Taking photos to import as material?

[NateMantis]

Anyone ever try going out and taking photos of textures (concrete, grass, sheetrock)and importing them as textures, then materials?

If this is a viable solution to quickly getting your own materials loaded into UDK, does anyone have any tips on making sure the texture repeats fluidly as a material? By this I mean grass would look like grass and not grass tile.

Any other methods of getting quick materials or meshes is appreciated.. The ones that come with UDK are a bit too gothic for the type of map I would like to create.

Thank you!

[DigitalDemolition]

(before starting, make sure your textures are 4096x4096 or under)I use pixplant and crazybump, you take a bmp or jpg and they both auto normalize the textures made, i usually import them as BMP, there is a option for the popup box right when you import, for the original texture you had check on the option "Create material?"
you then double click the newly created material in the content browser, material editor pops up then hold ctrl and click your material box and drag it to the right(it's connected to diffuse)then right click and go to "Texture" then "New textureSampleParameterNormal" import your normalized bmp or png then back in material editor click on the box (textureSampleParameterNormal) we just made look down below at it's Properties and notice it says "Texture" go back to content browser click on your normalized material then go back to the "Texture" box and click on the Green Arrow,connect the NormalParamBox to Normal(on the left side) by clicking on the small little black box right above the little red box.you'll have to see about more advanced settings, I know the good basics but there is alot more like "Multiple" & "TexCoord" that will enhance the specular and bump effects.

[NateMantis]

Thanks for your help!