Where do you get your textures?

[wannabeartist]

Hi all,

 

I'm curious where do you get your textures for archviz, if you decide to buy them?

 

I just bought some from Arroway and they are nice, but their selection is still kind of narrow. Is there any other vendors out there with matching quality?

 

Thanks!

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

I know you are looking for sources, but I hand build 80-85% of textures because I often need very specific items.

 

For trees I primarily use the high res RPC collection in Photoshop. A solid collection of wood would be a good purchase, concrete is fairly universal. Gras, people, and skies would be worth while. Other than that, you wil be best off learnign how to use Photoshop well to create perfect semless and nontilable textures.

Edited February 14, 2010 by Crazy Homeless Guy

[cupsster]

http://www.cgtextures.com/ will be good starting point then hand edit and enhance to fit your need..

 

Don't forget to check out Tuts section http://www.cgtextures.com/content.php?action=tutorials a lot of useful stuff there.

Edited February 14, 2010 by cupsster
missed link

[wannabeartist]

Right,

 

This is often the case, but I feel I could may times benefit from ready-made textures. Even if they don't completely match what I need, they can be useful starting points.

 

I'm just starting out and I'm a bit concerned about my ability to meet deadlines, if the project involves a lot of texturing work and I would have to produce those maps from scratch - I'm not too confident with Photoshop currently...

 

EDIT: Thanks for the links, Peter!

[Tsukiyono]

I know you are looking for sources, but I hand build 80-85% of textures because I often need very specific items.

 

For trees I primarily use the high res RPC collection in Photoshop. A solid collection of wood would be a good purchase, concrete is fairly universal. Gras, people, and skies would be worth while. Other than that, you wil be best off learnign how to use Photoshop well to create perfect semless and nontilable textures.

 

Do you have any resources out there for making non tileable textures? most of the time I just see references for making tileable ones. Dont believe I have personally seen any to be honest, also not really looked to hard though.

 

Also, thanks for the links a couple of post up, Cuppster. Trying to start taking pictures for my own textures as well so I can learn photoshop as well, the Photo tips will come in handy getting me a head start.

[anejo]

I have purchased most of my texture from Dosch Design.

 

I know you are looking for sources, but I hand build 80-85% of textures because I often need very specific items.

 

For trees I primarily use the high res RPC collection in Photoshop. A solid collection of wood would be a good purchase, concrete is fairly universal. Gras, people, and skies would be worth while. Other than that, you wil be best off learnign how to use Photoshop well to create perfect semless and nontilable textures.

 

But would also be interest in learning how to make it because most of clients need specific types of hardwood for cabinetry and furniture.

Edited February 14, 2010 by anejo

[easy3dsource]

I second the suggestion for http://www.cgtextures.com. A lot of their textures are great for using in post-production to add variation to your images.

 

As for people textures, take a look at my site, http://www.easy3dsource.com. I'm currently developing a library of trees as well, which is definitely a resource you want to have in your texture library.

[Peter M. Gruhn]

I find that all too often even the nicest textures are just too small. I think people don't understand that "tilable" and "doesn't have an obvious horrible repeat" are different concepts.

 

I used some Arroway textures recently (demos off their site?) and the materials were beautiful but still, bloop bloop bloop bloop across my object. Great if you only have 64" of sidewalk.

 

Do other people notice this? Am I doing it wrong?

[mahorela]

Pixplant is handy for creating tileable textures, but I often find that you need to create more complicated materials in your rendering package to get a good tileable effect. Mix maps, vray blend material, composite materials etc.

 

The Marlin Studios and and 3dtotal have some good libraries for sale as well.

[wannabeartist]

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

Alexander, I'll remember your site when I need people. Right now I'm more interested in building a library of construction textures.

 

Peter, you should try the full versions of Arroways textures. It's probably quite hard to get a perfectly tilable texture from photographs, but the full textures often represent quite large area, like 6m x 6m for floors, so sometimes you don't need to tile it at all. I think the floor textures can be downloaded individually.

 

As to building your own textures, I'd be interested if there are any good tutorials on building bump maps? - They are usually the ones that scare me away from trying. I have heard about the highpass filter trick and I recently started a thread at CGSociety on the subject which got some interesting responses, but still it seems like a very time consuming task - hence the need for ready textures.

[Pictor]

http://www.crazybump.com/ might be worth a look for you. Personally I use photoshop to generate bump maps but you can get some good quick results from this.

[wannabeartist]

I have read good comments about Crazybump and I tried it just last week, but at least for that particular job it didn't really get me the results what I was looking for. Have to try it again, though, it might be great for some situations.

[BVI]

Easiest way to make seamless textures is Imagesynth:

 

http://www.luxology.com/imageSynth/

 

Its 100 Bucks.

[wasteland giant]

Easiest way to make seamless textures is Imagesynth:

 

http://www.luxology.com/imageSynth/

 

Its 100 Bucks.

 

Holycrap. sold!

 

[Peter M. Gruhn]

[arroway] Sweet, thanks.

[Tommy L]

I find that all too often even the nicest textures are just too small. I think people don't understand that "tilable" and "doesn't have an obvious horrible repeat" are different concepts.

 

I used some Arroway textures recently (demos off their site?) and the materials were beautiful but still, bloop bloop bloop bloop across my object. Great if you only have 64" of sidewalk.

 

Do other people notice this? Am I doing it wrong?

 

I find that any textures, store-bought or home-made, need to be a building block for something at least semi-procedural if you want a large expanse of non-tiling material. Mix maps, blend materials, tile material etc. Use noise maps for blending, tile maps for random tone adjustments in pavers, mix maps with hand painted monochromes to drive the mix, and so it goes on. It would be easy if you could just drop a texture here and there, but wheres the fun in that?