Banner, billboard or anything else, the background is used everywhere. The background is not only a wallpaper, but also a colorful basis for the development of other designs. The background comes in a variety of styles and colors and is used by designers everywhere. There are several types of background patterns, for example, dotted, checkered, striped etc.

Today, there are many services and tools for graphic design that can greatly simplify the life of designers. There are many online generators for color palettes, fonts, icons and other tools useful for designers working on various projects. Similarly, there are tools for creating background patterns and textures which can be useful to every designer. These web apps are quite easy to use and suitable even for beginners. So get ready for this wonderful list 15 services for creating solid background patterns and textures.

Strip Generator

Stripe Generator is web tool for creating a one-piece striped pattern. The tool offers many features for creating custom striped patterns on tiles using a variety of sizes, colors and orientations. The service allows you to use up to 5 colors, as well as customize the background, background style, padding and shadows. The striped tiles are easy to edit, plus you can check out the extensive collection of designs created by other contributors.

BG Patterns

BG Patterns is a modern tool for creating colorful patterns, using various built-in shapes or custom . The tool offers for various themes such as flowers, parties, animals and geometric shapes. You can choose from many colors for the background and shapes. It also involves rotating and scaling custom images, setting up an overlap to use multiple shapes. BG Patterns allows you to use images with a resolution higher than 300 × 300 pixels in PNG and SVG format.

Noise Texture Generator

Noise Texture Generator allows you to create a simple background texture using different colors and shades. The service allows you to set the dimensions of the texture, as well as the opacity and density. There is a preview of the tile and the ability to download it instantly.

Rapper Patterns

Repper Patterns is a powerful pattern creation tool for web, print and graphics work. The service allows create patterns from custom pictures, which can be used for book covers, mugs, newspapers, flyers and web design work such as banners, logos, website backgrounds. Rapper Patterns is useful for beginners as it offers 14 built-in unique and beautiful styles.

Color Lovers

Color Lovers is a modern application that allows you to create different patterns, using custom palettes, images, and built-in styles. The service also offers Seamless Lite, a Flash-based tool for designing new patterns using a variety of settings to create and edit, such as adding shapes and text, rotating and transforming shapes, and more.

Patternizer

Patternizer - advanced online pattern generator app. You can easily design from several built-in vibrant styles like plaid and diamond patterns, edit their positions and colors. Patternizer allows you to create custom styles using multiple stripes, setting the width, rotation, opacity and background color.

texture generator

Texture Generator is tool for fast texture generation using different color tints and built-in texture styles. The tool allows you to use different texture styles, such as earth, clouds, wood and cells. In it, you can edit texture styles using the settings, generate JPG and PNG images.

Trianglify Generator

Free low poly background generator. It is possible to customize colors and gradients. After setting up, you can download an image in vector SVG format or a raster version in PNG format.

Trianglify Background Generator

One more low poly background generator, but unlike the previous one, this one has a different texture and more interesting variations in color transitions.

Background Image Generator

Great service for generating backgrounds for the site. It has many options for textures that are painted in the color we need.

Plaid Maker

Plaid Maker - Modern service for generating checkered patterns in different style. You can choose a combination of colors to create a pattern, or simply edit the built-in pattern. Checkered patterns can be used for a blog, website background, or as an app or Android background.

For a long time I had the idea to create a list of useful programs which can help you develop. Some of them are simply irreplaceable for game creator, and some only complement and simplify life.
I did not find a universal list on the Internet, so I ask:

P.S. I didn’t write down the versions of the programs, somehow you yourself will figure out which version you like best.
Links do not always lead to download files.

To start: List of game engines

3D

• Zbrush- program for three-dimensional modeling with imitation of "sculpting" 3d models
• Mudbox- like Zbrush, only from Autodesk. Both are good in their own way.
• Autodesk 3ds Max- everything is clear here. Creation of three-dimensional graphics, animation, etc.
• Maya- ideal for creating animation. It also contains everything for modeling and even some simulations (liquids, smokes, flames, etc.)
• Blender- a good plus is that it's free, unlike Maya and 3ds Max. It also develops as an independent game (!) engine.
• Topogun- a retopology program designed to build a low-poly model on a high-poly surface, scanned with a 3D scanner or created in Zbrush, Mudbox, and texture baking.
• keyshot- tool for interactive visualization of 3D scenes and models
• Headus UVLayout- a program for fast and high-quality UV overlay on 3D models (used by many professionals (for example Gnomon) in the games and visual effects industry)
• Unfold3D- independent program for automatic creation of texture coordinates for curved surfaces
• world machine- a good generator of natural landscapes. The output gives a mesh, texture, heightmap,
• Terragen- terrain generator. Creates photorealistic landscapes .
• vue— 3D modeling and rendering program
• speed tree modeler tree generator. Useful for everyone
• Makehuman- program for generating humanoid 3d models
• Marmoset Toolbag- small, handy and complete material editor and tool for fast real-time representation of 3D models.
• marvelous designer- program for modeling and design of clothes. Offers built-in cloth simulation and real-time rendering engines, export function in common formats (Collada, OBJ/MTL).

2D

• Adobe Photoshop- I personally draw in Photoshop, I'm much more comfortable there, but it's a matter of taste.
• pixplant- tool for creating seamless textures from photos
• CorelDraw- graphic editor, as for me, is more suitable for artistic art. Mixing colors is good.
• nDo2- plug-in for Photoshop. Allows you to create displacement and shadow maps (ambient occlusion) in Photoshop using manual drawing tools. In addition, it is possible to view a 3D preview of the received maps.
• Alchemy- a very good program for creating sketches. It is possible to enable both horizontal and vertical symmetry.
• ArtRage Studio- also an interesting program for drawing. For sketches / concepts, that's it.
• sketchbook pro(also available for tablets) - a drawing tool from Autodesk. Good for creating all sorts of sketches
• Substance Designer- a powerful program that is designed to create, edit and process complex textures
• filter forge- program and high-quality plug-in for Photoshop with 4100 visual effects, 4400 textures. It also allows you to create your own filters, textures, effects, distortions.
• xNormal- creating normal maps from Color Map.
• crazy bump- texture generator (displacement, normal, occlusion, and specmaps based on 2D images)
• knald- similar to CrazyBump
• Paint.NET- free raster graphics editor
• gimp- raster graphics editor, a program for creating and processing raster graphics and partial support for working with vector graphics.
• inkscape- vector graphics editor, convenient for creating both artistic and technical illustrations
• GraphicsGale- a free program focused on creating pixel art, including animated
• Adobe Flash- Adobe's multimedia platform for creating web applications or multimedia presentations

Voxel editors | Voxel editors

Sound | sound

• - free multi-platform audio editor for sound files, focused on working with multiple tracks.
• GoldWave- quite a powerful audio editor. In terms of its functionality, it can compete with such well-known programs as Adobe Audition, Sound Forge, etc.
• FL Studio- great for writing music, there are many plugins and different packs with sounds
• Steinberg WaveLab- a program for recording and editing professional-level audio.
• Steinberg Cubase- software for creating, recording and mixing music
• rosegarden is a free MIDI sequencer, notation editor for Linux using ALSA and JACK, music creation and editing software like Apple Logic Pro, Cakewalk Sonar and Steinberg Cubase.
• sound forge is a professional digital audio product suite that includes everything you need to go from raw sound to finished product.
• Adobe Audition- performs all the necessary functions of editing and mixing audio. It has a very easy navigation and interface.
• sfxr - utility for generating "8-bit" sounds

Video | video

Text editors | text editors

• notepad++- free text editor with syntax highlighting for a large number of programming and markup languages.
• JuffEd- text editor for Linux and Windows
• PSPad- free text editor and source code editor, can even work with files on a remote computer, via ftp, clouds
• jEdit- text editor, has an open source code and support for the syntax of many programming and markup languages.
• context- good alternative to Notepad++
• Sublime Text- fast cross-platform source code editor.

Development environment | IDE

• Microsoft Visual Studio- a set of tools designed to help software developers, both beginners and professionals + ghostdoc- plug-in for Visual Studio, autodocumentation Resharper- productivity add-on for Microsoft Visual Studio
• IntelliJ IDEA- commercial integrated software development environment in many programming languages, in particular Java, JavaScript, Python
• eclipse- free integrated development environment for modular cross-platform applications.
• NetBeans- a free integrated development environment for applications in the programming languages ​​Java, Python, PHP, JavaScript, C, C ++, Ada and a number of others.
• Adobe Flash Builder- a software product from Adobe, is an Eclipse-based IDE for creating rich cross-platform Internet applications (RIA) using Flex
• FlashDevelop- free analog builder with more modest features
• Olly Debugger- Win32 debugger with a huge number of necessary functions, plug-ins and settings.
• Adobe Flash Professional- provides an environment for developing animated and multimedia content, allowing graphic designers to compose interactive interfaces that work equally on desktop computers and mobile devices. Native HTML5 support included.
• xcode— integrated software development environment for OS X and iOS

Decompiler | Decompiler

• IDA- an interactive disassembler that is widely used for reverse engineering (research of some device or program, as well as documentation for it in order to understand how it works)

When creating 3d models, the question arises of how to color them, you can create a texture scan in the program in which we create a model, for example 3ds Max, apply textures in Photoshop or another graphics editor, then apply a texture map to your model. But this is somewhat inconvenient, long and in order to see the result you need to impose it on the model, and if the result does not suit you, redo it and overlay it on the model again. And there is another option, to use special programs for this.

TOP programs for texturing (coloring) 3dmodels.

Autodesk Mudbox

1. Autodesk Mudbox is a professional program for texturing 3D models. Mudbox is widely used in the development of computer games, films, and also by designers. The advantages of this program include an intuitive and simple interface, many different templates, brushes and tools that allow you to create realistic 3d objects and scenes. With this program you can create bump maps, displacement maps and normal maps. Mudbox allows you to work with layers, mix them, set the transparency of individual layers, etc. Good compatibility with Photoshop, Softimage, Maya and 3ds Max. However, for all this variety, you need to have a computer with a good video card, and in general, Mudbox system requirements cannot be called small (at the time of writing, the current version of the program is Mudbox 2018).

3D coat

1. 3D coat- this program is adapted to work with low-poly 3d models. In its arsenal, 3D-Coat has a wide range of tools for texturing models, creating unwrapped textures, importing, editing and re-exporting a model with ready-made textures to a 3D editor. With all this, this software works quite fast and is not demanding on computer resources. Unlike Mudbox, the 3D-Coat interface will be somewhat more complicated, despite the fact that there are a few fewer features.

The Foundry Mari

1. The Foundry Mari is a program developed by the New Zealand company Weta Digital specifically for texturing 3D models. You can see the works made with The Foundry Mari in such films as "Avatar", "District 9" and others. The program has a fairly flexible and customizable interface, which allows you to make the workspace convenient for each user. Another disadvantage of this program is the special demands on hardware. Considering the price of The Foundry Mari (which is quite high), I don't think it's the best choice, but since I'm taking into account the opinions of other users in writing this article (and some of them consider this software well suited for "3D painting") , Mari is not third in this article.

ZBrush

1. ZBrush- one of a set of professional programs for editing 3D models. A feature of ZBrush is the possibility of "clay modeling", this technology allows you to create high-poly 3D models. To facilitate the work of a flexible interface allows you to customize the program as you like. If there are not enough brushes, it is possible to download additional ones. Demanding on computer resources and lack of reference information are the main disadvantages of this software.

Substance Designer

1. Substance Designer- one of the most powerful programs in three-dimensional modeling, but in turn, it has huge resource requirements. Particle brushes allow you to draw whatever comes to your mind, the program is adapted to all existing game engines. Substance Designer allows you to create and edit the most complex textures (to some extent, you can even say that its possibilities in three-dimensional modeling are limitless). You have to pay for high performance in 3D graphics, and this applies not only to the price of the program itself, but also to its exactingness to the video card.

Conclusion

Of all the programs listed, my choice fell on the Autodesk Mudbox program, maybe someone will disagree with me (you can write in a comment), but I think this program is the most suitable for texturing 3D models, although if you don’t need to work with high polygons, then 3D-Coat fits great too.

Textures have become an integral part of our lives. Designers use them to fill backgrounds or overlay objects. Textures are often used in web design as a background object. Here they are subject to special requirements. On the one hand, to speed up loading, an HTML page, along with graphics, should take up as little space as possible, on the other hand, a page often has a lot of textual information, and if you use a page-sized texture, it will take up a huge amount. A compromise option is to use a small texture, placing it close to one another, but so that it is not noticeable. Therefore, in web design, repeating texture elements are used with smoothly flowing edges of one texture into another, i.e. so that the right edge of one texture element smoothly flows into the left edge of another and the bottom edge into the top one.

Many people use ready-made textures in their work. Have you ever wondered how they are created? After all, this is not just a set of the same type of objects to create a background. It is important to achieve a combination of textures. To do this, you need to initially create textures in such a way that you can make a continuous texture mosaic from one repeating element, or be able to transform existing graphic elements into continuous textures. For this, special programs have been created, which will be discussed in this review.

TextureWorkshop 1.5

The TextureWorkshop program allows you to quickly and easily convert almost any image into a repeating texture. The program can also be used for simple texture editing and texture color manipulation. To work with graphic elements, the program has 7 tabs:

Tilize tab (Mosaic element). Actually, this is the tab with which the program converts graphic elements into continuous textures. It sets the amount in pixels that will be smoothed from each edge of the edited element to create continuity.

Tab Color (Color) sets chromaticity of the image from initial to black-and-white.

Tab Color Balance (Color balance) allows you to change the color balance of the image.

The Brightness tab allows you to adjust the brightness of the image.

Tab Contrast (Contrast) allows you to adjust the contrast of the image.

Tab Gamma (Gamma) allows to make gamma-correction of the image.

Tab Special (Special) allows you to invert colors, as well as rotate, bevel and mirror the image.

In the unregistered version of the program, the Gamma and Special tabs are not available.

As already mentioned, a unique feature of the program is the creation of a coherent background using repeating textures. You can take any picture with similar objects (leaves, stones, grains, etc.) and turn it into a version of virtual wallpaper with the click of a button. You can do the same with small patches of pre-made textures like marble, forest, water, or fabric to create smooth and borderless textures.

For example, let's take a picture:

As a texture it looks like this:

Open it in the program:

After transformation we get:

While not perfect, it's obviously much better. If you use pictures with the same type of objects to create textures, as the author of the program advises, then the transition between the "tiles" of textures will be invisible.

Together with the program, several blanks with the same type of objects are supplied for creating ready-made textures, on which you can practice, which we will actually do. On the left (or top) is the original, on the right (or bottom) is the finished result:

The program works under Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP operating systems. The author of the program is the Russian programmer Sergey Stolbov.

The registration fee for the program is $25.

After registration you will be able to:

Use the program longer than 10 days;

Perform gamma correction

Use the functions of invert colors, rotate, mirror and tilt;

Create save/readable transform templates to apply to different textures.

I am not an expert in complex graphics packages, and I would be interested to hear the professional opinion of designers both about this program and about alternative ways to create background sets from repeating textures.

Download TextureWorkshop 1.5 (size 1.02Mb): link

Pattern Creator 1.0

Pattern is translated from English as drawing, model, pattern, stencil. Pattern Creator is a program for creating beautiful continuous patterns consisting of separate identical pieces connected to each other. Because you have to do the main work, then this is an opportunity for you to show your creative abilities.

First you need to choose the size of a single element, from which the overall pattern of the picture will then be formed. By default, the program suggests a square of 100 by 100 dots.

Then a program screen with a white rectangle appears in front of you, on which you, as an artist on a white canvas, can create your masterpieces. To simplify the work of novice artists, a grid is available that shows the border of individual elements.

The following tools are available to you: pen, straight lines. You can fill the picture with your chosen or random color, as well as various textures in BMP and JPEG formats. At your disposal is also a full color palette and the ability to change the thickness of the applied lines. Any line drawn on one piece of the mosaic is repeated many times on the rest, and when moving to the next piece, it also starts on the previous one and on the rest.

The result is a mosaic consisting of a single, repeatedly repeated element. You have the option to burn it in BMP format. You can also read ready-made BMP images. Of course, I'm not an artist, so I ended up with a rather simple mosaic.


I suggest you try your hand, especially since the program is absolutely free. You can freely distribute it for non-commercial use without making any changes to it.

Download Pattern Creator 1.0 (size 2.24Mb): link

Textures Gallery Maker 1.2

Textures Gallery Maker is used to generate textures randomly. The program was born during the implementation of a graduation project on improving the quality of raster images by applying various filters. As a result of the error, instead of an improved image, an incomprehensible pattern was obtained. After adding a random number generator to it, a separate program, Textures Gallery Maker, appeared.

The program is very easy to use and does not require installation.

The Generate Texture tab contains all the necessary buttons for creating textures and setting generation parameters.

- Button Generate (Create) is used to create or generate a texture with the specified parameters;

- the Save button is used to save the created texture to a BMP, JPEG or GIF file;

- button Size (Size) sets the size of the texture, by default 100 by 100 pixels (it is not necessary to use only square textures, try, for example, the size is 300 by 20 pixels.);

- button Color (Color) sets the colors of the created texture;

- Button Smooth (Smoothing) sets or cancels smooth transitions between contrast points in the created texture;

- button Tile (Mosaic) includes showing a mosaic consisting of many identical elements of the created texture or shows only one element.

Slider Contrast (Contrast) is designed to change the contrast of the texture.

Tab Preview HTML (Preview HTML-page) allows you to see how the created texture will look with the standard 16-th HTML-colors. Initially, the program description page serves as a test page.

- the Open HTML button (Open HTML page) is used to open the user's HTML page in the program against the background of the generated texture;

- button Text Clor (Text Color) allows you to change the color of the text on the open HTML-page (do not be afraid, your page will not suffer, all changes occur in a temporary copy of the page);

- The Link Color button allows you to change the color of links on an open HTML page.

There is also a beta version of the program under development. You can see examples of textures generated by the program here.

The author will be interested to know your opinion about the program, if you want, you can vote for it to the author's email address [email protected], indicating "useful program" or, conversely, "useless program" in the subject line of the email. You can also express your comments and wishes. In addition, the author asks for help with algorithms for various graphic effects and algorithms for random generation of graphic images.

Textures Gallery Maker is free. The program is written in Borland C++ Builder 5.0. Along with the program itself, its source code is also available.

Download Textures Gallery Maker 1.2 (size 352Kb): link

Source code for Textures Gallery Maker 1.2 (size 93Kb): link

Download beta version of Textures Gallery Maker (size 353Kb): link

Rect 2 (Rectangle 2)

There are also two effects: Water (Water) and Glass (Glass), which can be included in addition. The Glass effect turns the image into a kind of oil painting, as if "smearing" neighboring dots, creating something like diffusion. This is best seen when using textures with squares.

The Glass effect blurs the image. The same textures with squares are unrecognizably transformed, and the fact that they were once squares is no longer recognizable.

The Background button sets the background on which the textures will be generated. they do not always occupy the entire surface area and sometimes the background shows through in some places.

Button Sizes (Dimensions) sets the size of the generated texture: Width (Width) and Height (Height). If you check the box "X=Y", then the width and height will be the same. Parameter (Parameter) sets a certain parameter of the generated texture, which mainly affects the size of the elements of which it consists.

Button Colors (Colors) determines the amount of red, green and blue in the texture.

The Many1 (Mnogo1), Many2 (Mnogo2) and One (One) buttons set the program operation modes. In Many2 mode, the entire screen is filled with the created texture, in One mode, a single created texture element is shown on a full-screen black background. Many1 mode - the most convenient - shows the entire screen filled with the created texture, and on top - the program itself, in which you can create new textures that are dynamically displayed in full screen behind the program.

The Create button is used to generate the texture. The Save button is used to write the created texture to a BMP file. The button with a question mark calls up a description of the program in Russian and English. The Exit button is used to exit the program.

Random Background works under Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000.

The program is distributed free of charge. You are also free to use the textures it generates for non-commercial purposes.

Download Random Background 1.0 (size 377Kb): link

Conclusion

This article reflects various ways to create repeating textures: smoothing the edges of ready-made graphic elements, drawing on a field from elements adjacent to each other, and generating textures using a computer. I am not a designer and would be interested to hear what designers think about these programs and other possible ways to create repeating textures.

This is an indispensable texture creation tool that can create in seconds from normal map to seamless textures, as well as Displacement , Specular .

The program is distributed in two versions: one as a plug-in for Photoshop, and the other is a separate program with its own original interface. Further review will focus on the second option.

The program interface is simple and intuitive: it is easy to understand all the menus and sliders. Literally in five minutes you can get comfortable in this program, but there are a couple of tricky features that I would like to talk about.

And so let's get started.

The program interface is divided into two main working parts:

texture 3D Material

Texture is a generator and the main area for working with textures.

3D material - on this tab, Displacement, Normals map, Specular maps are created. In order how the texture generator works.

Click on the New Texture tab

Specify the resolution of the texture! (For beginners, I remind you that the textures must be a multiple of two 128... 256... 512... 1024... 2048)!

Click Add Seed from file

And add textures for generation. They will be displayed horizontally and participate in the formation of a new texture. (You can upload one or two pictures to generate). And if necessary, you can select those areas that you do not want to participate in the generation.

Click on the button

And it should be a mixture of our two textures.

If suddenly you are not satisfied with the texture, then you can click the Generate button again. In principle, this manipulation can be repeated until you are satisfied with the result. In this way, you can prepare a seamless texture in a matter of minutes. Without resorting to photoshop.

Here is the result of our manipulations.