this is best viewed on the forums - [1]

Anyways, on to the tutorial. This is by "justanother1" and is being added by Chocolatepie33.

Part 1: Seamless/Height

for this tutorial I'm using Paint.NET along with several of the plugins. I can't remember which plugin was in which pack so you'll need to get several ( You should get them all anyway, their free and very useful). The image I used is a free wallpaper found here. I brought the image into Paint.NET and cropped it down to an area I like toward the upper right hand corner and resized to 512x512. Your crop doesn't have to be exactly square, but try and get it close so there's not too much stretching. Then I duplicated the Layer so I have two to work with.

Image: [2]

On the bottom layer I used the Seamless Texture Creator plugin from the Effects-Distortions menu, using the Seamless Texture Helper setting. What this does is swap the upper right quarter and the lower left quarter, and the upper left quarter to the lower right quarter. but it leaves an ugly cross in the middle, this is what the top layer is for.

Image: [3]

On the top layer we'll use the eraser tool around all the edges except in the middle where the cross is. You can erase more or less, the trick is to find areas where the two layers will blend nicely. Finally use the magic wand selection tool to select all the transparent areas, the INVERT your selection, and use the Effects-Selection-Feather Selection plugin. I use the full 10 setting. this will transparent the edges and help it blend nicer. Then flatten and save your Seamless texture. Then we'll need a Heightmap. Start by using the Black and White function in the Adjustments menu, then add a new layer for touch ups. The height map is a depth representation on a greyscale. However darker colors will show up as depth in the wrong area, so we'll use a lighter grey color and paint in those areas, then use Effects-Blurs-Guassian blur and Layer transparency to blend it in.

Image: [4]

Making Seamless textures