Well,
After delving in to making decent seamless textures over some days for maps in Il.-2 I think I found the most suited tutorial for this skill.
There are many here like Bombsaway, Redko, Hudgarian etc who makes awesomely very good textures for retextured maps
There is a skill involved and an artform when developing a seamless texture.
I've mainly been using Gimp 2.2 and now recently 2.4 for this purpose.
Many people also say that the make seamless filter can be ok but you really don't have any control over the texture.
I have discovered it is pot luck using this filter some textures are ok others are not.
I looked in to a number of ways to create the ultimate very very seamless for IL-2 maps. In-other-words trying to have no eye sore repeated lining etc in the texture.
The First Method.
This was on youtube and I tried it. However it may be a perfectly good seamless texture but it seems to have a diamond pattern in the middle of the texture
which looks very wierd for IL-2 scenic purposes,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-i2gU_LMK4I then researched further into seamless texture tutorials and found this method of making a seamless texture.
http://rubicondigital.host22.com/index.php/articles/general/25-creating-seamless-texturesThis method goes way beyond the first method and should be a good base to use for creating seamless textures for IL-2 map making .
The author discusses a number of things that should be done first even before you start painting with the clone tool such as
"There are colour and luminance differences across the image. We need to fix them."
The auther also shows a very artistic approach to using the clone tool.
I've just started to learn and go over this procedure however I get stuck in Gimp here
Set the blending mode of the top layer to Soft Light at 100%. The colour and brightness shifts have been smoothed out. The top layer might be giving an unwanted tinge to the background layer. If so, select the top layer and turn its saturation all the way down
I can set the blending mode of the top layer to Soft Light at 100 percent However I am not sure which satuaration filter the author is referring to.
The one I see in Gimp is Colours/ Hue Saturation.
The auther says to turn it all the way down. not sure. 0 or below 0 into the _ numbers
If anyone in IL-2 land wants to add in thier own experiences in making seamless textures for IL-2 maps feel free to do so.
Kirby