Common information
Compatibility
Installation and activation
Release notes
Simple material creation
Generated texture settings
Render nodes
Tile set parameters
Slice editor
Normals workflow
Pattern parameters
Pattern editor
Texture formation mechanism
Polygonal pattern import
Tile ID
Tile random parameter
Bitmap-in-container
Procedural gap
Tile channels settings
Workflow optimization
1. ATTENTION! The plugin requires an active internet connection to work.
2. Run the plugin installation as administrator. The included archive must be located next to the file QuickTiles.exe at the time of installation, to install a new version, or update the libraries
3. Select the versions of 3d max that the plugin will be installed on (from 2018 to 2024)
4. The plugin library is installed in the current user's folder, in the QuickTiles subcategory
4. The plugin library is located in the current user's folder, in the QuickTiles subcategory. All files are downloaded from the plugin interface. Libraries are updated once a week automatically, or at any time, manually, in the About section.
5. After installation, the plugin will appear in the list of textures, in the General tab
6. The free trial period is 14 days. No additional activation or registration is required
7. After 14 days, the plugin will stop working. This means that the test period (or paid subscription period) has expired and requires purchase and activation. Also in About section you can see "Subscription expired" notification
8. When purchasing a subscription on the site, BE SURE to provide a valid email address
9. After purchasing a subscription, click Activate in the About section
10. In the window that appears, enter the same email address that you used for the purchase and click Ok
11. Within a few minutes you will receive an email with a link to activate it
12. After clicking on this link, the plugin will be activated.
13. After restarting 3d max, the plugin will work correctly until the subscription ends.
14. 30 days before the end of the subscription period, the exact number of remaining days will appear in the About section
15. While the subscription is active, the Activation button is unavailable.
Re-activation
16. If you reinstall the plugin on a new computer or make significant changes to the hardware of the current one, perform the activation again according to the standard procedure. The plugin installed on the old computer will stop working.
17. There can be no more than 5 such re-activations for one year of subscription. If you have run out of activations, contact technical support (support@quick-tiles.net) and we will try to find a solution to this problem.
For example, let's create a simple pattern in the Pattern editor. Use the 
tool to create several tiles (1). Do not forget to reduce the field to the minimum required size (2). After creating the base pattern, you can fill the repeating part with the Fill gaps button (3). You can also select any template from the library. When you finish, click Done (5).
For more the details of the Pattern editor, see the corresponding section.
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In this tab, you can add sets of tiles and adjust the parameters of their distribution.
Add bitmap tile set — adds an empty set of bitmap tiles
Add color tile set — adds an empty set of single-color tiles
Noise type — choose between a simple uniform mix of tile sets and a custom map. (see examples below)
None field —adding a custom map for mixing sets.
Add tiles — opens the bitmap tile slicing editor (Slice editor, SE).
Bitmap set— here you can specify the name of the tile set selected in SE.
Probability — the frequency of appearance of tiles of this set in the final texture. Works if more than one set is added.
— change the position of the set in the stack by dragging it . The order depends on the position when using a custom distribution map (see the examples below)
— deleting a set.
— duplicate the set.
Tile set id's — opens a window for selecting the ID numbers of the pattern tiles to which this set will be distributed. You can select one or more numbers.
For more information, see the section Tile ID
Сolor set — here you can specify the name of a single-color set.
Diffuse, reflect, roughness... — setting the colors or noise of the set channels. If you leave the color completely black, the channel will not be generated.
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— search by name and tags
Category — select the cut category
Create set from texture — create a new slicing from a solid texture. Resets the interface and all settings.
Create set from individual tiles — creating the cutting of already pre-cut tiles.
Icon of the finished cut saved in the library.
Double-click on the icon - loads the slicing and all settings to SE. A right-click will open the context menu.
Duplicate — duplicates a set in the library
Rename — rename a set in a library
Delete — deleting a set
Save to file — export set (when you exporting the slice, the source bitmaps are written to the file, so you do not need to transfer them separately)
Set custom preview — set a custom icon for the selected set. You can use images of any format, the plugin will reduce it and trim to a square.
Set default preview — resets the custom icon to the standard one.
Import tile set — import the ready slicing from a file. When importing, the source bitmaps saved in the slicing file will be unzipped into a folder C:\Users\your_user\QuickTiles\libs
Save (to library) — saving the slicing with the settings to the library. When saving to the library, the original bitmaps are not duplicated, and are loaded from the place where they were originally. Therefore, do not delete or move the original bitmaps used to create the slicing, otherwise the slicing will load empty.
You cannot save or change the source files of the library.
— tools for creating and editing slicing
— slicing creation and editing modes
— Mode 1, the generation of the grid. In this mode, you can create a grid of lines that will be slice a texture and move it away from the edges. Tools and manual editing are not available here.
Preset — choosing a grid pattern — standard or herringbone
Vertical — количество вертикальных линеек
Horizontal — number of vertical lines
Row offset — the distance by which the row is shifted
N row offset — number of offset rows
— The second mode is manual editing mode of the grid. In this mode, you can manually shift the slicing lines, adjusting to the imperfections of the texture. Some of the tools are available here.
— Move tool. Shifts the horizontal rulers along the entire length of the grid, and the vertical ones in the limits of the two closest horizontal ones.
— Erase tool. Deletes rulers. The horizontal lines are removed along the entire length of the grid, leaving the ones above as vertical lines.
— Cut tool. Adds a new line. To create a horizontal slice, hover over the nearest vertical ruler and you will see a preview. To create a vertical slice, hover over the existing horizontal one.
Functions Preset, Vertical, Horizontal, Row offset, N row offset and Cropping are blocked in the second and third mode.
Returning to the previous mode from the previous ones will cancel all the changes made.
— In the third mode you can edit individual tiles manually. Move the finished tiles, rotate them, remove , cut , etc. All the tools are available here.
Context menu of the tools:
Select smaller — selects all tiles of a much smaller size. Useful when cleaning after autoslice.
Select same aspect — selects all tiles with the same aspect ratio
Select same ID — selects all tiles in the same ID
Mark all — disable all tiles (only for the erase tool)
Unmark all — enable all tiles (only for the erase tool)
— Move tool. Offset the tiles. To select multiple tiles, use Ctrl. You can also use the keyboard arrows to move tiles.
— Rotate tool. Rotates the tiles around the center.
— Scale tool. Stretches the tile by the selected side. The rotated tiles will stretch in local coordinates.
— Erase tool. Turns off the tiles by marking them black. These tiles will not be used in the layout. They can be turned on at any time. Erase+Shift — complete removal of tiles. You can also delete a tile by pressing Delete.
— Cut tool. Cuts the tile vertically. Cut+Ctrl - cuts horizontally.
— Create tool. Creates a new tile.
In this mode, copying tiles via Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V works, as well as steps back via Ctrl+Z.
— Set orient tool. Allows you to set a custom tile orientation.
By default, the orientation of the tiles is set perpendicular to the long side of the container. When you click on the tile once, an arrow will appear showing the default direction.
To change the direction, move the mouse cursor with the left button pressed, just as if you wanted to rotate the tile. At the same time, the direction arrow will rotate in increments of 45 degrees.
To rotate at an arbitrary angle, hold down the Shift.
To align the arrow perpendicular to any face of the container — Alt+Click
To align the arrow in the direction of the specified vertex — Ctrl+Shift+Click
To align the arrow vertically — Ctrl+Click
To reset the direction to default, and remove the arrow — double Click
This function is useful when placing tiles of complex, asymmetrical shape, as well as in cases when it is necessary to observe a certain direction of the tile pattern.
The direction set in the Slicer will correspond to the direction set in the Pattern editor.
*When using the function, it is often necessary to disable random reflection of tiles and switch to Stretch mode in the Bitmap-in-container section.
**After using the Rotate tool, you need to re-set the tile direction.
In the third mode, the drop-down menu works (right mouse button)
Copy - copy the selected tiles. You can copy from one set to another
Paste - paste the copied tiles
Outline - expand or reduce the selected tiles evenly from all sides
Select all - select all tiles
Invert selected - invert selection
Select smaller - select all tiles significantly smaller in size than the current one
Select same ID - select all tiles in the same ID as the current one (same function - double click on the tile)
Select same aspect - select all tiles in the same aspect as the current one
IMPORTANT: create tiles so that the blue area overlaps the tile surface and does not go into the seam.
The following parameters are not dependent on the slicing mode.
Texture placement
Vertical offset — vertical offset of the texture
Horizontal offset — horizontal offset of the texture
Rotate — texture rotation
Plain texture — enable this option if you want to randomly distribute a texture inside the containers that initially has no seams, such as marble or granite slabs, concrete, stone, wood, etc.Other slicing settings are not required in this case and will be blocked.
Tiling vertical — indicates that the texture is seamless vertically
Tiling horizontal — indicates that the texture is seamless horizontally
Setup ID — here you can set the tile ID directly in the slicer. This is convenient for distributing complex sets with tiles of various shapes, colors and sizes, such as Origami, Trapeze or Tiara.
Double-click on a tile will select all tiles in the same ID
Texture scaling
Reduces the original texture to 12%, 25% or 50%.
Often, a large size of the original texture is not required, and only slows down the plugin. This function allows you to reduce the size of the source files in the process of work, and does not require saving and storing separate sets of smaller textures.
Options
Gaps — specifies the width of the gripped seams. Set this value so that the red area of the tile slightly overlap the neighboring one, or less if you want to reduce the original seam.
In Mode 1 and 2, Gaps adjusts the width of the rulers. When switching to mode 3, gaps between tiles appear in the area captured by the rulers.
View alpha — setting the transparency of the preview of the finished tiles.
Numbering — puts a number on each tile. Helps to find and modify certain tiles in the final layout.
Autoslice button — opens the automatic tile recognition window. Read more about this below.
Clear grid button — resets the grid settings in slicing mode 1 and 2.
Input maps — slots for adding a source of texture (drag-and-drop copying works)
Diffuse — a slot for adding diffuse texture.
Reflect — a slot for the reflection texture.
Roughness — slot for textures of glossiness or roughness of reflections.
Displacement — a slot for the height texture.
32bit .exr or .tif textures are recognized, but the plugin outputs 8bit anyway. In this case, the work may slow down. Better use the original 8bit textures. In future versions, an option that includes a 32-bit process for displacement will most likely appear.
Bump — a slot for black-and-white textures of small bump.
Normal — a slot for the Normal bump texture. In this slot, you should not install anything other than normal maps, since the plugin uses a very specific algorithm to work with normals.
Mask — a slot for the black-and-white mask channel. Tiles should always be white, seams — black. The texture from this slot is not passed directly to the material, but is used for automatic tile recognition, as well as for correct randomization of tiles inside QuickTiles, or for replacing the seam texture.
To remove a texture from a slot, use right-click on the slot and select Clear
In the color picker to the right of the texture name, you can choose any color if you do not need a texture on this channel
The eye, the symbol of the channel displayed in the viewport.
And when you click on the pencil, the texture color editing window opens.
By clicking on the pencil, in the Normal channel, you can adjust the angle of rotation of the normals, as well as invert the channels.
For example: you will need to invert the green channel if the original normals are made in OpenGL format. For more information, see Normals workflow.
Note 1. When adding a texture to the Diffuse slot, the plugin recognizes and automatically loads the other channels, if the textures are in the same folder, and have the same name as diffuse, and the corresponding channel label. For example: brick137_diffuse, brick137_glossiness, brick137_heigth.
Note 2. After the initial channel recognition, you can remove or replace any of the textures (even diffuse), re-recognition will not occur. To re-recognize the channels, clear all the slots except diffuse manually and add the texture to diffuse again
- choosing a channel for previews
- disabling automatic preview updates
Turning off autoupdate previews SIGNIFICANTLY speeds up the setup of the material.
- manual preview update button
— switching preview channels (Ctrl+Shift+PageUp/PageDown)
— opens a large preview (Ctrl+Shift+P)
— selecting one of the simple presets
Pattern editor button — opens the window of the additional module for creating and editing patterns (see the section Pattern editor)
Base tile size H — width of base tiles
Base tile size V — height of the base tiles
Gap width H — horizontal width of the procedural seam
Gap width V — vertical width of the procedural seam
To save the original seam, set the size of the procedural seam to 0.
When working with polygonal patterns, only the Gap width H parameter works, which in this case is responsible for the width of all seams.
и 
— includes a proportional change in the size of the tile and seam
Gap blend — original gap mixing depth
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— search by name and tags.
Category — select pattern category.
Create rectangular pattern — clears viewport to create a new rectangular pattern
Import polygonal pattern — importing a polygon pattern (for more information, see the section with the same name)
Icon of the pattern, saved in the library.
Double-click on the icon loads the pattern and all its settings in PE. Right-click will open the context menu.
Duplicate — duplicates the pattern in the library
Rename — renaming a pattern in the library
Delete — deleting a pattern
The patterns included with the plugin cannot be deleted
New from bitmap — not active in the first version. This feature will be implemented later
Save (to library) — saves the created pattern to the library
You cannot save or change the source library files
Move tool — moves selected in the viewport tile. It impossible to overlay tiles.
Create tool — creates a new tile by stretching. The tile is created in the selected ID. By default — ID1
Set orient tool. Allows you to set a custom tile orientation.
By default, the orientation of the tiles is set perpendicular to the long side of the container. When you click on the tile once, an arrow will appear showing the default direction.
To change the direction, move the mouse cursor with the left button pressed, just as if you wanted to rotate the tile. At the same time, the direction arrow will rotate in increments of 45 degrees.
To rotate at an arbitrary angle, hold down the Shift.
To align the arrow perpendicular to any face of the container — Alt+Click
To align the arrow in the direction of the specified vertex — Ctrl+Shift+Click
To align the arrow vertically — Ctrl+Click
To reset the direction to default, and remove the arrow — double Click
This function is useful when placing tiles of complex, asymmetrical shape, as well as in cases when it is necessary to observe a certain direction of the tile pattern.
The direction set in the Slicer will correspond to the direction set in the Pattern editor.
*Using this tool is especially useful when working with polygonal patterns of complex shape, where the plugin may mistakenly determine the "direction" of tiles.
Extract aspect groups — opens the slicing library (Slice Editor) and creates several tiles of the same aspect (with the same aspect ratio) as the tiles in the selected slicing
This feature is very useful when you need to create a wild stone texture from a particular source, where the aspect ratios of the tiles are very different
Fill gaps — the plugin fills an empty viewport area by copying an already created template. All non-multiple zones are filled with 1x1 cell tiles
Select base tile — assigns a base tile for calculating the size of the pattern.
Size H и Size V — the number of viewport cells (the pattern may be non-square)
Set tiling box — set the tiling point for the polygonal pattern. It is located at the intersection of the horizontal and vertical repetition lines of the pattern (see the video in the Polygonal pattern import section)
Tile ID
Assigning tile IDs (for more information, see Tile ID)
Search — search parameters for a pattern in the library
Category — pattern category
Tags — any words associated with the stored slicing
Done button — accepting the result and closing the pattern editor window WITHOUT saving the pattern to the library. The pattern will be saved locally in the material. You can return to editing at any time by clicking the Pattern editor button again. Be careful. If you select any of the simple pattern templates in Mat. editor, the created pattern will be deleted.
Cancel button — changes the settings you made.
When creating a texture, QT works in the following sequence.
1. First of all, it takes a given pattern. The pattern is always taken as a whole piece, the one that is set in the Pattern Editor.
2. After that, the plugin calculates the size of the pattern horizontally and vertically, taking into account the size of the base tile, seams, and all the specified randomizations.
3. Last of all, QuickTiles compares the resulting pattern size and the desired size, and repeats the whole pattern as many times as it can fit into the specified size.
It is important to understand that any pattern is square. But it can change its shape to a rectangular one if the aspect ratio of the base tile of the pattern and the base tile set in Mat.editor differ.
For example: we have a simple pattern with a base tile size of 1:2. With the same aspect ratio in the base texture tile, the final patch will be square.
However, if we set the size of the base tile in mat.editor to a wider size, for example 1:5, together with the base tile, the entire pattern will stretch and become 2.5 times wider.
If such distortions are insignificant, QT will give a high-quality result without any problems. However, if the base tile of the pattern is vertical, for example, in the aspect ratio of 3:1, and the base tile of the texture is horizontal, 1:6, the resulting pattern will be too elongated, and errors will appear. Therefore, in such cases, we recommend making a more similar pattern.
Well, in the end, due to the fact that the pattern itself is repeated in the patch only in its entirety, and often has a non-square shape, the final patch also ceases to be square.
Suppose the size of the pattern is 123x87 cm, and the desired size of the patch is 500x500 cm. The width of the whole pattern will fit (500/123 = 4,065) 4 times, and the height (500/87 = 5.74) 6 times. Therefore, the size of the final patch will be 492x522 cm (123*4 = 492 and 87*6 = 522).
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All operations performed on QuickTiles are differ in complexity and the processor resources required to perform them. The more parallel settings are enabled in the plugin, the longer it will take to process new commands.
To optimize the speed of operation, we recommend that you consider the following points:
1. In the process of setting up the test material, use a small preset size of a piece of texture. By default, it is set to 200x200cm, but you can use a smaller size.
2. The smaller the source texture and the fewer channels it has, the faster the plugin will work. Do not use large textures in 4K resolution or higher, unless necessary. Do not use 32 or 16-bit textures. This will slow things down, and the plugin will still convert them to 8-bit.
3. When making settings, do not keep the large preview window open unnecessarily. It creates a texture in a large size, and therefore slows down the work further.
The best option would be to turn off the auto-update preview, and update it manually if necessary.
4. When working with the displacement, regardless of what data you transmit to the plugin, it converts them to 16 bits. This is required for higher quality and smoother shape gradients. However, it is desirable that the map be quite contrasting, but with the preservation of details. If this is not the case, edit the source in Photoshop or using HSV in a slicer.
5. Also, when working with the displacement in Corona Render, we recommend adding the CoronaDisplacement modifier and increasing the quality to 2 pixels.
6. The Corner fillet and Tile edge distortion size settings complicate the shape of the tile and can slow down the speed of the plugin.
7. Randomizing bitmaps is a rather time-consuming operation. Add it at the end of the material setup.
8. After you finish setting up the material, do the tests at a low resolution of 2K — if you need to make changes, the texture update in 2K will be much faster. After finishing the settings, set the working size and resolution.
9. Keep in mind that in order to work out the mixing of the original seams, or to generate the shape of the procedural seam, the seam must have a sufficient number of pixels of the final texture. If you are dissatisfied with the appearance of the seams, increase the output resolution.
10. When setting the final resolution of a texture, we recommend that you use on the following ratios of the texture physical size and its resolution:
200х200 cm — 2K — normal quality, 4K — excellent quality.
400х400 cm — 4K — normal quality, 8K — excellent quality.
1000x1000 cm — 8K — normal quality, 16K — excellent quality.
11. After you finish working on the texture, be sure to turn on Store to temp (for storing and working locally) or Store to scene (for transferring a scene to another computer). Quick Tiles will update the texture and save it to your hard drive, in a special file, from which it will load the next time you open 3d max. Otherwise, every time you open the program, the texture will be regenerated, which can take a significant amount of time.
