www.artist-reference.com

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: 19% [?]

Apart from being an artist, I am a tech-savvy person and picking out outstanding websites offering attractive textures remains an integral part of my work schedule. This hobby of mine led me to the homepage of iSourcetextures. And one of the several things that caught my attention was its varied inimitable designs. Artists who are in the field of game development can avail great textures from this site. I am a collector of good textures myself so I logged onto this site in order to find out as much information as possible so I can share it with you and give you some vision. I am not here to say you that it is the best in the business but I can say it is surely a great place to get creative. Game developers and 3D software engineers should consider visiting this place on the web at least once.

The site boasts of about 11,000 designs in its store with more then 200 textures made available free. In my opinion it is a very impressive and a rather massive collection. Designs are all divided into various sections as per category. Each of these sections contains about 10 to 40 textures in them. With such a massive collection, one cannot miss getting great textures for his work over here. Each design that is put onto the site is available with its properties, resolution and price information stated beside it. The zoom option is given for a better view of the picture, too.

The quality of the images that I used was very good. The resolutions offered by them are in the range from 2000 to 3500×3000 pixels. Some images are also available in 5000+ pixel size. Different resolutions are available on the site from which the artist can choose his pick. The user gets the option to download each texture in two different sizes of L and XL. The free textures are specially put into a different section in which free textures are available exclusively in the resloution size of 600 pixels.

Downloading images is chargeable except the free ones. The site offers no membership fee. The charges are levied on per download basis only, ranging from 1 USD to 2 USD depending on the chosen image size. I would rather prefer this over monthly or 6 monthly memberships for people who do not download a large amount of textures every day. But if you are someone who use up photos in bulk, it´s more convenient for you to pay some flat membership fee on a website like environment-textures.com e.g. and you will pay several times less for one photo. On the other hand, there is no restriction on the number of downloads at the iSourceTextures! Unlimited downloading of textures is one of the things I found remarkable.

The search engine integrated into the site is a really great one, enabling artists to easily find the textures required. Another great feature which can be used to make the user’s search for the perfect texture quick is ‘Find Similar Images’. This feature enables the user to quickly browse through the entire collection of the website in just a few seconds and get back with some similar textures to the one that the user is looking for.

The website has a license which allows free distribution and commercial use of the designs. This is one of the few texture resources which allow such liberty like selling modified textures, keeping in mind the minimum modification policy as mentioned in the website license. The company has also provided free textures which are still available for some commercial usage (except of selling as textures). The use and distribution is allowed in lots of other cases, just make sure you read the usage conditions.

One of the greatest aspects of the site is that one can sell one’s own textures too. They have provided a tool for uploading your own designs and ideas on their site, and they might put them up for sale on their site. What’s more – they pay you for your designs in form of compensation when someone buys the design. The company offers 50% royalty, which I would say is good enough for it provides free hosting of your design.

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One thing I marked about the site is that it is a little slow in opening up its designs and loading all the 3D textures. The large collection of the site might hamper its loading speed to certain extent. We all know that this can be overcome with a simple fast internet connection. But, when I’m writing a genuine review I could not miss on this one.

On the whole, the website offers a good resource of new and unique themes and textures. Looking at the pros and cons, well there are more pros than cons and in my opinion it is a great place on the web to get great designs for your work and also to make some money out of your own creativity. This website is surely a good one to visit.

Summary:

+    massive collection of designs in good resolution, offering unlimited downloads and possibility of selling your own textures

-    slower loading of textures compared to other sites

Popularity: 5% [?]