Avoiding the 'tiling effect' in Sketchup

[johnmcwaters]

I am rendering my final model, part of which includes a large gravel space. I am using the ground cover materials provided by Sketchup, but this creates a tiling effecting the final rendering which looks bad.

 

What is the best way to either avoid the tiling effect or diminish its appearance? Thanks for any help!

[ludnid]

You'll have to work on that particular texture in photoshop to further reduce the seams or use a large res image from a reputable site say cgtextures.com

 

Heres one of the best links i've seen on how to reduce tiling in your textures. head to page 3 and read through.

http://issuu.com/rclub24/docs/catchup_08

 

I suggest you join the sketchucation forum so you'll get more of these. hope it helps

[Boris Horosavin]

Tiling effect is common problem for all 3d software if you're working with large scale objects like terrain or similar. There are several solutions to this problem: You can either use plugin software that makes terrain and corresponding textures (like Vue or Terra, though I don't think there are those for Sketchup) or make your own Mix maps and Blend materials. Basically it goes like this: You make two or more materials you will use for you main, Blend material (for example sand for basic material and some other to mix it with - gravel, grass, mud... something like that). After that you need a Mix map - black and white texture that will separate this materials in irregular manner. You can use either large scale noise map, or fallof map set to z-scale to function as a height map. Finally, you'll have to spend some time playing with settings to get the right result. Experience is crucial here, but you can also look for some tutorials online to help you (I remember seeing a good terrain texture tutorial online some time a go but I wasn't able to find it). Hope it helps.

[Boris Horosavin]

Ah, yes, as Dindul said, if the texture is not seamless (hasn't got natural continuous flow when tiled) you ought to make it so, or use texture that is already made seamless.

Edited April 22, 2012 by Horosavin

[Aaron2004]

I'm about to suggest something that I swore I would never use....but it does work in cases like this. The 'watercolor' filter in Photoshop, if done CORRECTLY will clean this up to some extent. If you are rushed, this may be best.