PI8 Basics #13: The Texture Fill Tool

For a long time, seasoned PI users have requested the ability to resize Natural Textures. The new Texture Fill tool, part of the Fill tools in the Tool Panel, makes it possible to fill images with Natural, Magic or Photo Gallery Textures, or any texture of your own that you wish to use. What's more, you can resize the texture (except for Magic textures) to suit the image.

For example, I want to fill the chimney object on a house I'm making. When the Texture Fill tool is selected, you can edit the fill's appearance in the Attributes toolbar. Note in the screen shot below that I've selected a Natural Texture fill from the Texture fill dropdown list.

Note also that in the Attributes toolbar you can click "More" to access the Open dialog box, from which you can select any texture on your computer. When a Magic Texture is selected, the More button opens a secondary dialog box with variations on the texture. You can also edit the Hue value of the Texture fill and its Transparency.

On the right side of the Attributes toolbar are several more options. Among these are the Merge method for the fill and the Resize options. Click the Resize down arrow to select an option for the fill. Resize will be grayed out for Magic Texture fills.

The default of "Don't resize texture" was used to fill the chimney with the selected brick Natural Texture. The fill is surrounded by a bounding box with control points. As you can see in the screen shot below, the texture is disproportionately large for the object.

After filling the object, select the "Resize freely" Resize option in the Attributes toolbar. Drag on the control points to resize the fill so that it is congruent with the rest of the image.

Now the bricks are the right size for the chimney. I've repeated the Resized Natural Texture brick fill on the top of the chimney.

Similarly, the Natural Texture brick fill was used on the foundation of the house object, but sized larger than it was on the chimney.

And here's the finished house.

 

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