Tiling sculpted normal maps

[Pomperi]

This is an issue that has been puzzeling me for a long time now. I just can't figure out how people do when they sculp their tiling textures, to make the pattern match in the seams. I'd be more than grateful if someone could point me in the right direction here, because I'm all out of ideas, and rock textures without a proper normal = fail.

[Psyshokiller]

If you're using Zbrush3, there's the wrap mode http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/Image:Zb25droppedImage_16.png.

Guess anything else would be a horrible night in PS.

[Pomperi]

Thanks for the hint! I've tried it out some, but the results aren't that impressive. This features seems to work different depending on which tool I'm using, not to mention that navigating zbrush is a challenge by itself. Guessing that's because I'm not experienced with the program...

[PhilipK]

Worked quite a lot with zbr making tiling world texes on graw2 and I didn't care for the offset stuff zbr has built in but instead just used photoshop. It's usually pretty easy even on very deep rock textures and such. Just try and continue the patterns you have in the normal as good as you can and even handpaint over some seams.

99% of the time you need to make those kinda deep normals more tilable afterwards anyway when you actually see them in engine first time there's always a lot of removing small tiling areas.

I know this can be a bit irritating if you also render out more maps from the actual zbr-mesh such as AO or so. But this always worked for me anyhow.

[Pomperi]

Thanks for the input, will definately try it out. You don't happen to have any tricks for healing normal map seams? I've somehow always managed to get very odd results from both cloning, healing and handpainting the seams.

[PhilipK]

Hmm don't really have any tips on that other than try to continue the most visible details like large cracks on a rock or so.

I also tend to use quite small and pretty sharp stamp brushes (like 70-80% sharpness) and then just try to work on just the seam and affect as little of the image as possible. Some people seem to like to copy a cross in the image with blured edges in the mask and then offset that to the seam but I've never been a fan of that technique as it often looks very smooth and faded and you miss the thing with continuing the important details over the seams.

[Pomperi]

Thanks man, I owe you one!

I played around a bit, and it turned out that it wasn't too much of an issue to tile the normal in photoshop after all. Have always thought there was a more convenient method, but I've fooled myself apparently

Here's what I came up with, tiled 4 times on the same surface:

[PhilipK]

Nice, seems to tile very well