Ultimate Textures Feedback Tier2

menorian

Hello,

After alot of good feedback from this forum we have changed our page a bit and once again are ready for some more feedback.
As said before we are trying to create a good texture resource for artists and developers and need feedback to do this.

Our website currently include Complete Textures (tileable textures including diffuse, normal, spec and heightmaps etc), Source Textures which can be used to create tileable textures and Inspirational Images.
Keep in mind that our library still is a bit limited but we are uploading images all the time. Most of the content on our page is free (except complete textures) but you can buy a membership and get access to more images as well as bigger download limit.

You are welcome to give us feedback on everything from image quality to prices.

www.ultimatetextures.com

Thanks,

Eric Chadwick

Looks good from a cursory glance at a few of the samples. The "Complete Textures" look great. Well worth a bookmark. Thanks for the heads-up.

menorian

Thanks for the feedback, really appreciated.

Kawe

uhm.. my biggest crit is that.. double resolution costs twice as much. I mean.. it's not some crazy badass resolution we're talking about here. going from 512 to 1024 costs double? I don't think people are actually paying per pixel.. they are paying for the work you put in.

Mark Dygert

It's not that 1024 is double, its that 512 is half off... eh!?
Yea!
Not so crazy now is it!

But I agree, great stuff, pricing is a bit crazy but every site is different.

menorian

Thanks again for the feedback.

Joao Sapiro

the textures are too expensive and way to simple , since there are shit ton of other websites that offer better ones for free :

http://www.cgtextures.com/
http://www.imageafter.com/

( just some examples )

CaramelCamel

Johny, Why are you saying they are too expensive when a good portion of them actually are for free? Have you tried downloading any of them? The image quality is better than anything else I can find for free and I think they are even better than most texture photos you can buy.

I don't find 9 dollars a month too expensive for their full library..

Keep it up Menorian!

Ged

yeah I only need a few textures a day so places like cgtextures.com are fine for me and I dont have to be a registered paying member to get access to their whole database. Its free for about 5 images a day limit.

UltimateTextures do seem like decent quality images and the fact that there are normal and specular for the complete section is kind of cool. Honestly I think some people might just use the nvidia plugin or crazybump to get a similar result in a short amount of time and then they wouldnt need to pay anything.

Eric Chadwick

I would evaluate the price like I look at any other paid asset, how much time will it save me vs. how much is my time worth. If a complete texture saves me 5min cropping/tiling + 5min Crazy Bump, then it has to be less than the cost of 10 min of my billed time.

QuakeBob

i find a lot of the textures at cgtextures to be blury and without great quality.
it's a very nice and big library though but the quality isn't there imo.

i wish ultimate textures could have their whole library for free and limit the downloads instead of having member only images, since the image quality is better than cgtextures.
i'm not sure about the prices thuogh, i personally don't find $9 a month expencive, but maybe the complete textures are too expencive as this is something you easily can make yourself.

Joao Sapiro

lol , love this kind of first posters.

menorian

Hehe interesting.

Like EricChadwick here says you have to look at the time it takes to create the texture compared to your billed time, that's what we tried to do when we did the price estimates, and then we lowered the price from the costs of what an average artist would be charged.

I find it a little hard to say that it takes 5 minutes to create these textures, as the process is a bit more time consuming.

First you need a good base image, and a good base image to be used with a realtime renderer that utilizes normalmaps and specmaps needs to be without direct light and shadows, meaning the only light / shadows that must be there for optimal quality and effect is ambient occlusion. Getting these images is not easy.

Second you need to create a normal map that actually fits the diffusemap and yes, you can use crazybump for a fast moch-up but to get variations and optimal effect you need to do a bit more.

Anyway, I would like to see the person who honestly can tell me that they are able to create this texture in 5 minutes.
http://www.ultimatetextures.com/files/samples/sample_pine_needles_01_preview.jpg

Joao Sapiro

5 mins nop , 1 to 2 mintues. Just tewaking crazybump settings and use it to generate the heights etc with some quick tweaking.
Also that wouldnt go ingame in most games unless you could afford to waste 5 texture calls for a tree , might look good, but doubt much games would do that.

TheSplash

The colours and values in a lot of the spec maps are questionable. These rocks for example, the spec makes them look more metallic than they should because they have a coloured spec.... rocks don't have that.

I think a lot of people will have to end up tweaking them for their target engine or just make one from the diffuse to suit their needs.

menorian

I think you are giving yourself away a bit here dear Johny..

If you take a closer look at the normal map you will see that it is just not ran 1 easy pass through crazybump, secondly it has an alpha mask. Please check the mask out and tell me how to make it in 1-2 minutes. If you can I'll pay you dearly.

Thirdly this needle texture is based on the same principle as speedtree textures (ever heard of it?). Here is a link for you to check out and you will see that tons of games are using speedtree:
http://www.speedtree.com/gallery/index.php

If you do not use speedtree and want to decrease your draw calls (if that is what you mean by texture calls) you should gather your textures in atlases.
So your statement that few people are going to use it are obviously wrong.
You can download our sample textures here:
http://www.ultimatetextures.com/free_samples.php

TheSplash:
Yeah, I agree. We will try and fix that, it should be an easy fix to do. Now this is probably 2min work.

EarthQuake

My biggest issue with this sort of scheme is that, even if you've got good textures there, and they look cool in your preview renders, that doesn't mean they will easily fit into the art style/tech of any given game/engine. If you consider this, while your textures look finished, there is a very low likely hood that i personally would be able to use any of them without giving at least a quick pass over them. And in most cases, i would probably spend an even amount of time reworking your complete textures than i would just making my own normals and spec maps. So for me, buying D/N/S all in one isn't really worth it. But it is nice that you're providing a lot of your source textures for free.

Another thing, is that really the resized texture pricing scheme is pretty rediculous. Did it take you guys twice as long to create the 1024 than it did the 512? No, it took 1 second to size the texture down from 2048 to 1024, and another to size it down to 512. I would ditch that system all together, and provide either just the highest res, or possible do it in reasonable, maybe 10% ? increments.

Now, really i think that the entire concept of selling singular textures is just a bad idea in generall. I would like to see more of a pack system, like making grouping 10 textures together. You dont make as much money per texture this way(if your prices are reasonable) but you almost garuntee you're selling more of your product. Maybe this shouldn't be the only option, but i believe it would be something to look into.

Something else that i'm not really sure about is membership, do you get access to the complete textures with membership? If so, then thats actually something that seems worthwhile to purchase, but if not, then i'm paying a monthly fee for something i can get free at other websites. Maybe the quality isnt as good, maybe it is, i'm not going to argue that because you guys are obviously going to be biased. The point is that you need something to really sell us on it, not just provide an alternate service.

I think the entire concept of charging what a production artist would make to create a texture is just completely insane, you're selling bulk textures here, not doing contracts for specific work orders.

Having said all that, its great to see you guys are actually trying to listen to us here, so keep at it!

menorian

EarthQuake:
Now this is the kind of feedback we really appreciate, constructive!

We knew before we started that it would be impossible to make all kind of art styles, this is why we went for the realistic look which is most commonly used. So if you are not going for a realistic looking game\application you are not in our main target group, yet. I think it is possible to stylize our textures anyways though, but it would ofcourse
require some extra work, which usually is the case anyways when you add a style to textures based on real photos.

Another reason for selling complete textures is that many companies lack artists that have a lot of experience\talent when it comes to making the different maps, like for instance normal maps. We tried to figure out what an artist would get for
doing the same work we did and we actually think that if you buy complete textures from www.ultimatetextures.com it would be 2-4 times as cheap (depending on where in the world you work) as hiring an artist that can deliver the same kind of quality in the same amount of time.

We also knew that poeple would have to tweak our textures to some extent to make it fit their engine, but this is usually done within the engines material system and is something you usually have to do anyways. It is far less time consuming to tweak a product than to make it from scratch, atleast in our experience.

We actually do exclusive freelance work, so if you want tailored textures that suit your specific needs contact us at this e-mail address: contact@frostsoftware.com

We will make packs later when we got a bigger library.

We are also considering making memberships for complete textures, we just have not figured out the details yet.

Thanks again!

Eric Chadwick

Another look at the license worries me enough not to buy, nor even to use any of the freebies.

· The non-exclusive, non-sublicensable right to use the Images on for use in Advertising, Print, Broadcast, Video, Promotions, Multimedia or the Web and any Test or Sample use.

No games?

· You may not sell, rent, loan, sublicense or otherwise transfer to anyone either the Package or Content ... and nothing you produce shall grant or purport to grant to any third party a right to use or duplicate any textures or 3d models.

So my game can't be modded if it uses your textures.

· Use of the textures or 3d models, or any part thereof, as a trademark or service mark is not permitted.

Strange limitation. If this was more specific to prevent usage in a trademark for a directly-competing service, then I could understand having this in the license.

· No textures or 3d models may be used, or in any derivative work maybe used, where value is the result of the textures or 3d models themselves.

Too vague. Value of a game is derived in part from its artwork.

· No textures or 3d models may be sublicensed, resold or be redistributed in their original form or a form created solely to facilitate redistribution. For example only, and in no way limiting the foregoing, you may not place any of the textures or 3d models on an electronic bulletin board, within your software, web site or a form of on-line service.

Can't include them in a game then. Many games don't/can't encrypt their art assets.

Slum

Wow. Interesting phenomenon. Either we have two of the most literate first-posts in the history of these boards, (whom strangely decided defending a random entrepreneur was worthy of a first post) Or we have some hilariously sad attempts from the guys themselves. Either way, there's a whole lot of lawl.

menorian

Wow, thanks EricChadWick! We had a guy helping us out with the "Terms of Use" since we are foreign and do not know much about that kind of stuff. We will have this sorted out immediatly. Thanks a bunch!!

Slum: Those are probably guys I have on MSN, atleast CaramelCamel. In my personal info from today I have a link here.


*EDIT: I ran through it fast now and corrected the issues EricChadWick pointed out, lemme know if there still are issues. Cheers!

Eric Chadwick

Well at least it's not mrbones.

· You may not sell, rent, loan, sublicense or otherwise transfer to anyone either the Package or Content, or right to use the Content (except insofar as stated above).

This is still there, so I can't distribute ("otherwise transfer") a game that uses the content.

There are also grammatical errors that cause problems, like "You may only copy parts from or alter a complete-texture product in any way".

You need to get a real lawyer to write your contract. This won't pass a studio's legal review.

menorian

EricChadWick:
I have now contacted a proper lawyer and he is going to look at it ASAP. Thanks again!

Jonathan

Sorry, I'm not believing someone just "registered" to post a "critique" of a competing texture website.

menorian

Just to answer the people who think it requires a lot of work to make our textures fit into different rendering engines, here you have some textures from our library that I added to Unreal Tournament 3 without modding\tweaking them:








To set up each material took me 5 minutes and you can tell by looking at the rock material picture that it's not very complicated.

Cheers!