New Texture Site (www.ultimatetextures.com)
Hello fellow modders and developers 
I just want to mention that a new texture site is launched, this is a site created by game developers.
Here you will find free reference and inspiration photos of landscapes, architechture, industrial objects and machinery and so on.
And Free texture base photos for making textures.
There is also the possibility to subscribe and get access to the full library with better resolution photos.
Anyway, head over to www.ultimatetextures.com and check it out.
I just want to mention that a new texture site is launched, this is a site created by game developers.
Here you will find free reference and inspiration photos of landscapes, architechture, industrial objects and machinery and so on.
And Free texture base photos for making textures.
There is also the possibility to subscribe and get access to the full library with better resolution photos.
Anyway, head over to www.ultimatetextures.com and check it out.
Replies
http://www.ultimatetextures.com/product-info.php?pid82.html
just 1 texture @ 1024²: difuse, normal, spec and bump
for 39 $ ?
to be honest I think thats highly expensive & overprized, its not like the person who buys that texture has the exclusive rights over thetexture but instead buys just another license to use it for commercial work.
I skilled texture artist would need below 1/2 hour for creating those 4 maps with tools such as crazybump and the like- if that would be the case the creator would get roughly 80 $ a hour and to be honest for that prize the textures are not worth it - in my eyes at least. But maybe I misunderstood something here
If you're here actually looking for criticism on your textures/site i'll let this stay, otherwise if you're just trying to get some free advertising i'm going to have to delete this thread.
Just set competitive prices.
Good luck
QFT. Check this one out. http://www.ultimatetextures.com/product-info.php?pid137.html
$100 bucks for a 1024 sewer cap texture!!!
Why bother paying for something you can make yourself.
and alright, the prices might be too high, so we need feedback to adjust the prices to what people are willing to pay of course.
this feedback is really appreciated.
on a side note tough, i would like to see the artist who create a better texture, including all maps (diffuse, normal, spec and height) where the highres texture looks good from all possible angles in one hour, crazybump is awesome yes, but it tends to make the texture look good from only one angle.
Thanks alot so far for the feedback.
I'm with the other guys here, they are nice textures, but I wouldn't pay anything over $5-$10 for them, because I can do them myself.
That would be more attractive in my opinion.
- generic model (like a cube, sphere, wall,...) on which the texture is mapped onto additional next to the flat view
- 512² is a joke, even if someone aims for that resolution for a tileable texture he/she propably wants it twice of the size just to be better in control,- so perhaps scrap that resolution
- less margin space around the textures, or a darker background so that the texture browser is A: viewed in a better contrast, B: not so scattered bur rather crowded so that more thumbs fit on a page
- LOWER the prices, consider the time a regular artist would need to create those and what he/ she would get paid for an hour- is it worth for the artist to buy them because:
A.) for the quality
B.) for the time that would be needed
C.) for the flexibility (resolution independence would be nice for example, or a set of different resolutions)
D.) of the easy download and subscription model (no IE forcing,...)
about price models,
I´d never never buy textures myself individually because it´s just nuts in a world of today where you can basicly anywhere and anytime free pictures or sources.
So If I´d buy anything it would have to be a collection of professional themed textures in a pack, like 80-300 textures of forest nature elements and forest machines.
Also if you want to stick out from the texture market,- offer something nobody else has- like crazy old rusty russian technical stuff or something else.
Clean architecture textures are available for example on mass, but less dirty, old, historical or exotic ones.
I´d also like to see a paper texture collection, like the ancient Japanese paper art. Because it´s not just usefull for 3d stuff but also illustration stuff.
Don't include spec/normal maps and lower your prices. Let the artists do that on their own, or pay a premium to have all 3 layers included.
At a glance the free section contains only one useable texture that requires extensive editing to make tileable, offer more for free and the word will spread, afterall a digital snap with a cam doesn't cost much with regard to recharging a battery. Here's some (free) env photo's I took today, great sunset, enjoy!
Ground
Sun 1
Sun 2
One of the best reference sites for character artists is 3d.sk, and they charge a yearly fee (two levels). That's a great pricing structure because for a studio it's a cheap way of getting a metric tonne of images that they pick and choose from.
There arent really any suggestions I can make except one. Put an IP tracker on your site, allow minimal downloads a day as well as offering larger downloads for a low monthly fee like 3d.sk or cgtextures.
Im not keen on legal terms and such but you will need to be super careful you take all these images yourself. Using reference from other sites and selling them is illegal...especially from copywritten sites...such as sites you can get photo reference for textures from.
GL though
I have a few questions to you all, claiming that our image quality is not that good.
What is so bad about it?
Our photos are taken in very optimal light conditions, meaning there is almost non direct light hitting the surface when we take the photos, resulting in very little shadow and mostly AmbientOcclusion on the images, there will always be some shadow in all images unless you use a flat direct light yourself comming from the camera direction.
You say that you can get photos up to 4000x4000 pixels for free on many sites, and yes we know that, but it doesn't matter how many pixels a photo has if it is compressed or the lens they use are cheap resulting in unsharp and shadow shaded images. Not saying that the sites you mentioned has that, just saying that resolution isn't everything.
and GCMP, you claim that in our free section there is only one usable photo, how can you say that? did you ever download the full size or did you only look at the preview image that is 480x360 pixels? if not, how can you say non are useable? what is so bad about them?
when it comes to the prices for the textures including all maps, we are probably going to change that to a monthly subscription, as it seems like everybody hates the idea of charging per texture.
The reason we sell textures with all maps included is that we have experience from the game industry where alot of artists struggel to create good normalmaps (not everyone of course), so we thought we would specialize in the field and provide textures that includes all maps with good quality.
and to zerafian of course we take all of our photos ourself, it would be pretty stupid for a corporate company to steal photos from other websites and sell as our own as that would give us extensive legal problems.
we have several expensive cameras and lenses and we take all of our images our self, obviously...
again, thanks for the constructive feedback.
I imagine either companies want access to your entire site for a fixed fee or be able to get your entire site on a CD/DVD for a set price, and even then I'm fairly sure most artists would be happy with just high quality diffuse textures and handle all the normal and spec mapping themselves - and in that respect you're going to have to pull out a fair few stops to compete with sites like CGTextures.
The only people who'd really go for this at the moment are indie game developers who can't afford to hire an artist full-time to create that all for them, and even then the price is (as previously mentioned) extremely steep.
For the site design you might want to take a leaf out of CGTexture's book and send users straight to the main content. I can guarantee most users don't really care about your latest news or your welcome paragraph - they want your textures and they want them without fuss and excessive clicking
It's also extremely hard to see how good the actual textures are from what must be a 200x200px thumbnail, tops. To the extent that I don't think anyone would really fork over the money just to find that it's maybe not as good as they think. You might want to show off all of the different textures with higher contrasting lighting conditions or using varied combinations (i.e. diffuse only, diffuse spec and normal, normal and spec only) using larger images.
The prices really are ridiculous tho, specially considering that most textures will never be usable in your engine/project right away and will need tweaks.
A decent production that would use high quality textures with all the maps etc will also have a strong art direction, meaning that all the textures bought from your site would need editing to be brought to the same style... be it by adding more dirt and dust overlays, ageing the materials etc. It would be almost less work to redo the spec and normalmaps in some cases than it would be to edit your to match the edited colormap.
As they are now, the textures could be use for few games right away.
If they were cheaper or based on a monthly subscription, or both (lemme pay for 1 if I really just need 1, or let me grab all I need if I'm subscribed), it would be much better.