Finding the perfect photo texture, to get the look of your material juuuuuust the way you like it, can sometimes be a pain. But with the right resources at your disposal, perhaps it might not be quite as difficult, or time consuming, as you once thought. Below is a list of 21 awesome (and free) photo texture sources, that you can use to make your CG artwork that much better!
Where to Get Your Textures – 19 Free Photo Source Sites for CG Artists
Jul 9th in Articles, Tools & Tips, Web Roundups by Craig Snedeker
-
CGTextures.com
If there's any texture site at all that you've heard of, it's this one. Being the world's largest texture site, CGTextures.com almost has it all (though they seem to lack images of weapons, cars, and animals). They even came out with tilable textures this year, so what more can you ask for really. If you don't have this link already, you can check it out here: www.cgtextures.com.
-
TextureKing
This is an awesome site, with high quality textures, in stunning resolution. As long as you don't sell, redistribute, or host any of the stock photos, you can download the images, and use them in your projects (commerical or non-commerical), as much as you like. On top of all that, the website is stylish and easy to navigate. The only thing that is really missing, is a good name search tool. You can pay them a visit at: www.textureking.com.
-
2Textured
Ok, so this is site that you go to when you need what CGTextures.com is lacking: weapon, food, animal, and veichle textures and images. This site is a variable texture jackpot, although they are lacking in human textures (at the moment they have four head textures...and that's it). It may not be as elegant as some of the other texture sites in this thread, but if what I mentioned above is what you are looking for, then this is where you need to be. Check it out here: www.2textured.com.
-
LuGher Texture
Although LuGherTexutre.com is one of the smaller texture sites around, it does have some great high-quality textures from metal to wood, and everything in between. Take a look at what they got here: www.lughertexture.com.
-
Textures.Pedramk.com
This site is a little old and hard to navigate, but it has a lot of textures, and once you figure out how to find your way around, it can prove to be quite a useful resource. Also, with categories like "Reflection Maps" and "HDRI" in its repertoire, it has a lot of stuff that some of the newer (and more popular) texture sites don't. Check out the link for more: www.textures.pedramk.com.
-
StockTextures.com
This site really caught my eye. It has some truly inspiring web design, and of course some really great textures, complete with alpha maps, normal maps, bump maps, and even sometimes multiple versions of textures too. Granted it doesn't have very many textures yet (it is still only in Beta after all), but the ones that it does have are high quality and professional. I will certainly be keeping my eye on this one, and you can too, by visiting them at: www.stocktextures.com.
-
GrungeTextures
This site is bound to be your number one source for the most grungy and dirty textures on the web! With over 1,300 (and growing) quality textures available for download, this site should definitely be the first on your list, if grungy, dirty, weathered, cracked, rusty, or all of the above, is what you are looking for. If you don't believe me, then why don't you look for yourself at: www.grungetextures.com.
-
ImageAbstraction
Created and managed by the same guy who runs GrungeTextures.com, this site focuses on abstact, liquid, organic, light patterns, and glass images. There is quite a lot great stuff on here (if...that's what you're into:P). You can check out all the abstract goodness here: www.imageabstraction.com.
-
Bricks n' Tiles
This site has a few textures...ok, so they have 3 textures...but that's not the point. The point of this site is to give you a free program that makes seamlessly tileable brick textures. I have yet to try it out, but it looks pretty freakin awesome. Of course, the free version is for non-commerical use only, but...the commerical version is less then $50, so if you are gonna be making money off it anyways...then who cares right? You can take a look for yourself here: www.bricksntiles.com.
-
Terminal 26
This is a site for game artists, and more specifically, game developers. They have free, along with paid, model and texture sets, and I'm not sure what language it is in, but there is certainly a lot of stuff worth checking out. Give 'er a gander at: www.terminal26.de.
-
FreeTextureSite.com
This is a great site, and...it's made by a guy I know too! It's got tons and tons of textures that are totally high-rez, and commercial quality to boot. So if good textures is what you want (and I'm assuming it is), then you need to do yourself a favor, and check out this link:www.dougturner.net.
-
The Well Equipped Thief - Textures
Tons of wicked textures for that dark and evil RPG game you always wanted to make. Nuff said? Yeah, I thought so. Go get em at: www.thief.washboardabs.net.
-
GameBeep
This is a site with resources for Indie Game Developers. In addition to lots of great textures, it also has models, audio clips, sprites, and even software. And yes...they do have free stuff thrown in there too (you cheapos). Just check them out ok: www.gamebeep.com.
-
CG-India: Free Textures
Hmmm...CG-India: Free Textures...the name kinda says it all huh? Basically this is just another free texture site (but from India). They do, however, have some good texture packs (metal, house, sky, etc), and a lot of it I haven't seen on any of the other sites (this is probably where the "from India" part comes into play). Either way I think it's worth a look: www.cg-india.com/free_textures.html.
-
Texturama
Texturama.com has a ton of high resolution, professional quality, tileable textures, all arranged in categorized thematic bundles for easy browsing. Sound too good to be true? That's because it is. Most of Texturama's texture CD's cost over $100 each. Don't cry yet though, because they do have a small free texture page, with some great textures that you can download too. You can get the free stuff here: www.texturama.com/txt_free.php.
-
3DXO
3DX0 has the world's finest resources for 3D deveolpers, or so they claim. They carry free textures, models, training programs, software, plugins, and books. Basically, its just a lot of great stuff packed into an awesome layout. Oh, did I tell you they have textures? Well, they do. Check them out: www.3dxo.com.
-
LandscapeTextures.com
Landscape Textures has some great free (and paid) texture packs. I bet you can guess what categories they carry. Mexican, city, townscape, winter, nature, and ground textures. In other words...textures of landscapes...who knew? A great site to bookmark (freakishly appropriate name or not): www.landscapetextures.com.
-
FreeTextureMaps.com
This site has both raw photo source, and tiled texture galleries. It is not quite as large as CGtextures.com, but they sure do have a lot to pick from! Either way...you can never have too many textures right! Take a look: www.freetexturemaps.com.
-
Spiral Graphics
To finish off this little thread, Spiral Graphics has some nice and free terrain textures, that you can use to texture your...well... terrain. They are all pretty great quality too, if I do say so myself (and I did...so there). Now go get your textures, and make awesome!: www.spiralgraphics.biz.
If you enjoyed this post, please give it a vote on Digg or a stumble to say thanks!
Related Posts
Keep reading with more great tutorials and articles!
Enjoy this Post?
We'd love your vote!
User Comments
( ADD YOURS )phazor July 9th
tnx a lot!
( )this site is really interesting.
Rafael Braga July 9th
Very useful! Thanks ….
( )jamesel July 9th
nice round up, i will be sure to check each and every one out!
( )(first! yay)
Evan Riley July 9th
Amazing Post. I knew of some and some of them were unknown, and some of the unknown blew me away.
( )SG Design July 9th
Nice thanks!
( )also visit http://zentextures.com/
Joe July 9th
Thanks for the resources. These sites have a very nice collection of textures.
( )Jose July 9th
Thanks for the resources!
( )Craigsnedeker July 9th
Your welcome
( )Rafael Guerra July 9th
That´s soooo useful….for any 3d application. Thanks, smart post!
( )pencil July 9th
yeah thanks for this man! this is great
( )David W. July 9th
Very nice job Craig! Funny to see someone besides Topher giving a list of cool sites, or videos.
( )Craigsnedeker July 9th
Thx
needed to dust off my bookmarks ya know?
( )Mr Kuzio July 9th
Thanks a lot.
( )I am happy because some of this sites are in my list, like this:
http://www.mrkuzio.com/blog/2008/07/14/8-siti-dove-trovare-textures-o-fondini-gratis-solo-alta-risoluzione/
Tollboy July 9th
you missed one of my favorites
http://freestocktextures.com/
great resources though, I did not know about a few of these.
( )Craigsnedeker July 10th
I’ve been on there, thought I added it. guess not, since the guy who owns that site also owns the grunge texture site and the abstract texture site also.
( )Tim July 9th
cgtextures kicks ass alright!!!
some other sites to consider also…
http://www.sxc.hu/
( )http://www.imageafter.com/
Craigsnedeker July 10th
They do have a lot of stuff, just not all of it is for CG as much as graphic designing.
( )dumber July 9th
great for textures as well – http://lostandtaken.com/
( )Diego SA July 9th
These resources are so valuable! Thanks!
( )lawrence77 July 9th
Craig you contribute more comments to Envato…
Now your first contributed article….
Wow amazing…. Thumbs up!
( )Craigsnedeker July 10th
I’m a comment geek
( )Hegyeli Hunor July 10th
Thanks for the resources!
( )These sites are very good.
Patrick July 10th
Hey, this is great. I was actually looking for texture sites yesterday and couldn’t find anything decent and the whole time I was thinking: “Why doesn’t cgtuts have a list of texture sites?” and then bingo-bongo, there it is.
( )Craigsnedeker July 10th
Great timing! You have envato to thank for that, I had almost forgotten I submitted this.
( )jerry July 11th
also visit http://www.50pixels.com... just starting out, so cut me some slack.
( )Martins Zeme July 17th
This is pretty good: http://mayang.com/textures/
( )Robin July 17th
This is an awesome resource!Thanks a lot!
( )Corbi August 14th
Hey,
have a look at http://www.assistcg.com/ Such great seamless textures are there!
( )Jason August 27th
I had no idea there were so many great texture sites. There were several in the comments I hadn’t heard of either. Hard to believe so much quality images are free.
My father and I put one together at http://www.texturepop.com just for fun. We were thinking both textures and “studies” like objects, which we just put into stock photo categories.
It’s very fun to take texture shots. Your eye tunes in to them and you start seeing them everywhere, though where we live there isn’t a ton of industrial or grunge texture sources.
( )Clever September 4th
thankssssssssssssssss alot
( )CefVil September 20th
Thanks man, nice to have so many options for free and good looking textures.
.C.
( )De Menace November 16th
Another not common one: http://textures.forrest.cz/
( )