I've had my eye on this for a couple of months now because you guys are doing exactly what I'm doing when it comes to modular asset/utility development: putting it in the public domain, where it belongs.
I'm all for making money on specialization or convenience, but I really can't find it in myself to build a perfectly useful something and then only use it for myself unless someone else can pay for it. As long as it's fully modular, I just have to give it away for free. Some things - no matter how much work they took to make - are just not worth paying for. Or, at the very least, I would never pay for them. So rather than just keep everything to myself so I can use it the one time, I can't see any reason not to just make it entirely available to the public.
And, good god, I would be so embarrassed to see my name in the credits of something with a label like "provided image formatter", or something. So attribution is something that I really couldn't care less about. It's always a nice gesture, but some things just aren't worth attributing.
All of which is to say: I love your interest in releasing these things to the public domain, and I'm very eager to join you! I've worked in games since before the original THQ went under, and have been using Unreal for the last 6 years or so. I'd be happy to get into whatever process you guys are using, and provide assets to whatever specifications you enforce. I find the most important thing about assets is that they be uniform (so large-scale changes can all happen in the same way, per asset). So I'm happy to conform, just so I can make assets that will act well in-editor.
Unfortunately, I'm mired in some side-project dev work, and won't be able to work on games, or game assets, probably for the rest of the year. So I've got to put off helping until I can clear my plate some. But I have bookmarked you guys, and will follow up to see if you have any interest in additional help with this kind of work, as soon as I can!
Aside from all that, thanks again for providing this. It really is a useful and altruistic endeavor!
Thanks. Substance Designer, Substance Painter, Metashape, Blender, Marmoset. We are mainly using these softwares. For the atlases we are using Details Capture from VFX Grace
Would you be willing to consider sharing the substance source files on your site as well? I've been learning material design off and on for a while now and the ability to learn from and modify them would be cool, but obviously not required if that's too much effort or just not something you'd want to share.
Either way, thanks a lot for the resource, stuff like this always gets me excited!
Before bindless became a thing (and it's not yet standard with for example WebGL) then doing extra render calls just to change active textures could be an quite expensive operation. Thus a texture atlas is useful to be able to batch a lot of geometry into the same call (Also useful for 2d-like animations).
Love this! One nit. The homepage says “All of our content is copyright-free. It means, you can use them anywhere you want which includes commercial projects too.” That's not how copyright works. All of these works are copyright. That copyright is what allows the owner of the copyright to place them under a CC0 license. What CC0 really means is "the copyright holder has waived the rights they have under copyright by granting you a non-exclusive license to use this work pretty much however you choose."
CC0 is “a tool for relinquishing copyright and releasing material into the public domain”, and the official icon for it says “public domain” [1] mainly created because actual public domain is problematic across different countries, I believe. Actual public domain really is ‘copyright-free’, and it makes sense to describe CC0 as making things ‘copyright-free’ to a general audience that may not be familiar with the subtle intricacies of copyright law. It is true that only the original copyright holder has the authority to release their works into the public domain, but once they’ve done that, copyrights are no longer held, and the work is no longer subject to protection under copyright law.
Right... CC0 exists because there is no such thing as relinquishing copyright in many countries, including the United States. It's a license that allows the work to be used as if copyright were relinquished. If I create a work and license it under CC0, I still own the copyright, I've just given everyone a license to use the work in such a way that I cannot enforce most or all of the rights associated with my ownership of that copyright.
This does depend on the jurisdiction. In some legal jurisdictions the effect of putting something in the public domain is to assert that no copyright exists in the work. In other jurisdictions that's not legally possible.
In the US you can disclaim your copyright and place works in the public domain. It's only countries with strict authors rights like Germany that that isn't possible.
I sorta think that for a large banner appealing to a naive audience, "copyright free" is more appropriate than "the copyright holder has waived the rights they have under copyright by granting you a non-exclusive license to use this work pretty much however you choose."
But hey, maybe there are more IP lawyers in the free texture community than I realize.
Great timing. I'm currently playing around with 3D in Godot 3. We've made a bunch of 2D games, and have a huge system that we have no real incentive to port to Godot 4, so I'm seeing how far I can push Godot 3. Looking forward to trying some of these.
They can "mostly" be fairly easily reduced down to 512, 256, ect... if you happen to be doing smaller scale work. Color, ambient, metallic, normal, height, and roughness are all provided independently, so you can pick and choose what you need.
Already tried a few as conversions for textures on 16x16 or 32x32 tiles, and while obviously smeared really badly, they still work. You can still make a castle wall in a SNES game starting from a 1k source of stacked stone blocks.
I'm also working on Unreal Engine and creating my assets Unreal Engine Material versions on that. I'm hearing too much about Godot and I hope, I can find a way to make a game using my own assets.
My wife and I have been architects since 2013, and back in 2018, it was almost impossible to find high-quality free materials. Polyhaven (formerly Texture Haven) and AmbientCG (CC0Textures) mainly focused on more natural assets. We decided to give it a try, and within just two weeks, we reached 100 patrons. So, ShareTextures is funded by the patrons, and as a result of this support, we continue creating.
We have our website because we want to provide some advantages to our patrons. Additionally, it helps us promote our supporters, partners, etc.
Don't you have a feeling that your actions will break down the market and kills the revenue for those who depend on this kind of income? I mean, you people are architects, not some digital beggars. You should ask a minimal price for it, but should not offer it for free, as others have also pointed it out.
I think it's so they can provide a quality web experience curated to facilitate their Patreon goals.
Their work is free, but they likely want to ensure folks know "who" is making all these assets and that they have a Patreon so you can help support their efforts.
That seems fair to me considering the generosity at play here.
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I'm all for making money on specialization or convenience, but I really can't find it in myself to build a perfectly useful something and then only use it for myself unless someone else can pay for it. As long as it's fully modular, I just have to give it away for free. Some things - no matter how much work they took to make - are just not worth paying for. Or, at the very least, I would never pay for them. So rather than just keep everything to myself so I can use it the one time, I can't see any reason not to just make it entirely available to the public.
And, good god, I would be so embarrassed to see my name in the credits of something with a label like "provided image formatter", or something. So attribution is something that I really couldn't care less about. It's always a nice gesture, but some things just aren't worth attributing.
All of which is to say: I love your interest in releasing these things to the public domain, and I'm very eager to join you! I've worked in games since before the original THQ went under, and have been using Unreal for the last 6 years or so. I'd be happy to get into whatever process you guys are using, and provide assets to whatever specifications you enforce. I find the most important thing about assets is that they be uniform (so large-scale changes can all happen in the same way, per asset). So I'm happy to conform, just so I can make assets that will act well in-editor.
Unfortunately, I'm mired in some side-project dev work, and won't be able to work on games, or game assets, probably for the rest of the year. So I've got to put off helping until I can clear my plate some. But I have bookmarked you guys, and will follow up to see if you have any interest in additional help with this kind of work, as soon as I can!
Aside from all that, thanks again for providing this. It really is a useful and altruistic endeavor!
Is there a tool you used to create these materials that you would recommend?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_atlas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license#Zero_...
https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/
But hey, maybe there are more IP lawyers in the free texture community than I realize.
Yeah. Been a mindfuck ever since I started 3D stuff.
Deleted Comment
https://images.sharetextures.com/u/pavement_16_normal.webp
They can "mostly" be fairly easily reduced down to 512, 256, ect... if you happen to be doing smaller scale work. Color, ambient, metallic, normal, height, and roughness are all provided independently, so you can pick and choose what you need.
Already tried a few as conversions for textures on 16x16 or 32x32 tiles, and while obviously smeared really badly, they still work. You can still make a castle wall in a SNES game starting from a 1k source of stacked stone blocks.
Just curious: is there a reason to create your own site for this? Instead of listing on things like Sketchfab?
They seem to support public domain for a long time already: https://sketchfab.com/blogs/community/sketchfab-launches-pub...
We have our website because we want to provide some advantages to our patrons. Additionally, it helps us promote our supporters, partners, etc.
Me personally, I like the old web. Websites that people make and put stuff on.
Platforms are generally great... until they aren't. Your own website will be great as long as you want.
Their work is free, but they likely want to ensure folks know "who" is making all these assets and that they have a Patreon so you can help support their efforts.
That seems fair to me considering the generosity at play here.