New version of Seamless Texture Generator released

Community Forums/Showcase/New version of Seamless Texture Generator released

sswift(Posted 2005) [#1]
Seamless Texture Generator is a tool for making seamless textures from photos.

You can find the website here:
Seamless Texture Generator

And here is a link to the updated demo:
Seamless Texture Generator Demo

The website hasn't been updated to list the new features yet, so I'll list them here:

* You can now use the arrow keys to move between tabs.
* You are now warned if you accidentally enter a very large final texture size, and asked if you're sure you wish to proceed.
* A bug which prevented PSD and DDS files from being loaded was fixed.
* Updating the texture now automatically switches to either the final view, OR the tiled final view, depending on which view you were looking at when the update occurred.
* There are now keyboard shortcuts for load, save, quit, and help. These are CTRL-O, CTRL-S, and CTRL-Q, and F1. These shortcuts are listed on the menus.
* Fixed the file load and save dialog boxes. Files will now save in the selected file type regardless of whether you enter the file extension or not, and selecting a specific file type will now display all files of that filetype in the directory.
* You can now drag the edges of the perspective transform quad by clicking on the center of the edge. Additionally, the vertices that will be dragged if you click are now highlighted.
* The controls have been rearranged a bit, and now has a scrollbar so you can scroll through all the controls if they don't fit in the window.

* You can now sharpen the final image! The sharpening control uses a new sharpening algorithm I invented which doesn't suffer from the bright halos around edges you get with unsharp masking, and which enhances the texture significantly.


The update is free, so if you purchased it already, the update should be sitting in your inbox right now.


fredborg(Posted 2005) [#2]
EVALULATION VERSION???


sswift(Posted 2005) [#3]
Huh?

I sent the evaluation version?

I'll have to check on that and resend it if I did.


sswift(Posted 2005) [#4]
Oh I see, I made a typo in the demo version.

I must also have a broken brain, because I even typed evalulation in the post above! And the constant that triggers the version change was named wrong as well!

Augh! :-)

E VAL U A TION.

I really don't know how I managed to get another L in there. I know how to pronounce it right and how to spell it right and yet I did it wrong three times!


Amon_old(Posted 2005) [#5]
Hi sswift. I didnt get the latest update. My gmail account denied the attatchment. Can you send it to my other email addy from now on? Email below.

amon (at) kamikazekrow (dot) com


thanks :)


Ross C(Posted 2005) [#6]
I've yet to receive the update either :o)


sswift(Posted 2005) [#7]
.


sswift(Posted 2005) [#8]
I found your email address Ross, and I sent it. Let me know if you get it. I'd left your email address off the mailing list somehow, that's why you didn't get it.


AdrianT(Posted 2005) [#9]
Slenkar:
You get what you pay for. :-)

Evak:
"Sswifts texture generator has a few disadvantages in the interface, and the way that it doesn't have automatic update."

Please elaborate on what you mean by "disadvantages" in the thread for my program. Also, the most recent version of STG added automatic updating. Perhaps you should take a look at the latest demo!
__________________________
Hey Sswift, I'll check out the auto update. The last version I played with hwad the tabs for different functions across the top. But everytime you want to see a change you have to click the regenerate texture button, at which point everything got reset and by the time you click on the tab to preview the changes you just made, you can't always see the difference.

The most useful way would be something like the dual window view the optimize feature in Adobe Imageready which shows you before and after. The most basic way would be to have a realtime update or the render button that doesn't refresh to another state on completion. Being able to compare what your doing with another version would be really handy.


sswift(Posted 2005) [#10]
Evak:
It used to be when you pressed the make texture button, it would switch to the final view. This shows you the final texture, so you can see what your changes do.

You also had the option of holding shift when clicking the button to prevent it from changing to the final view.

Now, there is a checkbox which makes it update the texture every time you change a textbox, or move a slider.

When it updates, now it changes to either the final, or the final-tiled view depending on whether you were lookign at a regular or tiled view at the time. The tiled view can be more useful for seeing how the final texture looks than the final view.

You also still have the option of holding shift to prevent it from changing the view.


The reason I didn't go with a side by side view is because then you would only be able to see half as much texture at once, and does it matter how the texture looked originally that much, when all that really matters is how it looks in the end? There's no point in obsessing over what has changed, either it looks good or it doesn't. :-)

Plus it would only make sense to compare the transformed view to the final view, and not the original to the final because the original view might be much larger and not cropped or rotated. :-)


TartanTangerine (was Indiepath)(Posted 2005) [#11]
sswift,

This would be a nice feature, not sure how well it would work on complex images though.

http://www.hiend3d.com/hq2x.html


sswift(Posted 2005) [#12]
It's a neat algorithm I have seen in emulators before, but it's only really useful for sprite graphics, and designed for speed over quality. Also, as far as textures go, you're more likely to have a high res image and scale it down to make a texture, than to take a lower res image and scale it up.

But thanks for the suggestion. :-)


AdrianT(Posted 2005) [#13]
Any chance of some selection bounding box dimension info or a measure tool in pixels, so you can make a better estimate of what texture size to put in the final texture info.

Sometimes you just want to do perspective correction, and not tile textures, or you are going to put more 1 direction tiling textures on the same page. It's useful to be able to aproximate closely the dimentions to create your texture at without too much distortion.

Just a thought. Think I'm goig to buy it now that I got paid :)

Done :)


Grey Alien(Posted 2005) [#14]
actually Evak that is a good idea as often I have select an area and wanted to make a square til but wasn't sure if the area was exactly square.