What Do You Do With Low-Res Materials?

[stusic]

I often get requests for exact types of finishes on materials; a prime example is the countertop of the apartment floorplan I just posted -- they gave me a number and I was able to get the attached image of the granite from the manufactureres website. The problem is that it's a low-res map and the tiling is painfully obvious. So how do you use the image without getting the cruddy tiled look?

[dellis]

I would fire off an email to the manufacturer asking for a larger picture of that material. Be sure to tell them that you are producing a rendering for someone who is going to use their product. :) Another way would be to shoot it yourself....if its available. That is a small sample but if it were me and i couldn't get a better photo of it...i would spend a little bit of time trying to create it procedurally. If that didn't work i would jump over to photoshop with the little sample and tile it a bunch of times and then start painting out the obvious bits. There are some pretty good programs out there that will create tilable images but with a sample that small you're going to get noticable tiling unless you increase the size.

[stusic]

I would fire off an email to the manufacturer asking for a larger picture of that material. Be sure to tell them that you are producing a rendering for someone who is going to use their product. :) Another way would be to shoot it yourself....if its available. That is a small sample but if it were me and i couldn't get a better photo of it...i would spend a little bit of time trying to create it procedurally. If that didn't work i would jump over to photoshop with the little sample and tile it a bunch of times and then start painting out the obvious bits. There are some pretty good programs out there that will create tilable images but with a sample that small you're going to get noticable tiling unless you increase the size.

I dug all around their site looking for a larger version of the material, but it never occurred to me to email them and ask for one... thanks. :) I like procedural textures and thought about doing it that way, but I didn't think I had time.