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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 18th Feb 2012 at 1:24 AM
Default Tileable tartan images
I've just recently started trying to figure out how to do something in CAS, but I haven't got it figured yet. What I'm trying to do is create tileable plaid patterns with separate channels for each color.

In the process, I have discovered how to create a tileable argyle pattern from a particular pattern by bucket-filling it onto a 3x larger canvas, then rotating it, cropping to about 1.4 (√2) times the original picture (because the corners are now at the top and bottom, it requires a larger canvas to contain the repeating part of the image.

Here are some examples of what I've done so far. Note that these images have not had the colors separated out into channels (something that's baffling me plenty right now -- anyone who thinks they can explain it to me in "Compleat Idiot" [:eg:] terms go right ahead). Tartans with a suffix of "45" are the argyle patterns.


How I did it:
To go into more detail (and you can skip this if you think it's boring) I Found several tartans in a square format (256x256, plus-or-minus), made them all 256x256, and made sure that they were, indeed, tileable.

I then used the bucket-fill tool to fill a 768X768 canvas (nine times larger, so the desired part of the pattern is centered) with the desired pattern. You then take the the large canvas and rotate it 45°. In Gimp, there's a tool that allows you to reduce the canvas size and keep it centered. This step is crucial. Reduce the canvas size to 362x362 and make sure you're centered.

Crop the layer to the canvas size. Shrink to 256X256 and make sure its tileable. (I just copy the pattern to the clipboard and then "undo" the final image until it's back to 768x768. Bucket-fill the canvas with what's on the clipboard to test it for tileability. If it's good, copy the clipboard into a 256X256 canvas and save it in the correct format (I have to copy it to a file that already has the proper format because I can't for the life of me figure out how to make one that way in the first place (24-bit png).

Feedback and tips welcome. I really don't know what I need to know to get from .png to an actual Sims-3 pattern file. I i just really want some good recolorable tartan.
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