What’s the best way to avoid tiling with triplanar projection and paint maps?

[StevenTS]

I’ve been trying to get my procedural material to look less uniform across a large surface, but every time I use a triplanar projection it just feels flat and synthetic. I’m wondering if blending in some hand-painted detail maps at certain angles would break up that obvious tiling, or if that defeats the whole point of a non-destructive workflow.

[Matthew_W]

I did something like that on a big concrete wall texture. I kept the base using triplanar, then layered a small hand painted detail texture and blended it by world space angle so the brush strokes show up only at certain orientations. It broke the obvious tiling without killing the non destructive workflow since it was just a texture pass on top.

[LoganSP]

I tried painting detail maps too, but on long stretches the pattern still pops, and the detail texture tiling becomes obvious. I ended up swapping to a micro-noise texture with a tiny amount of random rotation per tile so the repetition isn't so obvious. It helped more than big color detail did.

[VioletJH]

Do you think the real problem is the shading or the texture tiling itself? Sometimes the lighting makes the repetition read louder than the tiles.

[Layla.L]

I wandered for a while and ended up suspecting geometry curvature plays a role. A tiny displacement pass or micro bevels can mask the flatness revealed by the projection, even if you stay non destructive. It felt like a separate tweak rather than a fix, and I didn't settle on one approach.