Lately, I'd say in the past few months, I've noticed a lot of products coming out on several different sites (including DAZ and RMP) with textures that just aren't that good. They either lack detail, or they're muddled, or they simply look like some kind of photoshop fill bucket pattern. Now I'm merely a hobby artist and have only been able to make the most rudimentary of textures, but when I first started using poser, I was met with texture makers like Stonemason, Uzilite, Davo, Eloroncedark, As Shamin, Sanctum Art, (hope he comes back) and others. Now, where it used to seem like textures of the quality these artists make were the rule, their quality appears to be the exception. It's kind of disappointing because I think one fact that can truly make or break a poser product are the textures (the other is probably mesh detail). Now I recognize that even the most rudimentary poser product takes a lot of time, work, and talent to produce. Lately, they just don't seem to be as good as they used to be...

Are you referring to textures or the items themselves? It seems to me that Stonemason and Sanctum Art were more about modelling than they were about supplying textures. Of course their models come with textures, but they release models and not just textures. If you are referring to models, I don't know anything about them. I do know that it takes a keen eye, and lots of time and patience. People who take months and months to make one item don't want to sell it for $10.00. And most poser users will complain if they have to pay high prices for their poser toys to play with. Perhaps it's a matter of it's just not worth the modellers' time and effort if they can't get the prices they want for the item because people are always looking for cheap deals. As for just textures. I find loads of great textures for existing products. I can honestly say that I have been happy with every texture I have ever bought. Of course I take the time to look and think about it. Sometimes things sit in my wish list for a long time before I decide to buy it. Rarely do I impulse buy. Of course I have, but it's been items that I have seen and have thought about buying earlier and when I see it again I make a decision to buy. If a merchant has freebies available for download, I try their freebie items first as a measure of the quality of their store items. If their freebies are low quality and junky, I won't buy from their store as I believe that if you are putting your name on something, it should be the very best that you can make it; even if it is being given away free. If I like their free items then I'll more than likely buy from them in the future. Poser has become a way to make a buck to many people. stay at home Moms or Dads looking for some family income. Job lay offs where the person can't find work may decide to try and earn some money from their hobby, etc. I also know Poser has grown in popularity and everyone and their mother are using it now. In addition, I think the price of it has come down to a more affordable level too. Most graphic groups I've been in have several people in them who use Poser. The natural progression after you get bored with playing "Dress up dolly", is to try your hand at making textures for your own use. Soon you are giving them away and the next thing you know, the person is deciding "Hey! I'm making things as good as so and so, so if they can sell their products, why can't I sell mine?" Next thing you know the person has a store set up. I've seen on forums where a person who has only used Poser for 6 months is making textures and asking how to get a store. To them it's a fast way to make some extra cash to feed their Poser habit. Poser is expensive, so if it's possible to earn some income from it so they can buy new stuff, they try their hand at selling their wares. Also, hobby artists aren't usually as demanding as those who use Poser for professional means. And those that use Poser for professional means are usually good enough at it that they make their own models and textures. I suppose there are any number of reasons you might have noticed a drop in quality. Those are my thoughts on it.

I think it may be a reaction to the dropping prices of Poser content. People are now releasing items with fairly basic textures, then selling texture packs separately. Because an item and two texture packs for $7 each is more palatable to the customer than one $20 item.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/gallery.ez?ByArtist=Yes&Artist=Arien

Ah, good Rendo eating my post. Lovely. Thank goodness I saved it.

Some disjointed thoughts, as I need to leave pretty soon, but I think this is interesting and it's something I've been wondering myself.

I'd have to agree to a certain extent. Of late, there's been a LOT that I've seen on the market that I can't believe is on sale.

From the user point of view, I ignore them and just don't buy, letting the rules of capitalism deal with them. Although I have to say I've also been severely dissapointed with "packs" that were lovely... until you open the "different textures" and realise they're the same base with a hue-saturation adjustment. This gives some Poser art some of that uniformity quite a few of the "snobs" complain about.

I'm not going to diss the people that create anything to give back to the community, because each does what they can according to their abilities, and I know first hand how much time it takes to do it. But there's also a minor issue that the attitude of "those good enough make their own" is missing: quite a few of us use Poser commercially (for whatever reason) and when you have a deadline of a week or less, we can't afford to start doing our own stuff, not because we can't or don't want to, but because we have no time. In that respect, good, professional-quality textures are what we need; they can't be a recoloured version of the one we used for the previous illustration, and it can't be something that looks too uniform to be real fabric or can't stand a close-up because it's small or has been compressed to hell and back. Or some other problem that I'm forgetting at the moment.

From the texturer point of view, I have to say that there is a hell of a lot of work that goes into creating and setting up textures or freebies. So far I've done "Seidr" for Freja (in freestuff), a bunch of textures for the full Djinni set also by Fredrik (will be a freebie too, but there's an example in my gallery, "Spinning Dervish"). I've also currently got my first set of textures for sale in pending (again, examples in my gallery), so I'm not an "uninterested" party. But I waited to put something on sale until I had stuff that I would be happy to use regularly, and that was the best I could possibly offer. Seidr was started when Fredrik sent out the first beta, and finished right after he made the final version available to the public, so we're talking in all about a month or so of development. Djinni took up solid my week's holiday earlier this year, plus every waking hour two weeks before. And it isn't finished because the models aren't finished yet. Sylvan Jewels (the one in pending) was done even with more care, and a lot more detail than the two freebies; including a pile of bonus stuff that I honestly didn't have to do, but I thought would be handy. I spent long hours working on each set, crafting it carefully, and I'm damn proud of the lot. But if I had to charge for them enough to "recoup" the time I spent crafting them, they wouldn't be saleable in the Poser market.

I think one way of reversing this a bit is for us to think what we're doing as consumers. We're driving the market, preferring to buy the cheap stuff, or demanding that the creators give things ever cheaper. Truth be told, I know I'm not going to make piles of money with mine, but I couldn't possibly sell for less. There's a limit we can go down to, and I'm wondering if the "decline" we seem to see has to do with people "wisening up" and deciding to spend less time working on things, as otherwise there's more waste than gain in doing textures. I think a LOT of us are willing to pay higher prices for quality products (Blackhearted as MotM is a good example, Uzilite's, Stonemanson's and Sanctum Arts' popularity another), so it would be possible for texturers to say "hey, let's make the best we possibly can and charge a fair price for it". On the other hand, I'm not sure how most of the buying public will react to that.

To sum it up, as buying public, I think the only thing we can do is to support the artists whose work we believe is good enough, not only by buying but by letting them know what we think of their work.

Message edited on: 10/18/2005 08:00

I wondered if it was just me thinking that a lot of stuff has come out that is just not that good. If you bake a cookie and you sell it, you have to bake another cookie. If you make a texture you don't have to make it again, and you can keep selling it to whoever walks in. I don't buy this idea that it takes a lot of work so you have to charge more. There are lots of great textures that aren't expensive and you will typically see more reviews on those than on the higher priced items, I'm thinking because more folks can afford them and are buying. I won't buy anything from anyone just because it's new. I'm seeing a lot of items lately that are just not that good and wondering how many sales they are actually getting. I think it's bad to show pics of what a texture can be if you buy all the addons, kind of bait and switch if you ask me. I also think the market is saturated with textures, I'm seeing stuff that I can do myself, and I'm no texture artist. Basically if you charge too much, you will not sell that many, and if the items are poor quality you won't sell any at all. Marque

Attached Link: http://www.rawart3d.com

I think one thing to keep in mind is that people are requiring more and more professional quality items (as home computing technology grows), and in order to make professional product, people have to specialize in one area or another. It is not unreasonable for someone to be a great modeller, but not have skills for texturing (or vice versa). A few years ago this would be rectified by the two teaming up to release a set. But that doesnt work anymore, because of how low the pricing has become. For example at daz, the cut for the creater is already 50%, so if that is split again with a team up. That means each artist is only able to take home 25% of any sales, and that doesnt add up to much. So it is far more effective for a modeller to release a set with a basic texture, and the texturist to release their set seperate. That way they would be at least able to take home 50% of the sales...plus they help to promote each other....and each can work on building their particular skills and providing better quality stuff. Rawn www.rawart3d.com

It may not actually be a case of dropping standards, it's quite possible people's expectations are being raised so high by people like Stonemason, Sanctum Art & Rawn that anything less is seen as badly inferior even if it's not.

If you're talking about props/sets, you're best off making your own textures, and if you're serious, don't be afriad to re-UVmap these objects. I see a lot of bad work in that area as well. That's often the real problem, not the textures themselves.

Message edited on: 10/18/2005 10:50

I have a very simple solution, I don't make textures, I do the mapping and use photographic textures with the following advantages. 1) The renderings looks much better. 2) You can use any texture that you have, and you are not forced to only use my texture.

This is an interesting comment and I think, for the most part, it's true. I'm probably not going to win any friends with this but I've been squawking about it in the Merchants Forum for a year now so I might as well squawk here too LOL.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that some folks see all the merchant resource kits that are available, think they can create a product in a day or two, and make a few bucks...many of them just interested in making enough to be able to spend more money in the MP. You can't blame them for that either but unfortunately what has happened IMHO is that there are a ton of textures out there and they all look the same. I'm talking about skin/character textures mainly since that's what I do and I don't pay that much attention to clothing textures.

If you look at the readme's to see what resources have been used, it's the same ones over and over again and, in some cases, up to ten or more resource packs used in the one product so you have to wonder just how much original work there is in the product to begin with...hence that "cloned" look.

It's interesting that it's reached a stage now where often you can tell which resource packs have been used without even looking at the readme's because the same ones are being used over and over again. I don't even own a merchant resource pack apart from Lisbeths transmaps and her PS brushes for brows, lashes and pubic hair and the only reason I use those is because it saves me time and even then, I don't always use them. Now, others will say that that's exactly the reason that they use the resource kits in the first place, which is fine too except that when you're talking about an entire figure, that's a whole nuther story IMHO.

I know there are a lot of merchants who put a lot of work into their products even when they do use the resource kits, but there are a good many who buy the resource packs and do nothing more than alter the hue and saturation, maybe fiddle with the color balance a bit and call it done and that I think is quite wrong. Resource kits are intended to be used to assist in the creation of a product not a final product.

To create a character/texture set from scratch takes a long time and is an arduous task but in the long run, you have a product that is unique and original and for me, it's well worth the effort even if Rendo does take 50% of my sales.

The other thing too I think is that the market here is being strangled to death for those of us who would like to charge what a product is really worth when there are so many products available at flea market prices...again because something can be created in a day or two without a lot of effort.

I don't think it's going to change anytime soon unless there is a limit put on the number of merchant resources that can be used per product and people are forced to either learn how to make their creations from scratch or at least alter them sufficiently so that they don't all look the same.

In the meantime, I'll just shaddup and keep on keeping on LOL.

I don't think merchant resource kits should be for sale in the MP. I think they should be sold in a separate area available to merchants only. It's always best to learn how to do things for yourself before resorting to "macro" shortcuts.

I agree that it's best to learn texturing "the hard way," and I also agree that the results of "merchant resource kits" tend to be bland and and lower-quality, but limiting sales of any creative resource is likely to breed serious resentment. It's bad enough that in our community some people take on a regal attitude when they become a "merchant." :-) Interestingly, the most talented seem not to do that. I can't think of friendlier and more open folks than Stonemason and face_off, for example. I know you're referring to character mesh textures, but if all resource kits were limited to merchants only, non-merchants like myself wouldn't be able to buy resources for noncommercial use. I've purchased several texture tile packs for my own texture creations. I've given some away but am not interested in selling them.

a thought about textures....(Qoute:They either lack detail, or they're muddled, or they simply look like some kind of photoshop fill bucket pattern) the reason for the photoshop fill bucket pattern is that there are so many things copyrighted now days that if you can't make it in photoshop yourself or if you don't buy a texture fill pk that can be used then you risk someones copyright...aka, using existing online photos or even parts of them..the other thing is as stated above, if your going to put that much time into all the detail of a texture to make something really good then you give it out as a separte pk for the item. i wouldn't save my textures are really good quality but, then again there all free(at least so far..lol) netta

When you think about it, all textures begin with a seamless, tileable pattern. Be it skin or cloth, there is always some type of element that repeats. However, good textures only begin there. It's the attention to detail that makes the difference ... seams that match, fabrics that look worn rather than off the rack ... trims, buttons, varying transparencies, displacement and bump maps, all of these things can make a difference. However, I do have to agree with a point that someone has already raised. Prices in the Poser market have become so competitive, and the number of Poser merchants has become so high, that the returns for the amount of time it takes to produce a quality product are getting lower and lower. In short, the continual drop in prices is now hurting all of us.

Oh ... in regards to making textures that are totally original, Super Blade Pro (by Flaming Pear) and Eye Candy 5: Textures by Alien Skin are good investments. Each of them help you create original and customizeable patterns and textures for textures that will be all original.

Two of my favourite plugins....

Yup, worth their weight in gold! 8-) (Well, figuratively that is ...) LOL

In terms of copyrights, why not just scan a real piece of cloth and start there. It would look much better and would be ridiculously easy for a hobby artist like myself to do. I guess you couldn't scan a printed pattern on the cloth, but you could at least get the actual fibers of a colored piece of cloth which would look infinitely better than some of the textures I've been seeing lately.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/gallery.ez?ByArtist=Yes&Artist=Arien

bnetta: *the reason for the photoshop fill bucket pattern is that there are so many things copyrighted now days that if you can't make it in photoshop yourself or if you don't buy a texture fill pk that can be used then you risk someones copyright...aka, using existing online photos or even parts of them..* Not strictly; you can, as onimusha says below, use scans of fabric that you add to at a later stage, either through your own images, or through using other type of licensed material. Dover books are wonderful in this respect to create lots of things, but then again, you must "create" the fabrics yourself. And that requires quite a bit more work than using a pre-bought "merchant resource"

the other thing is as stated above, if your going to put that much time into all the detail of a texture to make something really good then you give it out as a separte pk for the item.
Why? This I don't understand at all. I personally would not be able to live with myself if I was giving away -let alone selling- something that I'd made without putting my best in. The only possible reason I could see for this is the profit line.

Deecey:
However, good textures only begin there. It's the attention to detail that makes the difference ... seams that match, fabrics that look worn rather than off the rack ... trims, buttons, varying transparencies, displacement and bump maps, all of these things can make a difference.
EXACTLY! That's one of the issues I've been noticing that's been lacking of late. You've put it very well.

*However, I do have to agree with a point that someone has already raised. Prices in the Poser market have become so competitive, and the number of Poser merchants has become so high, that the returns for the amount of time it takes to produce a quality product are getting lower and lower.
In short, the continual drop in prices is now hurting all of us.*I mentioned it above, and I'll mention it again. Each of the texture sets I made for free took at least 20-30 hours of solid work, if not more (don't ask about the marketplace one, because I'll start crying... let's say my hours of sleep have been few, and I've become reacquainted with caffeine). Anybody can do the maths to figure out how many copies of a product need to be sold to "recoup" the investment of time, using something basic as minimum wage per hour of work invested. It's quite an eye-opener. Granted, none of us are in this for the money, but we can only do so much.

Onimusha:
In terms of copyrights, why not just scan a real piece of cloth and start there. It would look much better and would be ridiculously easy for a hobby artist like myself to do. I guess you couldn't scan a printed pattern on the cloth, but you could at least get the actual fibers of a colored piece of cloth which would look infinitely better than some of the textures I've been seeing lately.
This has been discussed in the copyright forum, and it is a very valid alternative. You could use it as a base to create your own printed fabric, or other things, and it usually looks pretty good. If you have the resources to do so, there's nothing stopping you from embroidering/knitting/weaving stuff yourself either, and those would be pretty unique resources that you can then come back to again and again. And combined with the piles of stuff from Dover, you could create more than interesting, original stuff. Of course, this isn't as "convenient" as using a merchant resource created by someone else :(

Message edited on: 10/19/2005 06:57

Message edited on: 10/19/2005 06:58

Sometimes you can't even scan a piece of cloth though, because the pattern might be copyrighted. Sure, something like denim would probably be ok, but not a floral pattern because those specific (painted) flowers might be someone's copyrighted flower... And while I CAN take pictures of skin and bodyparts, I can't get the seams nice without a merchant-pak underlaying texture. I've tried. Lots of times. And it just looks crappy. People are so fast to diss Merchant Ressources, and it's true that some of the crappier textures out there rely 110% on them (but also some of the truly unique and spectacular textures) - it's a TOOL like everything else. You might as well ban the use of Peter Levius' photos, as everybody seems to be using those as well... Personally I LOVE to make CHARACTERS and MODELS and I positively HATE to texture them. But as you can't sell anything untextures (at least not if you expect poser hobbyists to pay for it) I have to go through the texture phase too, knowing full well that that part isn't where my talents are... At the same time, as Rawn pointed out, it's just not a solution to pair up with someone else, because the profit is wayy too small then... We all want Poser stuff to be high quality and low price. I'm no different there, but sometimes I'm wondering if we aren't shooting outselves in the foot with that approach.

according to american law, secondary use of a textile design is ok as long as it isnt in direct competition to the original. Or in other words, if I popped out and got some Laura Ashley sheets and photographed them, and turned that into a tile to apply to say a dress for v3 ....nobody would care as long as I dont turn around and use that image to making a competitng physical textile project. And yes .. I checked with my copyright lawyers. whee. (other countries amy have other laws and this does NOT count copyright illustrations/logos such as disney characters ..use those and disney will come after you guaranteed) that being said, it is not easy to turn a photograph into a seamless texture. I should know, I've done literally thousands at this point. frankly 90% of the merchant resource sets I've seen here I wouldnt use. Any design thats made seamless by mirroring it is useless IMHO ... its not realistic. The only time you see that in existing textile design is in mid 70's op-art prints. (incidentally I can recomend Handspans and BlackLotos' sets ... seamless, clear and no mirroring) Generally even if I do use a 'merchant resource' in a texture I'm not likely to use more than one in any set. I've sat down and photographed my entire textile collection and turn those into very high resolution seamless tiles and generally I use my own most of the time. Good thing I'm a crazy quilter .. have hundreds of fabrics samples to work from :) for texture artists out there .. I suggest you sit down and learn more about the capabilities of your program as with a few simple Layer style modifications I can (and have) used one base texture for an entire garment without anyone noticing. Poser product pricing has gotten nastily competitive ... but I price as I see fit for the time I put into a project and IMHO it works out. Lyrra

I'll admit there are certainly some texturists that I prefer over others. At the same time there's a lot of saturation in the V3 market and a lot of stuff that was once given away for free is now being sold. In the veins of the modeller vs. texturist factor I think this has played in part as to why a lot of the free and 3rd party figures haven't received much support. A lot of the energy has been put into the mesh and mapping but sometimes the artist just doesn't have the ability to create a higher end ultrarealistic texture for their figure. A good texture can sell a figure better than a bundle of clothing. And texturist support is really the indicating factor as to whether other forms of content will be provided.

One of the producers of great male textures and morphs JPeter (Jepe) recently decided due to the flood of crappy textures out there for less that $5.00 all using the same 3dsk skin textures or the same merchant packs, which managed to somehow get around the testing process, with stretched skin, blotchy renders or just plain awful templates, which seem to be selling like hotcakes. I assume you all know JPeter (Jepe) who created the hairy suits for David and all the MovieMen series with 3 characters each and 3 body types without hair, with medium hairiness and with fully hairy textures, and eyes. If you see the quality of what he delivers for 2 dollars more around ($7) you get quality bang for the buck and oddly -- his quality stuff doesn't seem to sell like the crap stuff does. Jepe recently announced that he would quit making textures entirely and leave it up to the folks who produce 4 products a week, (how they manage that I seriously don't know) and let the folks out there figure out how to make decent hairy textures themselves. I find it sad that one of my idols in the world of Poser has been forced to realize that quality work will make you go bankrupt. And that shoddy work will make you rich. -- How sad. Antonio

"has been forced to realize that quality work will make you go bankrupt. And that shoddy work will make you rich." I can't understand by which reasons comes to my mind, Microsoft!....

Well wishy-washy is one thing, but I've had expensive textures which had seams before. That's just shoddy as hell and it STILL went through. When I see a white seam on the head (I mean COME ON can we say obvious or what??) and a skintone difference on the arm... then sorry, that's shoddy as hell. No matter how much detail is put into the texture, no matter how great it is - if there is a seam then that's simply not good enough. When contacting the actual merchant - I was greeted with complete silence. Needless to say I won't be buying anything from them again.

I find that some textures have seams showing before they are rendered, but for some reason they do not show after a final render is done. Is that what you are referring to, or are you talking about seams after rendering?

If a texture show seams in preview mode and once rendered don't show, the texture is ok, is not a problem of the texture only the lack of precision of the preview mode.

No, this is after rendering in final mode. I tend to render at high res (300-600 for print stuff) and with high end settings (since my machine can handle it) and I see seams in various textures. Maybe it's just in P6 I don't know, but even at lower resolution with lower settings I see them. Or maybe I'm just too picky. (I don't think so though) Wasn't just one texture either. Also, since my other half and I have kind of different tastes in textures, and he does more stuff with V3/Steph (surprise surprise) while I do more stuff with M3, we tend to have different packages on our machines. He picked up one of those Omega textures and when I was working on his box the other day I put it on a V3. Err.. I don't know if it's just me, but I thought the texture was extremely blurred (the tattoo stuff) if you did away with all the gloss (which I don't like) and did a closeup render. He doesn't do many closeup things, mainly uses the posed figure as a filler in sci fi scenes and stuff, so it doesn't matter as much to him. At the same time I sat there with my eyebrows raised and was like "Urgh, no thanks." (I am picky... so it's probably just me who feels that way.) This is by no means meant as a slight to the artist who did those textures, I realize how much work such a texture involves. It's nust not for me because I'm incredibly picky. I have the greatest respect for the people who produce the textures, please realize that. I cannot do it myself, it's too time consuming. My other half is quite happy with his purchase, while I'd have slung it into a corner. Just shows you the difference between two poser users who sit next to each other lol. (He feels the same way about some stuff I've bought btw lol)