Why Size Matters
Depicting surfaces believably is a per-case scenario. There are surfaces that are manufactured in a very precise and small tile repeatable manner - like metal mesh or chess board. These surfaces can be well depicted by just one small solid tile.
Soft Materials
One would think that even fabrics and clothing are manufactured in such fashion - there is one yarn that interveawes the other - and that is repeated hundred of thousand of times. While that is true, when we zoom out and take a look, we still do not usually see one homogenous blob of color
The reason is that many surfaces start to introduce imperfections. These can be slightly differently colored yarn or position displacement and shift - some do less, some more. Another component in the process that does introduce bigger scale movements is dyeing - for example giving jeans their natural look and movement.
When talking about soft fabrics like suede or other fabrics with tiny hairs - there are visible large local movements that represent visual key component of its appearance. These movements are created by naturality of sourcing and processing.
With that being said, particularly for clothing industry, it is true that majority of technical and usually produced fabrics can be depicted faithfully by acquiring smaller tile and repeating it.
The reason is also that human clothes are rarely showing as much area as for example a sofa would and also many fabrics are manufactured in high precision where bigger
local movement and contrasts can be neglected.
Synthesis - extension of Texture
One could try to overcome limited capture area by providing texture synthesis. Synthesis is used when a small tile of for example suede is captured and then computer tries to define how it would look on a bigger scale.
While this technique is viable for limited number of use cases, it has been proven
in our experience to be non sufficient and usually not able to correctly
estimate naturality of bigger samples like suede, wood, leather or wallpaper.
Wallpaper
Wallpaper can be manufactured very precisely and in small tiles - same as soft materials - but can also have big tiles, usually of up to 110cm. Visual difference from soft materials is that wallpaper is usually more solid and does not introduce displacement and shift in its texture.
For wallpaper, on the flip side from soft fabrics, it is usual to have big tiles which has to be captured and can not be created with synthesis at all.
Size Matter
tmac provides versatility of zooming in and getting smaller tile with higher dpi for more precisely manufactured surfaces while offering bigger scale of up to 1,3 x 1,3 meter for surfaces where big natural movement is important visual aspect.
