What are the best practices for creating tileable textures?

Alongside standard practices, these points are to consider: Question if an "hand-made" tileable is truly needed. For common materials, it's often more efficient to explore existing online resources.Realistic options, like scanned tileable textures with all channels already, provide a solid base for further customization If displacement will be used too, source quality is crucial. It could be really the channel that ruin the final results if the source it is generated from is not good or the volumes to displace cannot be interpreted correctly from the source tileable Have clear what is the scale of the surface the tileable needs to be tiled onto. No matter how good the tileable is, if too small, tiling it many times will show repetitions

A more advanced, and better approach is to take 2 images, which are close variations of the same theme. It could be one image (A) of a concrete surface and another image (B) of the same concrete surface, just a few meters along from the original focus. Tile first the image A, and then tile the next (image B) on top of it (in your layer stack, or node graph). Make sure that image A and B are not tiling at exactly the same frequency, or offset the position of one of them, so their edges do not line up exactly on top of each other. Then add a mask to (top most) image B, masking it out completely. Only image A should be showing then. Where seams are showing on image A, paint into the mask with a soft brush to show the tiled image B.

For creating tillable textures for gaming it's recommended to create texture from scratch using softwares like Adobe Painter and Designer In the above softwares you can create PBR textures which enhance the readability and accuracy of the asset in game engines or renderers. This will require gathering images from search engines but using them only as a reference point. Self created textures re much more accurate iterative and visually striking as you can add bespoke details for storytelling, ageing and overall art direction of the game/ product

Textures should appear realistic or stylistically consistent in the final output, balancing quality and performance. Apply sharpening filters sparingly to enhance details but avoid over-sharpening.

Here are some best practices for creating tileable textures: Use a high-resolution source image. The higher the resolution of your source image, the better your tileable texture will look. Make sure your source image is seamless. This means that the edges of the image should match up perfectly when placed side by side. You can use a variety of tools and techniques to make your image seamless, such as cloning tools, offset filters, and edge blending. Use a consistent scale and lighting. When creating your tileable texture, it is important to use a consistent scale and lighting throughout the image. This will help to ensure that your texture tiles seamlessly.

The texture resolution of tilables depends on the amount of overhead on the game render engines. Higher resolution textures give better output, but are more heavier to render so right balance is essential. Also follow the concept of Texel density which dictates how many pixels will be used to texture a particular object based on its size. For example Texel ratio is 1024 pixels per 3 meters. Which essentially means using a 1024x1024 resolution texture sheet to cover an asset of 3m Texel density is important to maintain visual consistency between assets of different sizes in a single environment. Practical use correct texel density would result in induvial brick pieces in a brick texture look same size throughout an environment.

Tilables and Trim sheets created in Adobe painter and Designer will always be tillable by default and any Artist will not have to think of ensuring tiltability. The residual time and energy can be utilized to author better looking textures

Computer vision and AI are useful tools in removal of unwanted objects from textures but use it responsibly and consciously to keep objects realistic.

Always zoom out to see the texture from further to spot the obvious tilling point and in substance designer while working set or often switch the 3d view for a tilling of 2 to have a clear view of how your texture repeat itself.

In gaming there are sets of texture maps which form the basis on a tilable which included Albedo - Which is just the color without lighting information. Roughness - This is a black and white mast which dictates what areas are reflective and which are not Normal - This map will add the bump, small extrusion, emboss, crevices etc. on the texture without relying too much on geometry. Ideally these maps should individually undergo sharpening and enhancing as per the final requirements and art style. While there are multiple ways one can add noise to their textures the primary requirement is to make the noise readable. Also its recommended to have a basic light setup to preview textures before iterating upon them.

Normalize: For 3D modeling, normalize the texture for a consistent average color. High Dynamic Range (HDR): Convert your texture to HDR for a broader range of luminance. Create seamless edges: If the texture will be tiled, make sure it's seamless.

An important step is to pay close attention to remove highlights and shadows when creating uniformity as highlights and shadows can give you very bad results. An easier way is to use Adobe light room as this software can make good decision in averaging the shadows and highlights with a good white balance.

Be careful with those as it's often better to aim for uniformisation of the texture, contrast and color. Because as it is tilling texture anything that will be too/less contrasted, darker/brighter, or big color difference would make the tilling visible like a nose in the middle of a face. Prefer the use or blending multiple tilling texture and decals to add more details/variations than doing a tilling texture with particulier details that are going to give away the repetition (like huge crack, one broken bricks, etc)

I also agree with @Apoorv N that it is recommended to have a basic light setup to preview textures before iterating upon them. Here are some of the benefits of doing so: Lighting can drastically affect the way a texture looks. By previewing your textures in a basic light setup, you can get a better sense of how they will look in the final game or 3D scene. This can help you to identify any potential problems early on and make necessary adjustments. Lighting can help you to see how different materials will interact with each other. For example, you can see how a metal texture reflects light differently from a fabric texture. This can help you to create more realistic and believable scenes.

Optimize for platform. Depending on the usage, optimize the texture's size and resolution. There is multiple file formats, data compression and each of platform might have the individual preferences that will work best.