# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Image Textures

|next=Procedural Textures
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## Image Texture Settings

!Simple
checkerboard{width="100"}
To understand how the texture settings apply to image/movie textures,
start with an example texture. A nice simple one is this checkerboard at
right---don't forget to download it in (or convert it to) PNG format, as
Blender cannot use an SVG file as a texture.

![](Blender268TextureTypeMenuImage.png "Blender268TextureTypeMenuImage.png")
Start a new Blender document. Note the default cube already has a a
default grey material, called "Material", and this already has a single
texture, called "Tex", of type "None", which means it has no effect.

![](Blender268TextureContextImagePanelNone.png "Blender268TextureContextImagePanelNone.png")
Under the Texture
![](Blender255TextureContextButton.png "Blender255TextureContextButton.png")
context of the Properties window, with Material Texture
![](Blender268TextureIconMaterial.png "Blender268TextureIconMaterial.png")
selected, change the texture type to "Image or Movie". You will
immediately see some new panels pop up in the texture context. Look for
the Image panel, as at right. This initially contains a popup menu icon
for selecting from any previously-loaded images (this will start out
empty), a "New" button for using one of Blender's predefined test
textures, and an "Open" button for loading an image from a file.

Click the "Open" button, and select your previously-downloaded or
converted PNG version of the example checkerboard texture.

![](Blender268TextureContextImageSettings.png "Blender268TextureContextImageSettings.png")
Now a whole lot more settings will become visible. From the top, the
panels are:

-   Preview --- gives you a simple display of how the texture looks.
-   Colors --- lets you make simple adjustments to the image brightness,
    contrast etc.
-   Image --- lets you choose from any already-loaded images, and shows
    you the pathname of the file the image was loaded from. Note the two
    arrows in a circle to the right of the pathname display: clicking
    this will tell Blender to reload the image from the file, which is
    useful if you make changes to it in an external image editor.
-   Image Sampling --- controls how the image can be interpreted in a
    different way from straight pixel values.
-   Image Mapping --- lets you crop the input image, and apply fixed
    numbers of repetitions to it along each axis, even before it goes
    through the usual texture-tiling repetition process.
-   Mapping, Influence --- these are more general panels that apply to
    all types of textures. They will be discussed in more detail
    shortly.

!Projection: flat; axes: X→X, Y→Y,
Z→Z
If you render  now, you should end up
with an image like this. Notice in the Projection menu (*Texture* →
*Mapping*) the initial selection is "Flat": this means that the texture
X and Y coordinates go straight to object X and Y coordinates. Thus, the
texture only appears on the top (and also bottom) of the cube, not on
its sides. See also the three little popup menus just below the
Projection menu, each containing the items X, Y and Z. These let you
rearrange the object coordinates that the texture coordinates map to. If
you change the first two, you can get the texture to appear on other
pairs of sides of the cube, other than the top and bottom. The third
menu (corresponding to the Z axis of the texture) has no effect (yet),
because a flat image texture is only two-dimensional.

!Texture size increased to
3.
Now try changing the three "Size" fields in the Mapping panel: give them
all a value of 3. This will uniformly shrink the texture pattern to
one-third of its original size. Or alternatively, it will require three
times the number of texture repetitions to span the same distance as the
original.

!Texture projection set to
Sphere
Now let's try the other Projection types. Here's what "Sphere" looks
like. Imagine the texture pattern as a flat sheet stretched and curved
around, and its edges joined to form a sphere surrounding the actual
object; then the sphere is shrinkwrapped down onto the object.

Note the top and bottom edges of the sheet shrink down to single points
at the north and south poles; this is why the squares of the
checkerboard pattern turn into triangles next to these points.

!Texture projection set to
Tube
Here's a Tube mapping. Here the texture pattern sheet is rolled round
into a cylinder, with only one pair of edges joined together, the top
and bottom left open.

!Texture projection set to
Cube
And lastly, here is a Cube mapping. Here 6 copies of the texture pattern
are arranged parallel to the faces of a cube, before being shrinkwrapped
onto the actual object. Which in this case, happens to be a cube.

Cube mappings are very commonly used in game engines, because they are
just about the simplest way to wrap a texture around an entire object.

!"Mapping" versus "Image
Mapping"

## Making Your Own Texture

Procedural texturing is very powerful; however, sometimes it is
difficult or impossible to generate the desired realism with them. Image
texturing is there for you when you need it. To review, the basic idea
is to take an outside image and wrap it around your model. You can use
any texture, or a seamless one if you want it to repeat to get a tiled
effect. The following shows how you create a seamless texture, and then
how to apply any texture (seamless or otherwise) to an object.

### The difference between \'tiled\' and \'seamless\'

In many cases a simple material will just not cut it for an object, and
you will want to apply a texture to it. However, depending on the
object, you may want to apply either a seamless or tileable texture. A
seamless texture is an image that will, when applied to an object,
spread evenly across the surface of the object without any visible
borders or \'seams\' even if the object is many times larger than the
resolution of the image (also called \'procedural textures\' in
Blender). These can be useful in many situations; such as when you want
a texture for a carpet to seamlessly repeat itself without having a huge
resolution.

A tileable texture on the other hand, is an image that will repeat
itself across an object, but with noticeable seams. Any image can be
used as a tileable texture, but often they will only be used in specific
instances such as a vinyl floor with a tiled pattern on it.

See Using Textures
for more details on applying images as textures, and using them to
affect many other surface attributes such as luminosity, reflectivity,
translucency, displacement etc.

### How to make a tileable texture with the GIMP

![](MakeSeamlessSample.jpeg "MakeSeamlessSample.jpeg")

It is easy to create a tiling texture image with the
GIMP. Start with the photo you want to use. Crop
out any part you don't want. Here's an example random photo of some
plants in my garden:

![](MakeSeamlessSampleAfter.jpeg "MakeSeamlessSampleAfter.jpeg")

Go to Gimp's "Filters" menu, and find the "Map" submenu. In here you
will find the entry "Make Seamless". Select it. That's it:

![](MakeSeamlessSampleUsage.jpeg "MakeSeamlessSampleUsage.jpeg")

Just to prove it works, here's a (scaled-down) use of the result as a
tiled fill pattern:

### Other Image Texture Editors

-   Wood Workshop A
    free utility (Requires Operating System: Windows 2000/XP) that
    generates surprisingly high quality tiling wood texture images.
    These textures can be exported as standard image files for use
    within Blender.
-   MapZone A free utility for Windows
    (works perfectly in Wine) that generates node
    based procedural texture maps. Mapzone can export diffuse, normal
    and alpha texture maps as standard image files. It can also import
    SVG regions created with Blender\'s UV mapping tools.

