Procedural texture generation captured my mind a long time ago, but until recently I have not met a good working example. Still it’s the same idea in its core – take small pieces and interconnect them into a more complex system (just like you take houses and build towns in Knights Province). It is rather clunky though, for its main goal is to produce 3D volume materials and affect the render pipeline rather than create flat surfaces. In my 3D editing app (Lightwave 3D) there’s a procedural texture generation subsystem. Procedural texture generation is not uncommon to me. That made me think, if those nice textures are a product of an algorithm, surely I can tweak and repeat that algorithm to get the exact result I’m looking for. So when I found another bunch of neat textures I noticed they were not hand-painted, but procedurally generated. Every time it’s either a different scale, too low-res, watermarked, has unclear copyright, etc.

Finding suitable textures (free or not) to use in the game is not easy. Shingled roofs are so common in the game and they make the most screen area after terrain. So I was looking for shingles textures online again. Guess what, instead of painting by hand, all those textures can be generated from noise and simple functions! Those nice shingles, wooden beams, plaster and whitewashed walls, grass and lava. SD is a tool for procedural texture generation. Thanks to monthly support from my patrons on Patreon I was able to purchase Substance Designer!

Substance painter free textures