Tiling (Tracer Line)

Certain fabrics feature extremely fine threads, making it challenging to scan them perfectly aligned at 100% horizontal, which complicates tiling. The trace helper line is a very useful tool for tiling materials with small threads, when applying it, it will trace each thread individually.

The first step is selecting the Trace helper line tool, then clicking and dragging in the desired location on the texture.

Similarly, we need to create the other three trace lines to create the perfect rectangular cutout.

Once we have all four tracing lines ready, the next step is to snap the grid corners to the intersections of the tracing lines. Please note that the snapping should be turned on for this step to work.

Finally, we will check how the tiling looks, and apply the final steps for a perfect tiling, that includes running the AI alignment tool if needed, and enabling the border blending for a seamless texture.

The trace helper line can be used on any texture, for example, if the threads are not very visible in the diffuse map, then it is suggested to try tracing the threads on another map, for example the normal map, or wherever the texture is most visible.