www.artist-reference.com

Being an artist for long time in my career, browsing for new texture websites has always been my necessity as well as hobby. I happened to open this site once during my usual ventures as I was looking for good textures and 3D images. And I would like to say, that artists looking for some great material can definitely find a good collection on this particular website. While still under construction, this site promises to give the best of its collection of quality designs and images. TRU Textures stand by on the talk of unlimited downloads with no limits whatsoever. An artist looking for good and unique designs can surely go on to this. It is definitely worth giving a look at least once before deciding on the final textures.

This site shows off a collection of approximately 2000 sets of designs and textures. Each of these sets contains at least 10 textures. Most of them consist of more than 20 in them. Such a vast collection of textures gives the artist a wide variety of choices to choose from. Offered designs include metal, wood, nature, topography, etc. These are included in the basic section of the site. One can find interesting also 16 different 3D categories having Victorian, European and Middle Eastern themes as well as sets of seasonal themes including Halloween, Christmas and Easter. New textures are being added continuously on the site on a daily basis.

Having a fine search engine, like TRU Textures has, is one of the most important qualities of this kind of websites. To give the exact list of the designs and textures needed, one can type any name or design and the website lists out all those falling into that particular category. This eliminates the tough procedure of browsing through every list of designs for the required texture. Viewing through the numerous designs, it’s easy to look closely to each of them as the image zooms when clicked on it.

Different textures are available in PNG, TGA 24 or 32-bit file format. Depending on the posting time of the texture, its resolution may vary with initial textures having lower resolutions of 128 – 256 pixels. However, greater numbers of the textures are 512 pixels and even 1024 pixels, which are the most frequent sizes on the website. The older images with lower resolutions are however priced much lower than the routine price range.  Majority textures (up to 90 %) are seamless, designed to tiles. This site also offers 3D images, which are really helpful in building model designs for various construction purposes, so game designers, abstract artists and even architects can avail great designs from the collection.

One great feature about this site is that it does not have any flat membership fees. It offers unlimited downloads whenever you want and at a nominal price depending on the size and type of the texture as well as on type of license you choose. The prices are set per design and there are no restrictions whatsoever on the download limit. Payments are realizing via PayPal system and the website offers also credits, which can be purchased to avail discounts. One can purchase for example 1000 credits for 8 USD and avail 11% discount. If one purchases 5000 credits, he can get the same for 35 USD with 22% discount. There are varied such discount schemes on purchase of credits till 56% discount limits. Users of Second Life can buy some textures for Linden dollars.

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There are several license options to choose from according to customer’s usage intentions. The basic Second Life license is offered for using within Second Life environment only. With any world license, one will get the rights to use textures and images within any virtual world, Second Life included. Professional license and game developer license allow customer wider usage rights – for private or commercial use out of virtual environment. I would recommend you to read conditions of use carefully.

Overall, I would say this is a good source to get the latest and good designs. It is surely worth giving a look and ascertain.

Summary:

+       wide collection of themes, great 3D images, no download limits and nominal rates

-          the site usage limitation for non-second-life members – almost 35% of the images of the website are made available only for use in virtual Second Life environment

Popularity: 11% [?]

As technology goes incredibly fast forward literally day by day, 3D graphics have became matter of course and
standard in PC games, animated movies and other similar projects. 3D artists working with 3D graphics know how important are resources of photos taken for this purpose. In following review I am trying to point out some of the 3d.sk website’s main features, both positive and negative. This is supposed to be something like guide which should help you to make your own opinion and decide whether to subscribe or look for another website.

The content of www.3d.sk is made up by more than 240 200 unique royalty-free photos of human references, animal references, clothes, costumes, pre-made head textures and 3D human models. The basis of the website is formed by pictures of human references, both male and female. They are taken on the street or in the photo studio. Set of street references is basically varied collection of different types of people you can meet on the street. These are great if you are looking for interesting details (dreadlocks and other haircuts, piercing or tattoo, beard and moustache, any kinds of accessories, etc.). Sets of studio photos are more extensive, because they are enhanced by pictures of some specific poses (walking, sitting, modeling references, etc.) and even face expressions (basic emotions and phonemes). Photographed models in studio are both dressed and undressed. You can find photos of whole body, which are mostly taken from 5 or 8 angles, as well as details of particular parts, for example hand, eyes or recently added photos of fingers etc. There is quite nice collection of animal references, too – from tiny insect like butterfly, bugs, sea fish to big animals like horses, elephant or rhinoceros. Some of them are stuffed, photographed at the museum, other are live. Except references, 3d.sk provides also wide choice of photosets with regular clothes, working uniforms and various costumes from different historical period. Pre-made head textures, ready for comfortable and fast use while texturing, belong to premium content. With premium membership you will get access to more photos than with the regular one – in addition to head textures and 3D human models also more sets of costumes, clothes and animals.

Website has been designed with accessibility and ease of navigation in mind. Quick photo search is ensured by basic categories like age, gender, human race (asian, black, white), body type, clothes type etc., but there is also another way how to find more photos related by required feature. In behalf of more specific description, each photo is identified by tags, too. By clicking on one of tags you will get all photos tagged by this word. Speaking about search engine, I recommend you to use searching by categories instead of full text search, because photos may not be indexed by the key word you will type in full text search.

The pricing seems to be a really good deal, regarding the amount of photos provided. Although there is no free membership offered, the subscribing system is well adjusted, so at least one of the subscriptions should be affordable for any 3D artist or 3D graphics company. The price rises according to length of membership and according to whether it is premium membership or not. It is possible to subscribe hobby or commercial membership plan in length of 1, 3, 6 months and 1 year. Premium content is provided for subscribers with 3, 6 months and 1 year premium membership. Subscription starts at 24,95 EUR for 1 month hobby plan and the price rises up to 1290 EUR for 1 year premium commercial plan. Let’s see some example- if you were big company, which yearly use a great amount of pictures, and you subscribe the one-year-premium commercial plan, you would get access to more than 240 200 high quality photos for 1290 EUR. With daily download limit of 12 000 photos per day it equals 3 399 Hi-Res photos for 1 EUR! You should keep in mind that with hobby plan you are allowed to use photos only for non-commercial projects, while with commercial plan you can use them repeatedly and for commercial purposes.

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Photos are of great quality – you can clearly see skin pores, hairs and wrinkles in detail. Most pictures are 3744 x 5656 pixels, that is about 21 Mpx. If you would like to check the quality before paying anything, there is a chance to download some free samples. To prevent downloading all existing free samples, the website always shows same 20 free photos for some uncertain time. There are also shown some user works on the website, so maybe looking through them could help you make opinion on usefulness and quality of the photos from 3d.sk (while taking into account skills of their authors, of course ).

Summary:

+      broad source of varied photos needed for creating 3D characters and animals (especially surprisingly wide choice of varied clothing)

-       missing more anatomically interesting models, variety of races, body types, ages, etc.

Popularity: 46% [?]

Most web designers, 3D and computer graphic artists, whose  job demands extensive use of photos, acknowledge that sourcing for the photos needed for their design works or projects can be quite challenging. If you are a graphic artist who wants to get instant access to extensive and reliable source of photos, you should consider www.environment-textures.com.

This website represents a great online photo database that provides pictures of high quality and free of all copyright issues. These photos cover all needs and demands of an artist, who is looking for environment textures references. Website focuses on photos needed for modeling surroundings. It provides photos of textures (water, paper, fields etc.) and both exteriors and interiors with its details (buildings, furniture, vehicles etc.). You can also find 3D models and wide choice of background photos of exotic countries.

Let´s mention some interesting features of environment-textures.com. One of its strongpoints lies in simple and intuitive use. Searching by categories or keywords allows you to find what you need in very short time (as far as it is part of website´s offer). If you miss something among photos or if you have just some idea how to improve services, there is possibility to write your suggestions which will be taken to consideration in the future. Quite nice way how to show that customers and their needs are important.

The website offers also wide collection of free samples in high resolution, so customers can check the quality before buying. There are 20 free samples you can download. As advantage definitely should be considered fact that there are also free samples of premium content. Good opportunity to check and decide if it is worth to subscribe more expensive membership for lots of additional photos.

In terms of cost, subscriptions are not expensive. Regardless if you are an individual or company, there are membership plans that would definitely match your budget. The subscription fee depends on the sort of subscription that you intend buying. It is possible to get pictures for free just by subscribing a free membership, but you should keep in mind you might be limited or restricted from having access to certain pictures and that there is a download limit of 3 photos per day. Besides free membership plan, there are two other kinds that you can choose from – hobby and commercial membership plan. Both come in one, three, six months and one year recurring membership plans and special one year premium membership plan. Hobby membership starts at 13,85 EUR per month and allows usage of downloaded photos only for non-commercial purposes. With daily download limit of 250 photos per day you will pay 1 EUR for 541 photos, that´s about 0,002 EUR for 1 photo . On contrary if you want to use the pictures for commercial projects and repeatedly without any additional fee, you can subscribe commercial membership plan, which costs from 27,85 EUR per month. Daily download limit ranges between 250 and 3000 photos per day according to lenght of subscribed membership. Buying a premium commercial membership ensures you unrestricted access to all pictures, including special content (panoramas, seamless textures, HDRs etc.) that you might come across on the website. Premium membership is available at both, hobby and commercial plans, for the price 199 EUR and 325 EUR and download is limited by 12 000 photos per day.

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Speaking about quality, most photos are 4992×3360 pixels. This resolution ensures enough detailed photos, which means they are really good for texture paniters or other artists working with environment textures and references.

Summary:

+ more than 100 500 photos of hi-res textures, backgrounds, exotic locations or detailed objects

- relatively a lot of references compared with textures

Popularity: 18% [?]