Textures Resorces

[Karkadann]

Hypothetically speaking

If your using it for educational purpose's (IE self taught) or as a hobby and although their may be some distribution the distribution if free and no money changes hands.
Knowing that it might not be use-able on the Open Source project. If no money is being made from the item in question and no money is being lost.
how much of an issue would this be?

[dendwaler]

Could those of us who are not builders, but who like photography, help too? We'd need a steer as to the sort of thing you'd want and the format you'd need it in.

@ Acorn

It would be great if non builders would support this!

What is a good texture ? I will give my opinion and hope others will add to this.

A good texture differs a lot from a good photo for sure, because the composition is not important its the material and detail.
I hope i can explain it with my bad english.

First of all the best textures are very often made during cloudy days.
The picture must have an equal lightning on each point.
No shadows., no glowing.
the only shadows allowed are from the heights difference in the texture itself.
(the shadow must made be inside the modelling program depending on the object)
deeper inside is most of the time a bit darker.
the photo is from an absolute frontview.
It must be sharp. and lightning is in the middle of the spectrum.
(we change that inside Blender or 3dMax by adding or subtracting greyvalues)
As less distortion as possible!
A horizontal line will a get a curve from the lens. that curve must as straight as possible.
the photo has to be the material itself in most cases and often is a closeup that can be made seamless.
a picture of a flower or a leaf is best when it can be separated easily from its background.
Patterns!
patterns from ornaments for instance , but dont forget also to deliver a pic the material of the ornament, so give a set of pictures belonging together.
Photo's of cracks in walls.etc
This is it in a first glance, but i will come back later wit some examples of good and wrong.

[Calena]

Hypothetically speaking

If your using it for educational purpose's (IE self taught) or as a hobby and although their may be some distribution the distribution if free and no money changes hands.
Knowing that it might not be use-able on the Open Source project. If no money is being made from the item in question and no money is being lost.
how much of an issue would this be?

Trying to think about this logically and in the context of how we use images, unless we're using trademarked logos it may not be an issue at all. If I download an image to use as a background on a texture I'm going to create by combining several layers, the chances of anyone ever recoginizing the original images are slim. I'll use SL as an example. That site is huge and has thousands of people on it. I feel 100% confident saying there is copyrighted work being used there, yet I'm not aware of anyone being sued over it.

There's what is technically legal and what is realistic. What are the chances that the copyright police are going to start spending large amounts of time in MOUL going over every texture with a microscope? Even if they did, it would be difficult to definitively state the source since there are hundreds of thousands of freely available images on the interwebz.

Then again, cgtextures is a different example. It's well known that 3d artists use their textures to develop assets. One could easily assume that some of their textures have been used in an online free-to-play game. If the age source files (models and textures) are not being released to the public, there's no problem using them. But if the age authors do plan to release the source files, I personally think tach's idea of avoiding use of images from that site altogether is probably the best plan.

Another example is if you're using Cyan's textures. In that case, you'll almost certainly get busted . They're too well known and recognized and we don't have free license to use them. If an individual has obtained a license, there probably should be some type of .txt file stating that is the case.

Most people that are serious about not wanting their images used have them posted on sites like 123rf dot come where the online images are watermarked. There are thousands of free-to-use images on the deviantart site, but each image has the restrictions/non-restrictions stated.

I'm hoping we don't make the mistake of over thinking this and getting totally paranoid. As long as age builders aspiring to have their work included on Gehn or Cyan's server have a solid knowledge of what will or will not pass "copyright" inspection, we should be fine.

[Acorn]

Could those of us who are not builders, but who like photography, help too? We'd need a steer as to the sort of thing you'd want and the format you'd need it in.

First of all the best textures are very often made during cloudy days.

Well, that's easy, living in UK

I'm expecting to have more time on my hands in a couple of months so will see what can be done. Happy to have any more tips - how about format, resolution?

[dendwaler]

New site with (very good) textures, all free for download and use after subscription.

Free users 15Mb daily.

http://www.episcura.com