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.
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: 57% [?]
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