Texture source question
I know going on the internet and taking textures is a big no no (unless you have permission from the creator) but does that extent to images to use as a base to make a texture
I'm currently working on something that requires a stone brink texture but I'm having a hard time making it strait from Photoshop but I found a picture someone took of the structure close enough I can crop it and make the base of a texture (stone texture)
What are the rules about that ?
I'm currently working on something that requires a stone brink texture but I'm having a hard time making it strait from Photoshop but I found a picture someone took of the structure close enough I can crop it and make the base of a texture (stone texture)
What are the rules about that ?
Replies
especially if its just personal work, you might want to be more careful if its for contract/studio work but as long as you change it , it shouldn't be a problem.
http://www.sxc.hu/
its has plenty of free stock art including many photos that can be used for texture creation
What?
I fail to see why you'd consider a blog to be less okay (by however small a margin) than flickr? And google image search comes up with results from all over the place, so if something from that same photoblog suddenly turned up in an image search that'd be okay?
Using photos is okay, especially since the more artsy pictures won't be of any use to us anyway. The ones that we'll find useful are the ones that are a 1:1 reproduction of something in reality.
Still, I'm sure you realise it'll still need work to be useful to you, so you won't just be slapping a picture on your model. I admit, that'd be iffy.
http://www.heise.de/ct/07/14/080/
http://www.tutsi.de/marions-kochbuch-wieder-abmahnungen-fuer-tolle-fotos/2008/09/12/tutsi-blog-aktuell/
http://www.blogtotal.de/netzwelt/180-euro-fuer-eine-schuessel-reis/
it basicly is a website about recipes with some good photos,- sounds harmless at first but its not. Its main purpose is not about cooking or the recipes but acutally sueing people that used the photos from the website- or better said in 90% of all cases from google image search
The creators of the website made sure that certain ingredients from cooking would be in the top 10 of googles image search so that people would likely steal those images.
I dont know the details but there are propably some advanced techniques used for tracking the photos (meta EXIF, invisble pixel patterns, digital fingerprint)- anyway usually the people were told to pay ~ $200 per picture- this could be even more expensive if used/abused for a commercial project.
Btw. here is another nasty technology for everyone to check which website used picture X
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-06-10-n27.html
watch the video to see how it works:
http://tineye.com/faq
edit:, another case:
some idiots who did not understand the term internet even sued google because their images kept showing up in google image search
http://www.clancco.com/art_law/german_artists_sue_google.html
sorry, by photoblog I mean taking some thing from like a photographers portfolio site but you are right, images come up in google all the time from those.
a better example would be say you need a texture for a framed work of art or photo or something and ripping say some copyrighted painting and slapping it into a game, I know on Socom we had to be careful of things like that, but it was pretty easy to work around.
http://www.cgtextures.com
And Mightypea yea I know it is going to take some work, for one making it tileable but in the end it looks a heck of a lot better than anything I can create in photoshop from scratch lol
Thanks again, need to check out that CG textures sight, get some ideas
just another one I just googled regarding getty images (quite active trying to to be in the google image search list)
http://www.designerstalk.com/forums/business/13853-getty-images-want-take-legal-action-against-my-client.html
seems that they are searching and sueing as well- so in any case watch out with google images
Get yourself a good camera (Nikon makes great cameras) go out on the weekends overcast days seem to work best, and snap all kinds of shots of anything and everything. Of course whatever you shoot is subject to the laws of whatever country you're in. But in general no one really cares if you take shots of grunge patters in some skeezy alley...
You'll be able to get a lot of what you need without hours and hours of trying to butcher the same 3 brick patterns everyone else is using.
You can also look into procedural based texture generation as a base to paint your own. Most of them are seamless already. They get a bad rep for looking "procedural" and its true when you're a hack and use only what it outputs without taking care to actually make it your own. Just remember that they are a good base to start painting on, not the end result. Some good ones are:
Wood Workshop Free
Genetica Not free but pretty amazing
Filter Forge Not free but pretty amazing
Don't forget about Material Libraries that come with 3ds and Maya