Tile-able Backgrounds- The next step

Here is another repeating background tutorial that is still entry level. We’ll assume that you’ve done the Sinus Pattern Tutorial and have a basic understanding of the GIMP.

Sometimes the best graphic designs come from a little luck or by playing with the tools at your disposal until you create something you like. Many times I find myself taking this route and there have been quite a few instances where it’s worked out well for me. This is no replacement for having a solid plan for the job, though. Knowing what you are doing is a good thing. But sometimes part of understanding what you are doing is by getting your hands a little dirty.

Let’s create a new file in the GIMP that is 256 x 256. On our first layer we’ll add just a plain old sinus pattern by clicking Filters-> Render-> Pattern-> Sinus. Set the colors under the color tab to black and white.

After you’ve placed the sinus pattern add a new layer and this time we are going to make a checkerboard by clicking Filters-> Render-> Pattern -> Checkerboard. This may or may not be tile-able depending on the size of the checkerboards. For our graphic size we will make it 25 pixels.

As you can see the pattern is not perfect, but it will work just fine for what we are doing. We will now look to mix our two images in an eye catching manner. You can cycle through the different layer viewing modes for the checkerboard layer, but as I said, we’re going to go one little step farther in this tutorial.

We are going to use the Bump Map Filter on the checkerboard layer. The Bump Map Filter creates the illusion of 3D by using color gradients. The GIMP allows us to select a file to use as our bump map for a myriad of possibilities. What file are we going to use? Don’t worry, we can use a GIMP layer and we’ll use the sinus layer as our bump map.

So let’s go to Filters-> Map-> Bump Map. Clicking preview on the left will let you see image updates as you make changes. The select box that says Bump Map is where we will select our sinus layer, or any layer you’d like to use as your bump map. There are three styles of mapping, for this graphic we’ll use spherical. Don’t forget you can flip through any of the settings and see the changes in the preview window.

Azimuth, Elevation and Depth are the three main controls. Depth is how much 3d you’d like to see, while azimith and elevation adjust lighting direction and have some to do with how the depth displays, also. Here we’ve made the azimuth about 243, elevation 33 and depth 50.

Not exactly impressed, right? It’s a little rough right now, but it’s time to change the layer mode from normal to multiply. Now that’s a little better.

Now that wasn’t so tough was it? Building complex graphics is just like building simple ones, just with more steps. We’ll try to take another step in complexity in our next go around. In the meantime, why not add some color to our graphic? The overlay layer mode might add a little more life.