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Anatomy Books, DVD Tutorials and CG Texture Reviews

PoserWorld Review part 1

Posted by ewa On May - 4 - 2011

With more and more websites showing off their vibrant collection of textures and 3D images, it becomes increasingly important for artist to read over genuine reviews of these websites in order to find if a particular one is perfect for him. Here we shall talk about PoserWorld, a website which boosts of excellent quality, large variety and ready to use content.

The first thing you’ll notice after loading the homepage of PoserWorld is the website claiming to have a large variety of over 1900 items with excellent quality 3D content. Though the website shows off more content on human models and clothing, it also includes seamless textures of varied categories. Due to the diversity of website´s content, we thought it would be better to publish 2 separate reviews – one on textures and one on human models. Here we shall discuss all it has to offer in terms of textures.

The one thing about searching for good textures online is that you see the same kinds of textures as you move from one site to the other over the web. This does not happen here, though. Uniqueness is one of the main qualities you’ll find here. I would like to put light upon the fact that this site has a huge number of seamless and digital textures, props and scenes to offer. The texture collection ranges from

seamless Jet and Sky Photo Background added in July 2007 to the latest seamless metal photo texture set added on April 2011. They offer a huge variety of textures, having different sets of seamless fabric photo textures like gold embroidered fabric and variety of plaid and stripped fabric textures, which are quite unique. The Scenes section has a lot to offer to the user, too. For example beautiful textures like Pool Scene that shows off breathtaking pool view with the lawn by the side. Also there are textures like Cityblock which offers beautiful architectural views of the city blocks, generally not to find elsewhere. With ready to use exterior scenes like Bob’s Dinner, Park center and interior scenes like Kitchen, Sauna etc., one can easily and quickly incorporate it in his project. Moreover, different parts of scenes can be moved so the basic scene can be modified accordingly to your needs.  This section is worth taking a look and the site itself is surely a must-visit for an artist who is in search for some unique well finished scenes and textures with good resolution.

The sizes of these textures range from 512 to 3000 pixels but majority of them is 3000×3000 pixels. The site updates and keeps adding various new textures on a regular weekly basis. One thing that is not so satisfactory is that at times it displays only one picture of the textures collection. The viewer has to rely on one sample picture before downloading the whole section of images. For example ‘By the River’ set shows off one beautiful picture of bridge over river to sell off whole collection of 19 photographs of Newcastle Keyside section. Also, at times the viewer has to rely on lower pixel size samples of textures before he buys the textures in higher resolution. Speaking about website´s weaknesses, it seems a little clumsy with the heavy header, footer and right panel being repeated on each page.

Though PoserWorld has huge number of designs and textures, unlike sites like environment-texture.com, the viewers have to do a laborious searching through lots of data and lists to find the perfect texture to suit their needs. This is due to the fact that there is no division into categories on the site. Tough it has search engine which works fine, but again whereas there is a huge number of images loaded in it, even the search results might show up in huge number. One thing that could be improved is the way how the search engine works. By typing ´red brick´ the search engine lists all the textures and images with ´red´, ´brick´ as well as ´red brick´ so one will get more results than wanted, which means another tedious searching for the right image among the others. Very disappointing I find the fact that although there is a free sample section, there is just one free item, which changes “from time to time” (as they write). This is surprising because free samples are already the must-have of this kind of websites.

The downloading charges of the site are fair and reasonable. One can download a texture or any other design at a price of about 3 USD. This is the average price of the designs. Also the site offers memberships which when paid for, it grants full access to all the textures of the site. The memberships offered by the site are 20 USD for a three month membership, 50 USD for a 12 month membership and for a full lifetime membership one has to pay 500 USD. The lifetime membership grants the user full access to all of the features of the site for lifetime, plus 5 DVDs full of textures, 3D models and several tutorial videos. A good thing over here is that by providing option of single item purchase as well as subscriptions option, they have covered all the possible demands of individual as well as corporate users. All the images and textures offered are royalty free for personal and commercial use (if derivated), but for more information I would contact website´s owners. For all those who would like to learn how to create clothing textures on their own, there are also 3D clothes texturing tutorial video DVD for 19.95 USD and 3D photo texture DVD with over 1362 textures for 19.95 USD.

With all these information we can easily conclude the following summary for texture section of PoserWorld:

+     A commendable collection of 3D textures, with unique categories makes it stand apart from the rest.  Reasonable prices of membership – for example at 50 USD per year, one gets access to all of content for a full year, for the price of about 16 individual item purchases.

- At times it becomes clumsy to move through all the heavy panels of headers, footers and right hand panels. Search engine should be made more intelligent with added features to enhance the user’s experience over searching varied textures and designs. Disappointing Free Samples section with just one free item.

 

We couldn´t show you any sample textures, because as we already mentioned there aren´t free samples for download on the website. Although we sent PoserWorld a couple of e-mails asking for some samples, no reply received.

Popularity: 23% [?]

CG Textures.com Review

Posted by richard On November - 19 - 2010

Hello, I am not here to tell you that CG Textures is the best website over the web where you will find best of textures and backgrounds, but to give you a very frank and honest opinion of the website CG Textures. Being in the field of art since years, I understand the pain an artist has to go through for hours in order to find perfect matching background textures over the internet. The whole collection of 54,111 free textures and images are organized just perfectly to guide you through the exact genre of images, which you are looking for in no time. And that is the best thing to expect from a website whose extensive textures and images’ collection is growing day in and day out.

Sitemaps from CG Textures.com

One of the great attractions of the website CG Textures is its intelligent search engine tool.  Hence, if you looking for a red coloured door texture, all you have to type is red doors and in no time, you can select from a wide variety of high-resolution textures that suits your taste. Another great feature of the search tool worth mentioning here is that if you do not wish to have a look at metal doors which are red, all you supposed to type is ‘red doors – metal’ and in a wink of an eye your search result will eliminate all the texture that you do not wish to see. And of course, you can always search them by texture numbers or filenames!

The texture view gets bigger just as you take your mouse over the texture to facilitate you with a bigger pop up view of the image in seconds of your noticing the image!

Moreover, the website offers to its members, great texture versions of 5000 pixel or even more in size. You are free to choose your size of thumbnail images ranging from tiny to huge which are 450 x 340 pixels.

Sitemap from CG Textures.com - wood category

With a collection of more than 54111 interesting textures in all the varieties like blue skies, captivating tiles, beautiful walls, animals and lots more, with the download resolution of up to 640 x 640 pixels, it is increasingly becoming the first choice of artists. Moreover, if you prefer to be the member, there are three interesting membership options namely Normal, Extra and Corporate. Normal members can be small users or private companies with daily download limit of within 100mb per day with nominal membership fee of approximate 61 USD per year. Extra members can be small companies, schools and universities with daily download limit of within 250mb per day with nominal membership fee of approximate 124 USD per year. Corporate members can be large companies with daily download limit of within 750mb per day with nominal membership fee of approximate 250 USD per year. Nevertheless, this site offers only one-year membership unlike for example environment-textures.com, which provides more flexible membership options. 

One of the hottest attractions of the website CG Textures is its panoramic skies section. With some breath taking blue backgrounds with the download sizes as big as 15000 x 3800 pixels, the website becomes a hot destination for nature lovers and also makes up for competitor for other sites, which offer only a single sky background for as much as $100!

One thing, which you should be taking care while downloading textures from this website is that the website resets the daily download limit after 24 hours since you, downloaded anything. Hence, if you download your limit at 5PM today and sit to download your next quota at 12:00 noon, you will not be granted the permission for the same, well until 5:00 PM.

Overall the website CG Textures offers a great collection of textures one can think of and with its quick search formulas, it makes it even more easier for once and for all!

Popularity: 23% [?]

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