The periodic ripple structures on wolfram and titanium surfaces are induced experimentally by linear polarized femtosecond laser pulses at small incident angles. The structural features show a material difference in the s- and p-polarized laser irradiation. The interspace between the ripples increases significantly for p-polarized laser irradiation when it exceeds a threshold angle, and the ripples’ periodicities are larger than the wavelength of the incident p-polarized femtosecond laser; however, no significant change in the period of the ripples is observed with increasing incident angle for s-polarized laser irradiation. To explain these phenomena we propose a resonant absorption mechanism, by which the experimental observations can be interpreted.