Avoiding Tiling Repetition for Surfaces

[Alex29084420t94f]

I'm very new to this, so this question might be silly. I'm trying to texture a wall. So I downloaded a cracked painter plaster material from Adobe 3D Assets, and dragged it onto the wall. 

Now, to get the texture to the right size and resolution I used UV projection and increased the tiling to 7. However, now my issue is that the tiling looks very obvious (thanks to the brown hole artifact appearing in every tile, as well other features of the texture repeating).

I want to reduce this repetition by randomising the texture, but I don't know how? Any suggestions? Thanks for your help.

 

[Cyril Dellenbach]

Hi Alex,

This in an interesting question.

Hiding the tiling is a part of almost every 3D projects. Obviously, having a material with a tiled recognisable particularity (like the stain on your wall) doesn't help.

A common workflow is to have a pretty neutral base material (like your wall material, but without the stain), and add new layers on top of the base to bring variation that will break the visual tiling.

For example, if the material has some interesting parameters, you could duplicate the material on top of the base, tweak a bit the parameters and add a cloud /grunge mask to bring a simple variation. But usually, a good texturing comes from subtle specificities, so you could add some dirt at the base of the walls, a tag on a specific area or localised damages. Those types of details will also help to break the tiling.

The smart masks in the library can be a good start to bring some interesting variation as well.

My personal advice would be to always take a good look to your references.

Have fun with 3D and have a nice day. 

[Alex29084420t94f · Accepted solution]

Hi. Appreciate the response. I wish there was a procedural texture generator to randomise the tiles. Hopefully with AI in the future there will be.

The solution I found was to use the clone stamp tool and paint over the brown holes with areas from the other parts of the texture. This is the best I can do right now. But if you know any other ways that would be great.

Also, do I need to be baking the texture maps first, or can I avoid that step all together if I only have one layer or material? (Sorry this is slightly unrelated)

[Cyril Dellenbach]

For me, the clone tool seems like a good option to hide the holes in the walls. You could also check in the Substance 3D assets library if there is another material that look alike. 

If your goal was simply to apply a single material on a 3D object, no need to make a baking. The baking creates new maps that smart materials, smart masks, generators, etc. can read to create advanced effects. Usually, if you don't need those, no need of a baking.

Best regards,

[Kevin249542447e8f]

what I did is create a layer (paint brush icon), add the texture as base color under the 'properties - paint' tab (also add normals and roughness if you have them), increase spacing to something like 75 so brush strokes don't overlap, change angle jitter to 180, adjust brush size to get the right scale, and paint over everything (easier in F3 mode).

you get the same thing but without the obvious repeating tiling. results definitely depend on the texture you're using, if you have something like a brick texture then turn off angle jitter. also playing with brush hardness can help the strokes blend into each other more smoothly