www.artist-reference.com

What do you get when you take state of the art animation, 3D effects and a school that can provide you with all that? The Gnomon School of course! This website is just one of the few that the Gnomon group has to offer besides gnomongallery.com, sketchtheatre.com, cgchannel.com as well as thegnomonworkshop.com which I have reviewed earlier. Let´s have a closer look on the gnomonschool.com website.

The website has all that you need to know if you are one of the many hopefuls that hope to make it big in the world of 3D animation and graphics design. Basically, The Gnomon School of Visual Effects is an institute where professionals from the special effects industry come to share their expertise and to instruct those that are either already in it or are aspiring to be. As the website says, “we know that it is not technology that drives the results, but the artist.”

The website itself had my undivided attention the moment I clicked on it. It went right into what The Gnomon School of Visual Effects had on offer. As they say, their courses are for anyone that is interested in the film, game and broadcast industry. The Gnomon School offers several options to choose from – programs or individual courses and on-campus or online training. ´Entertainment Design´, ´Digital Production for Entertainment´ and ´Entertainment Design and Digital Production´ are provided as long term programs consisting of several courses. There is also Maya Fast track program which in particular is designed for those who are already adept at 3D concepts and are now striving to refine their skills on Maya even more. Needless to say, this program is not for people that are new to 3D graphics.

Other than that, training courses can be divided into digital and traditional. One can choose from many courses like Character Modeling and Sculpting, Animation and Visual Effects or Drawing for Film to name a few. Every of them usually lasts 10 weeks and prices range on average from 552 to 1695 USD. Their training options include also an online training courses which allows you to take classes at home. Besides this, their online training program includes Masters Classes that consists of a total of 12 two-hour training sessions. The website has a lot of info on all options (Program and Training Options Comparison; Course Schedule) as well as how you can register for classes.

However, the website was lacking a Home page when I accessed it. Instead, it had a substituted the standard Home Tab with a customized page ´The Gnomon Experience´. But I did like the fact that the people behind the website had chosen to broadcast the latest news in the special effects industry on the first page. Who wouldn’t want to see a play by play of how Pixar’s 3D animated movie “Tangled” was made?

I have to admit, the website has been very clear and intuitive as well as impressive, speaking about design. I also liked the fact that it has assigned a separate section for displaying the work of Gnomon students. It kind of gave me an idea about the level of sophistication and skill that The Gnomon School promises to train its students at when it comes to state-of-the-art 3D graphics design. The ´Best of Term´ section is place where some of their student’s best 3D works were put on display. Regularly, there are winners at the end of each term, who win shopping vouchers to Gnomon store. Here are some latest best works.

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There is no doubt that the Gnomon School of Visual Effects is one of the best training institutes in the field of visual graphics and special effects. The gnomonschool.com will not only tell you what the ´Gnomon Experience´ is, but will also give visitors step by step instructions on how they can be a part of it. The 93% placement rate speaks for itself. And the fact, that the website gives aspirants a means to collaborate with and builds on their own expertise, becomes another feather in its cap.

Summary

+ An excellent website when it comes to informing people about all that the Gnomon School of Visual Effects has to offer.

- You will have to look for information on their profile on other tabs since it is not on the first page.

Popularity: 6% [?]

After focusing on textures, props and scenes in our first review on PoserWorld, now it is time to also depict the core section of the website formed by human models and clothing. PoserWorld is one website of its kinds, which offers such wide range of human designs and clothing.

At this point it is needless to repeat the fact that the site boasts of its collection of almost 2000 downloadable products and that the company has been operating since 1999. Although the basic information like membership details, downloading charges, licensing details and information about general image resolution have been discussed in detail in our previous review, in order to provide you better overview and for those of you, who haven´t read the first part of PoserWorld review yet, let´s summarize in short some of the most relevant information you should know about this site.

PoserWorld updates and keeps adding new designs on a regular weekly basis. The site offers 3 types of membership, namely 3 month membership for 20 USD, 12 month membership for 50 USD and lifetime membership for 500 USD. If you choose to become a lifetime member, you also get a set of 5 DVDs offered by PoserWorld free along with lifetime access to website’s whole collection of designs. If you choose to not becoming a member of the site, you can download the images of your choice at an average rate of 3 USD per image. The image sizes range from 512×3000 pixels to 3000×3000 pixels. All the images and textures offered by the website are royalty free for personal and commercial use (if derivated), but for more info be sure to check its Terms of Use or rather contact somebody from PoserWorld if you’re expecting specific usage.

One interesting thing that would grab a viewer’s attention is the fact that they have developed different categories of clothing and designs as per human models. Different models like Aiko, Laura, Luke, Michael, etc. display eye-catching themed clothing. Especially certain characters such as Koshini, Manchu Emperor and Milbaby are quite peculiar and unique. For example the set of Manchu Emperor showing his rich cultural heritage contains images of its traditional clothing (casual and formal), slippers and hair, while set of Giselle, an interesting Alien character, shows off interesting vector designs of hair and body texture. These types of figures are quite unique and can be used for different purposes. I personally downloaded some for my presentation – David and Royal Canadian Mountain Police outfit for him consisting of hat, red jacket and black pants. As remarkable I found also Digital Seamless Royal Period Fabric 1 & 2, each having up to 15 rough woven textures that could be used as robes, tapestry, garments, floor coverings etc. Though the seamless fabric textures are of 512×512 pixel sizes, they could be very useful. There are some real fabric textures with finished seams and edges as well. PoserWorld also offers several DVDs containing huge collection of designs and other items provided by the website with single page menu to navigate easily through the DVD content. The DVD’s prices range from 15 USD to 45 USD for the content of 160 – 1000 items in one DVD. There is also ´3D clothes texturing tutorial video DVD´ for 19.95 USD. It is a 31 minute tutorial video which helps you to create a detailed clothing texture using Photoshop or any other image editing program.

The thing I really liked about the site is that it maintains the high quality of the designs. They are quite versatile and one can use them in almost any work. Though, one thing which could be improved is the website’s search engine. Of course, a smart search engine in a website with this heavy load of designs and textures is a must! As the website contains huge collection of images, despite of using a good search query, you might end up with a long list of images to search through. The search engine also displays the list of DVDs which contains the searched images. One more thing that I did not like much about this site is that even if you wish to download the whole set of textures, you get to see only one sample texture and based on that you have to rely and pray that the whole lot of designs are as good as the sample.

Although I wouldn’t say that I found all the collection I needed, I would like to mention that the quality of images I found here was truly worth appreciating. The site provides a great variety of human attire from casual to business. I must admit that I have never come across such a huge collection of men’s and women’s clothing in any website before, except the times when I had been visiting a mall .

Summary:

+     Good range of unique collection full of models in various themed clothing. Good resolution and flexibility of using the images anywhere as they are developed in vector style to suit all resolutions and sizes.

-     Sometimes it seems clumsy to find the right image from such a heavy load of human designs and clothing textures. Pages are unnecessarily overloaded by lot of same information in headers and footers, which is a little bit distracting.

Popularity: 48% [?]

My dream to be in complete knowledge of my field that is architecture and designing keeps forcing me to search for more and more quality stuff. While I was searching for some pictures of particular trees, Google brought me to imagecels.com whose variety of content convinced me to share a few words about it. Before I take your eyes towards the review of this excellent imagery website, I must make it clear that this review is written after carrying out a depth analysis which was stretched over a week. I have tried to bring all aspects of the under discussion site in limelight.

The company name is Realworld Imagery Inc and it is the leading producer of high quality photorealistic imagery for architectural and design visualization professionals worldwide, since 1988. In more simple words, Realworld Imagery hosts thousands of high resolution photos of trees, shrubs, people, vehicles, seamless textures of different building materials and landscaping, rendering backgrounds and lot more. Photos of people and vehicles are available in aerial and elevation views. Unlike a normal wallpaper or photo website, this one offers alpha channel mask with every photo. These soft edge masks make imageries very practical and easy to use with most 3D and 2D software programs. Architectural and design professionals can use Realworld Imagery content in their routine work to create richness and a sense of reality. Just by having a look around a few pages of this wonderful website one can estimate the quality and authenticity of content.

All imageries are placed with respect to their category and are grouped in sets of about 50-100 images each. There is no option of ordering individual images. The smallest unit which can be bought is a complete set which price ranges between 99 USD and 299 USD. In order to give clients the desired details, there is attached a list of additional details to every set, providing complete nomenclature, detailed description and information about image size. Also, one can find particular plant species by going through Master Plant list, which gives information about botanical name, common name, filename, size and name of set containing the desired plant. All stuff hosted by Realworld Imagery is available for direct download from the site, whereas one may ask for a CD as well, which will be shipped within one business day without any extra charges besides shipping costs.

Images are 2D and in “.TIF” (LZW compressed) file format with embedded alpha channel masks. They are placed against a black background. Textures are also in “.TIF” file format, seamless and tileable. Resolution varies from 900×1400 to 4000×4800 pixels but mostly the images are in resolution around 1200×1600 pixels. Even the photos are not in a very high resolution they provide notable results when used with most 2D/3D software. The reason for this excellent compatibility is their internal alpha channel mask.

No annual/monthly/weekly or any other kind of membership is offered by this site. Customers can simply purchase the required stuff on direct payment, however, up to 40% discount is offered on buying more sets/CDs. About 15 images are available to download for free as samples. In terms of license policy, they distinguish carefully between single user and multiple users, so customer should think of his intentions before buying.

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When I try to count the good areas of this website, first comes its simple design with easy navigation. No animations or flash slides and still having a decent look and feel. Variety and quality of all stuff regarding “people” and “trees” is exceptional and seems to be very authentic. Almost every species and category has been covered in ample detail, so it seems that many professional opinions have been incorporated in this website. Lots of extra information is provided about type of trees and their hardiness zones which makes it very easy for an architectural expert to find appropriate vegetation. A good FAQ section which provides depth and easy to understand information on all aspects like image specifications, compatibility issues, payment options and about browsing site. Excellent compatibility with all external 2D and 3D platforms. Moreover, all legal documents like privacy policy and terms of use are very well defined.

As nothing is perfect in the world so the website under discussion also has some grey areas. For example no membership plan is offered which makes it very expensive for long term usage. Photos are not in the best resolution and very little categories are offered as compared to other similar sites. Although site’s name appears on Google’s first page, while searching for images one can hardly find any stuff from this site which means the content is not fully optimized for search engines.

In short it’s a very good and resourceful place for all professionals to get useful stuff. Before relying on other content one must visit this site. It is ideal for those professionals in field of architecture, who work around designing of landscapes and places with vegetation like parks and even for the professionals who have some link with film making and gaming.

Summary:

+ Variety and quality of all content regarding people and trees plus detailed information provided to every set make this website exceptional.

- The only prominent problem is the absence of membership plan option, what hinders the way to long term relationship.

Popularity: 17% [?]

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% [?]

This review is for all CG artists dealing with everyday seeking for the right material, whether for their work or just for use in leisure time. If you belong to such kind of people, please feel free to read.

I ran into this site while browsing the internet in order to find some interesting textures and designs which I started to collect for my further works. The one thing about this site, that I need to mention right at the beginning, is diversity of its content in terms of products provided. Assist CG offers not only textures but also designs, backgrounds, video transitions and also software for video composition and texture modification. This site is a great place for getting ideas and good stuff.

It has to be admitted that in spite of its modest collection in terms of the number of textures in each category, Assist CG is pretty impressive and has lots to give. The website’s collection boasts of many interesting, quality photos, a few of them are hard to find anywhere else. Some of the eye catchy textures that caught my attention were for example Wood, Lawns and Paving sets. Most photos in Wood section may seem common, but some of them are very rare in its genre. Among the ordinary textures from Paving Sets, one can find intriguing photos of the Roman roadways, too. Above all, I would highlight remarkable designs offered in Tiles and Mosaic section, which are very rare and impressive. These great sets are one of the reasons, why artists definitely should visit this website. Since most of the textures represent different surfaces of the terrain and various kinds of walls and roofing, this site could be helpful for game developers in process of creating surroundings in games or for architects while presenting their architectural projects.

Textures are offered in the resolution ranging from 512×512 to 2048×2048 pixels, some even higher. Those in resolution of 512×512 pixels can be downloaded for free without having a membership. All you need to do is get registered and you can enjoy free downloads. Although free photos are in quite small resolution, still it’s a nice gesture from the website like this, which can also persuade artists to subscribe. Nevertheless, to get the original resolution of the images, you have to become a member.

Except textures, you can find a lot of more. The site provides Blender 2.49 which is software for creating video composition with different visual effects. Such video composition can be used in the presentation of your project. One can also find various transitions and animated video backgrounds ready for use in this video. Moreover, the site has a tutorial section in which a user gets information of how to use the provided software with some examples and tips. A new user, just like me, who is interested in making creative videos, can really get some help out of this. The basic version of the software is available for free download once you registered, but the full version which enables to use sources from the library is open only to members exclusively. There is also workstation section on the site, which provides software that helps you modify and make textures.

Assist CG offers a membership in length of three months for which one needs to pay only 10 USD. For such a small price one gets access to download all the textures and videos on the site in full resolution. The software is available in its full version, too. Although there is part of the website’s content which can be downloaded for free, for a price this low, I would better become a member and enjoy the full capacity of the site.

The license agreement of the site has very simple policies. The first being that one cannot put the textures and other material from the site directly on his/her own web for sale. If you want to do so, significant modification would be needed. Otherwise, all content is royalty free and can be used anywhere one wish to use.

The only defect of the site I noticed is its small collection. Assist CG holds very few categories with low number of textures in each category, when compared with sites like www.environment-textures.com, which has three times more categories and subcategories and which with the total number of more than 99,000 photos is one of the largest resources of high resolution textures.

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On the other hand, the site has a good search engine which helps to find any video, texture or software one needs quickly and easily. The site is also very well designed, too. I found it very intuitive and uncomplicated to use. Also, all the textures are very clearly divided into categories. That makes browsing simple compared to other bulky websites where it becomes difficult to get to a desired texture.

This review should provide the relevant information about Assist CG and I hope it has helped you get the idea of the site and its content. Please, note the summary below.

Summary

+ Intriguing and rare textures in good resolution and high-definition videos. Software is really helpful plus tutorials make it easier to use.

- Quite few categories of textures as compared to similar websites. It holds a small collection of textures in each category as well.

Popularity: 11% [?]

I came upon the site of Marlin Studios while I was searching for good designs I needed to build into my presentation. I won’t say I found all the textures that I needed but I certainly got the most of them. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised by finding more, other than needed right at that moment. In addition to different variety of textures, they offer great animations in terms of videos which are very helpful, e. g. in game development. Marlin Studios claims to have been in the texture business longer than any texture publisher and with the number of over 70,000 images, this site definitely deserves at least a glance from the game developers, architects and artists who are engaged in daily designing.

On opening, the site doesn’t really look too tech-savvy to be honest. It is actually very moderate and simple in view. At first glance, I didn’t find it to be impressive. The website might seem little perplexing and incomprehensible. There is also no search engine available on this site which makes it a bit of task to search for the texture desired. Although the designs are divided into many galleries and categories, it does take a while to get to the exact image we have in mind. Lots of confusion plus no search engine rendered the website tough to surf and the searching time-consuming. This could discourage potential customers.

However, the Marlin Studio’s strength lies in variety and voluminousness of the provided content. This site consists of lots of 2D and 3D images included in 25 libraries. These are divided into sub galleries such as seamless textures, specialty gallery, 3D gallery and money saver gallery. Textures given on the site include various basic ones like tiles, wood, stone, skies and such patterns. Apart from these, one will also find animated people and different 3D models of buildings or vehicles. Surely, it is worth noting the specialty gallery and its special libraries like the People N Motion with animated people in both business and casual attire, Panoramas, Tree palms, Traffic etc. The 3D section gives a number of images which can be used to make 3 dimensional structures or models in game development. The samples shown here are full built modern houses with yards and also various other images which might be of use for corporate presentations. There is also a section for free samples to download available on the site as well. One can see through the list and get a look at some of them.

All libraries are filled with numerous images and textures to work with, yet it displays only a few best textures which represent the other samples in the category. This could be little disheartening as the user might want to see all the textures he is buying. One option given by the website is to try free samples before buying, which nevertheless are in half of the actual size. The full size images can only be seen after the user has bought it. The resolutions of the images that I happened to look at were mostly 1024 X 1024 pixels, but it varies according to type of image. This is good resolution but in contrast with environment-textures.com, where most photos are 4992×3360 pixels, it´s quite a difference.  Free samples are provided in half of actual size, as already mentioned.

Textures and models available on this site are offered at a low cost as compared to the other sites I have visited in the past. The charges given are on the basis of the resolution and type of the file. Some images are available for prices as low as 35 cents. Good quality images or most 3D models can be as much as 2 USD each. In addition there is a separate section in the galleries which offers special saver packs that include 2D and 3D images depending on the pack. This gives the buyer an opportunity to save some money. It is worth to mention the amount of money one can save – it ranges from 89 USD to about 1000 USD.

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In comparison to the other sites, which usually offer membership subscriptions, this one provides only pay and download option and does not put forward any membership plans. While buying textures and 3D models, one has to buy the whole package even if he wants to use only a few textures from the package. It means single image download is not possible over here. On the other hand, possibility of availing the whole package at discounts can be considered as an advantage.

Ordering the designs is really simple. There are some options for ordering. You can either download the design online or order a CD/DVD of the same. There are also different ways of paying for the same – you can use your online PayPal account for the transfer as well as pay by using your debit/credit card (debit in case if it is a US card).

However, it was quite difficult to get to the license policy information, whereas there is no section dedicated to this. I managed to find out that all the model & texture libraries offered by website should be royalty free and one could use them in their commercial artworks. But the content of the libraries cannot be distributed in any way, shape or form. The user would receive one license per order, with the option to make a backup copy. Nevertheless, I would recommend you to contact the provider and inquire before using bought images.

Overall, the website obviously has its pros and cons and it is up to the artist to reconsider expectations he is having from this type of site and decide.

Summary

+    great amount of textures and animations; money saver packages

-     no search engine available; perplexing and difficult to browse the website

Popularity: 27% [?]