Effective Brick Pattern

A few people asked me how I got the brick effect for the house I drew. I whipped up a tutorial full of Images to show you exactly how simple it is to do. This effect can be used with any pattern you wish like rocks or stone tiles.

In this tutorial you will learn to create a seamless pattern, expand and create tiles on the fly, use bumpmaps, and overlay simple shadows.

your final product will look like this.


Artistic Level: 1/5
Difficulty Level: 1/5
Software: MS Paint & GIMP (freeware)

Now, lets begin.
We will start by opening a New Microsoft Paint (MSP) file and changing the size to 64x32 in the attributes.
Menu: Image>Attributes

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Now we select our Rectangle tool and choose the middle option provided underneath with a rectangle outline and fill.
Next select the dark red colour with the right mouse button to set it as your background color and fill.
Lets simply fill the entire area with one rectangle that will represent our brick stencil.

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Go back to the attributes and change the image size to 64x64
Menu: Image>Attributes
Select and Copy the entire image

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Paste the image diagonally accross underneath the orignial image.
Note: you will get a thicker (2 pixel) line between the bricks. Also the copies below do not have to be exactly centered.

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Save the image as something relevant such as brick.png you should end-up with this figure if you dont save and use the image below.

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Open the file with gimp

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Select the menu item Filters>Map>Small Tiles
Select all tiles only and set the number of segments to "4"

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You should end up with a tile set that looks like this.

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Select the menu item Filters>Map>Tiles opposed to "small tiles"
and set the values to 256x256

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You should get this result if you dont, save and use this image

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Now select the "Color Selection" Tool
Shift+O or Tools>Selection Tools>By Color Select

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Select one of the red rectangle bricks, they should all automatically highlight as selected.

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Select menu item Filters>Map>Bump Map and change the attributes to
Map Type: Linear
Compensate for darkening: checked
Invert Bumpmap: unchecked
Tile Bumpmap: unchecked
Azimuth: 120
Elevation: 30
Depth: 3
x offset: 0
y offset: 0
water level: 0
Ambient: 0

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You should have gained this effect (zoomed in level)

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Zoom back out to 100% and select your "free select tool"
"F" key or Tools>Selection Tools>Free Selection

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With your Free Selection Tool cut out the shape of the chimney or any desired shape you wish.
Note: its ok to go outside the boundary to get sharp ends at the top and bottom.

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Make sure to close the Free Selected Loop and Copy the selected Image.

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Now select the menu item File>Create>From Clipboard
A new image file will be created with only the selcted portion and transparent background
note: be careful not to copy anything else at this point we will need the image in the clipboard later

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Create a new layer Shift+Ctrl+N or Layers>New Layer
Select the transparency radio option and leave the default size as is.
note: be careful not to copy anything else at this point we will need the image in the clipboard later

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Select the new layer in the layers panel and Paste the image that still resides in your clipboard.
it should remain as a floating image for the time being.
note: do not click away from the selection this will make things easier to work with.

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Immediately select your Paint Brush with a bold marker do not use the faded markers
"P" key or Tools>Paint Tools>Painbrushcolor in the entire area of the floating pasted image.

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Change the opacity of the layer to 40%
Select the Rectangle selection tool "R" key or Tools>Selection Tools>Rectangle Select and click once anywhere on the screen to deselect the current selection.
this will simultaniously drop the floating image into the new layer that was created.

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Cut out the center of the image from the new layer using the "Free Selection Tool" as used before.

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Hit delete to remove that portion of the image.

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Save as PNG and Merge the layers
Note: Don't forget to save the gimp source file too .XCF

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Congrats!!
The long Tidious Tutorial is over you got yourself a nice brick pattern.
You can use this as head blocks like in the original mario series, use it as platforms, use it as castle or house walls, chimney, it has many uses. Also for an extra challenge use this methode to create a stone Wall.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and find it usefull in many different ways. Please post your comments below and rate using the polls above.




Source Files: Download

Great!
really helpful, final result looks awesome to!

i will try it as soon as i have downloaded gimp!

killer. I'm so noob to shortcuts like this, i didnt even know shiz like this was possible xD

i probably just do it the old fashioned way...pixel by pixel...xO

probably why pixel art isnt as fun to me xD

5/5
good detailed tutorial

- JuNki3

Sweet monkeys, I just do that manually in Paint, with some copy-and-paste. I haven't the patience to open my GIMP unless I'm rendering a sphere or something.

Hmmm... Those bricks look a bit too shiny and new. You should make them more... damaged, if you know what I mean. I'll whip up a quick example.

EDIT: Here we go, the one on the left is a nice, shiny new brick, and the one on the right is my more natural brick. You can see the difference.



I just did that by copying the shiny brick and playing around with the airbrush.

DruidTC you can make the bricks any which way you want dependy on the style you need for the game. Like I said before this method works for any texture you like to use. The bricks I used are merely an example. Nice work on the bricks BTW