From Where PAs usually Get Their Textures for Their Product?
James
Posts: 1,044
From where PAs usually get their textures for their product?
Is it from a commercial website like Poligon, or make the texture themself?
Post edited by Richard Haseltine on
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Moved to the Commons as it is not a Daz Studio application question.
The answer is probably "yes" - a variety of sourcse and tools will be used by different PAs.
Places such as CGTextures, 3D.SK and several more. Some actually make their own
Substance painter has a big library of textures/materials you can use. Easy to find more 3rd party ones on places like Arstation and 3DTextures.me etc.
There are basically endless sources of textures provided you can secure license to use them in products
https://www.daz3d.com/isourcetextures has some merchant resources
We make them
I snap digital pictures with my camera every day and some of those get turned into textures.
For me, it's a combination of Substance Designer, or sculpting in Blender and then exporting them into Substance painter.
FilterForge not mentioned yet? I'm not a PA, so maybe I should keep my big mouth shut, but lately when I'm modeling and texturing buildings or terrains or plants, I pull liberally from what Filterforge generates (and the thousands of user-generated presets it gives access to).
what is filterforge?
Filter Forge is a procedural texture generator that allows one to create various textures or modify images using flowchart-like nodes that can be connected together simulate various seamless materials and effects... https://www.filterforge.com/
Daz sells it too... https://www.daz3d.com/filter-forge-90-professional-win but as far as I can tell, its only version 9 (Filter Forge is currently on version 12, with version 13 coming soon)...
There is a free 30 day trial available here https://www.filterforge.com/download/
There's also Materialize... http://boundingboxsoftware.com/materialize/index.php
And Awesome Bump... https://github.com/kmkolasinski/AwesomeBump
I don't know if many PAs use them, but they are very useful for making normal maps, bump maps and various other maps for image based textures when one makes materials using pictures they took themselves... they are both free and very useful.
there are a bunch of AI texture generators now with varying levels of ethics
Polyhaven textures (and other assets) apparently can be used for commercial purposes for free, apparently, which i didnt realise: https://polyhaven.com/license
Materialize is good and easy to use. It enabled me to create the normal maps for the chased versions of my freebie 1915 fountain pens (below) purely from a manually drawn height map. Very useful.
Regards,
Richard
Are the shaders on daz3d shop can be used for commercial to be included with assets we sold/distribute?
Only items sold as a "Merchant Resource" as far as I know. They have very specific licensing on how they can be used, like for example most say they cannot be used in freebies... Check the Readmes if you have any concerns about a Merchant Resource's usage.
For anyone interested...
Here's a couple of free texture websites that have "CC0 1.0" licenses...
AmbientCG https://ambientcg.com Over 1,000 PBR (1K to 8K) Textures and (1K to 12K) EXR HDRIs, CC0 1.0 license. No registration required.
Also has a lot of large HDRI environments (skies and interiors) up to 16k.
CGbookcase https://www.cgbookcase.com Over 500 Free 1K to 4K PBR Textures, CC0 1.0 license, No registration needed.
Sharetexture https://www.sharetextures.com 1000+ (1K to 4K) Textures (2D Image Type and Full PBR), CC0 1.0 license. No registration required. Some materials are Patron exclusive and are only available with donation. Not all materials are tiling and not all materials are square formatted (like 4096x4096, instead they are rectangular, 4096x2048, for example)... most are tiling and square, but just be aware to check if that matters for your intended purposes.
CanTextures https://www.texturecan.com 500+ CC0 PBR Textures, 1K to 4K, No registration required.
3D Textures https://3dtextures.me 1,200+ Free 1K (small) CC0 PBR Textures + maps… if you become a "Patron" you can download the 4K versions.
and lastly as mentioned before...
PolyHaven https://polyhaven.com Hundreds of (1K to 8K) PBR Textures, CC0 (Public Domain) license, No Registration needed.
Also has a lot of HDRI large (up to 16k - 24k) environments, both indoors and outdoors and most available as EXR and HDR.
There are a couple of other sites that have some free CC0 texures, but they either have others that have different licenses, strings attached or you have to pay, and you'll have to register and or sort through them to figure out what is CC0, and most of those are small sized anyway, so it's not really worth the effort as there are plenty at the above sites to get one started...
Also keep in mind that wherever you have a choice, download or use the OpenGL (OGL) version of the normal maps... the other option, DirectX (DX) is reversed in DAZ Studio... so if you don't use the correct one, a raised area, like a bump or ridge line, might appear as a recessed area.
Here is a visual example of the concept in Blender which is also OpenGL... https://blenderartists.org/t/whats-up-with-all-these-different-normal-map-formats/1127822
Some sites refer to maps meant to be used with OpenGL as being for the Unity render engine and DirectX maps as being for Unreal engine.
The green channel is the primary difference between DX and OGL, so flipping that channel can often correct a map that is only available in DX... if you know what you are doing, you can use an image editor to accomplish that.
If you are making your own textures using Filter Forge, Materialize or Awesome Bump, keep this in mind and check the correct option for OpenGL.
Meaning of CC0 1.0...
No Copyright. The person who associated a work with this license has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.
You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
Note: One of the great features of PolyHaven is they have a bunch of textures that are large scale "Aerial" images that were captured via a drone... they are mostly terrains, but they allow for more distance before the pattern repeats... this is great for large areas... there are also a few wall, brick, tile, paver or cement textures that are also large scale... This is especially useful when texturing a large area like a factory wall or something... I never get why so many people make 8k+ brick wall textures that have distinct details, but are the equivalent of a 1.5 meter square... it ends up repeating so much it's ridiculous, but with large scale images (greater number of bricks) you can have more room before the pattern repeats... this texture https://polyhaven.com/a/brick_wall_006 is a good example of a large scale image...
I like Materialize quite a bit. I've used it to create spec bump and normal maps for older character sets which didn't come with those types of maps, or came with maps that just weren't very good. I left a mini tutorial on how to do this over on the Carrara forums a while back, if it might be of help to anyone:
Making Bump, Spec and Normal Maps in Materialize (mini-tut?) - Daz 3D Forums
I hadn't really thought of Materialize as a tool to generate textures from scratch though, like FilterForge can do, but rather a tool to take an existing texture map and then change/refine it, and turn it into new maps.
Just be cautious that alot of free texture sites are not always reputable with where they source stuff, if you seriously want to produce products it is always best to make your own.....that way you never have to worry about infringements.
also do not ever fall for the myth that editing an existing texture map into something different clears the copyrights...it does not. As long as you build off of someone elses base, it is violating the law. But that said, there are a number of merchant resources that CAN be used as a base to build off of, you just have to carefully read the restrictions as they are not all the same.
Big NO ! The general rule is thay are not redistributable. That is the standard prodcut usage license.
Now you have the fine print.
Some of those shader asset products are listed as "merchant resources". Only SOME fall into this category, MOST do not. You have to refer to that specific license and readme.
Materialize has some nice sliders. I don't really use it for its intended purpose, but I use the outputs from it alongside Substance Painter to derive secondary maps, such as Roughness and Specular, from other primary input maps, such as Displacement and Base Color.
Can't substance painter create Roughness and Specular map?
I'm sure one could create such maps in Substance Painter alone. Personally, I don't have enough of a grasp on the adjustments/effects available in Substance Painter to achieve what i can quickly achieve in Materiallize and then bring back into SP. I suspect Blender's Shader Editor would also be a good alternative to Filter Forge or Substance Designer for manipulating textures to derive Roughness/Specular maps but I have yet to try that.
UncannyValet,
I follow an Instagram account, BlenderHacks, that has good tutorials of texture generation using Blender material nodes. Worth the look.
Cheers!