Making tileable wall paper by hand

Many people have complimented my hand drawn wall paper in my store, and many people think it must have been really hard to make, but it is actually not as hard as it looks. I was suprised that a lot of people didnt know this technique for making simple tiling patterns - since i have shown about a dozen people now, I thought in this recent downtime I would make some more and as i made it whiped up a few demonstrative diagrams, because im bored.

I'm not very articulate with all this stuff but i will try my best to explain it, really its something (for me at least) that once you get the concept down it just makes sense.

You can refer to the diagram attached below for reference

Step 1 - hardest part in my opinion - basically you conceive your pattern, im going for a little flourishy victorian looking thing. Really just doodle.

Step 2 - Well you can either freehand the whole thing but if you are lazy like me sometimes ill just mirror it

step 3 - this is where it gets kinda tricky, you quarter the image. I have found the best way to do this is to grab the image and paste it in a new document so it is centered, then copy it to your clip board and delete it - so the codument is blank - then i open another document and make it 1/2 as tall and 1/2 as wide, basically 1/4 the size. You can then paste the orriginal in here and move it around to get each 1/4, for me the snappyness of the document usually grabs it and pulls it in place. When each 1/4 is in its place select the whole document and copy that 1/4 and paste it as a new layer in the blank document. Then move each peice to the corresponding corner (best to look at the color coded diagram for this one)

step 4 - You can then paste another full part in the center and it will create a nice alternating pattern.

-or-

Other step 4 - Even better you can do the process over again in the new middle blank spot or around the new center image and create an interlocking pattern. Again i just doodled one half and mirrored it. (seen in red)

Tip: dont be afraid to use tons of layers and tons of different documents to save peices and different versions of it, as any good photoshop pro knows layers are your best friend.

And that is about it. You can keep it simple or get really fancy and complicated with it. Obviously its best to start out simple and get a feel for it. Usually after i get one tile done i will open up a new document and tile it a few times and maybe dodge and burn here and there so it has some character and variation, i like to make it look a little aged personally.


Hahaha now lets see if anybody understood that. I want to see what yallls make

oh and here is the final product after i added cheesy plastic wrap and texture effects, feel free to steal it

Great tutorial Makes sense to me.

Just wanted to add that for steps 3 & 4, Photoshop (CS at least) has a filter called 'offset' that will do the quartering for you. You just input the values for half the width and height. If you only want vertial or horizontal tiling, just offset one of the axis.

And to test it you can select it then Edit>Define as Pattern. This will add it to your floodfill patterns list and you can open a new, larger document, and fill it to see how it looks.

I like tiling patterns I had to use it recently for a college project texturing 3D models with photographs of natural textures I took. Then I textured my SL build with some of 'em. I do love it when SL knowledge solves RL problems!

Heh...the entire tutorial makes sense...and I've actually done that a few times already...it's the actual "doodle" part I suck at

Wow really? See i really dont know the features of my program. I only have CS because my RL boyfriend has it for his photography, im not well versed in how to use it, I will have to check that out.

I tooooooooooooooold you! But you had to believe a stranger, of COURSE! cough cough *sticks tongue out* LOL
It is really nice of you Barnes to share this with the community, I found it very helpful when you gave to me ingame earlier, and now I am darn adicted to making fabulous wallpapers, ITS ALL YOU!! <3 YOU ALL MAKE SOME NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hehe *thumbs up*

since when have i ever trusted canadians? ask ingrid, i just cant do it.

That's a gorgeous tut, Barnes. Thanx for sharing! SL needs more Resident-created texturepacks.

It's so easy to use Offset in Photoshop when you're dealing with powers of 2-- just type offset 256 in a 512x512 image... and you have to use Offset when checking the texture to see that it is tiling or seamless.

Another cool thing to do is a double width or height image-- say 256x128, and make a "nonstandard" tiling that involves hex patterns... just did a couple of those the other day, they look really cool.

Really cool Barnes I think it's great you took the time to share. I also stole your wallpaper

Offset's been in photoshop's plugins for a long time (at least since photoshop 2.01).

oh my word. This is fantabulous. Thank you for sharing!

Great tutorial, Barnesworth, and very nice wallpaper. Thanks for sharing.

Like Erin, the only thing I would have added would have been the offest filter. Just so it's clear, to use it you go Filter -> Other -> Offset. Then you just enter in the numbers for by how many pixels on X & Y that you want everything to move, which for something like this would be half the height and width of the canvas.

Thanks a bunch for adding this

I hope no one decides they should try to sell it

Show off! Attention monger!


No, it's quite splendid, m'dear. Excellent!