Extraction of a representative tile from a near-periodic texture

Near-periodic textures are all around us, in brick walls, fabrics, mosaics, and many other manifestations. They are made up of a basic motif, which can be extracted, yielding a small image known as a tile. In particular, such textures are used in 3D scenes in virtual environments like games. However, the memory allocated for textures on a video card is limited. Generating texture by tiling allows scenes to be rendered in a realistic manner while using very little memory. This paper presents a simple method for extracting a representative tile from a near-periodic texture, working from a photo. The period of the texture is calculated to determine the size of the tile. Then the representative tile is chosen based on two criteria: avoiding color discontinuities at the junction of tiles, and recreating a texture that is as faithful as possible to the original.