Making a Tileable Texture for Stone Wall

Tileable textures are very useful for 3d texturing, especially in low-poly modelling. However when using tileable textures, it should not be directly visible as tiled textures. See the figure below. At once you see that, you can understand it’s having 9 copies of the same image.

Also, the textures at one tile boundary not match with their neighboring tiles.

Therefore you need to avoid these mistakes when making a good tileable texture. However real-world pictures may not fulfill these requirements, especially when you need irregular patterns such as stone walls. Therefore, it’s always essential to correct the textures before use them as tileable texture.
I am going to use the same texture to I have used in my above example, and convert it to a good tillable texture. So you can easily see the difference.
Take a good photograph of the texture map you need using a digital camera. Transfer it to your computer and open with Photoshop. This is my original map (however it is not my own picture, I have downloaded it through interenet). However it’s better to have an image bigger than 512 x 512 pixels.

Decide the size of the map you need, it may either 256 x 256, 512 x 512 or 1024 x 1024. Here I am going to make a 512 x 512 map. Start a new Photoshop file with 512 x 512 pixels (or the size you need as your map), and save it as stone_map.psd. Copy your original map (photograph) and paste it on stone_map file. Now it will paste as a layer on your stone_map file. Now you don’t need the original image, close it. Go back to stone_map, select the pasted layer and go to Free Transform option under Edit menu (shortcut Ctrl + T). now you will see the full size of the map you copied. If you can’t see, zoom out your file.

Scale down the image if it is too large when compared with the area you needed as the texture map. However don’t scale down it into the size of the texture map (512 x 512 in my case). It’s better to scale down the image to a size little bigger than the size you want, may be 1.5 times as your texture map (to me 800 x 800).

By doing so, you will get enough freedom to select a good area from your image to make the tile.
When you selecting an area for the texture, keep in mind not to include any uneven areas. Because if your texture map having such special areas, it will be directly visible when you tiled it.

I have selected following area for my texture map.

You may like to see how your texture looks like when it tiled, before going further.
Copy entire area of the map, and paste again. Not it will paste as a new layer. Scale down this layer up to 50% (now my map is 256 x 256). Go to Define Pattern option under Edit menu, and save in a name you like. Open new document with larger size (may be 2048 x 2048) Go to fill option under Edit menu, select the pattern you saved as the Custom Pattern and press OK.

It is not that bad the early one, but you can identify the tiling easily due to few colored stones.
(I will not explain the way of previewing tiling; keep the way we have used in your mind)
Go back to stone_map file and delete the new layer created to make the texture. Go to Image, Adjustments, Hue/Saturation (shortcut Ctrl + U). Decrease the Saturation value up to -100 and increase little by little until you just see the colours. Press OK to apply modifications.

(You are free to preview your texture any time you want using above method)
Now we are going to correct the edges.
Copy existing layer and paste it as a new layer. Delete the old layer by keeping new layer. (this will help to remove the map outside our boundary). Go to Filter, Other, Offset. Offset the image by 50% in both vertical and horizontal sides (its +256 for me).

Now you can easily see the edges as a cross in your texture map. So it’s easy to correct. Now it’s time to use your skills. Use Healing Brush Tool to correct the edges. It’s just like Stamp tool, you can copy part from one point and paste it on the place you need. Do some trials if you haven’t used this tool early. You will be easily understood how it works. This is how my corrected map looks like.

Now you can’t see any joint in the map, so it should well tilled. Use any other colour correction tools if you need. I am just going to apply Auto Levels to my map. And this my final texture map.

This is how it looks like when tiled.
Hope this tutorial will helpful to make your tileable textures better. If you having any problem, please let me know.