doesn’t work that way.

#16

Looks like poop.

#17

I can sorta see it, but no it doesn’t look decent.
Here’s what I do:
Find a good wood image that is almost tile-like.
Go into gimp.
Go to filters>map>Make Seamless.
Done!

#18

be hardcore and offset the image, then use clone stamp/healing brush to tile it yourself :c00l:

#19

You’re a virgin, arn’t you green bandit?

[editline]11:54AM[/editline]

How do you tile images in paint.NET?

#20

Get creative

which is why I have a hard time with tiles in pdn