Now, first of all, this is not an attack on all the nice people who are donating free stuff for all of us!

BUT...

There's something I just don't understand...

John Doe takes the time to create some nice freebie. He takes the time to zip it up with the right paths and everything. He takes the time to donate it here, on Renderosity. But he doesn't take the time to make a thumbnail so people can see WHAT it is he's offering?! :huh:

Sorry, but no matter how nice your freebie may be, I'm not downloading what I can't see... And while it of course saves on your bandwidth I also think it sorta counteracts the whole idea of giving it away...

Or is it just me?!

Amen to that ... 

IMHO freebee's MUST have a thumb to be alowed ....

Chris 

No kidding. If I am going to open up my runtime to something, I really, really want to know what it is exactly!

hey, maybe that's why they don't supply thumbnails - to save on bandwidth :lol: one other suggestion would be: write a good description in "details". but i ain't picky :lol:

I agree totally.  I'm to the point where I'm thinking of contacting 'Rosity and ask them why THEY don't require a thumbnail with the offering.  It not only gives one no clue what so ever as to what we are getting it makes the Free download area look quite messy and unprofessionally kept up. 

This is a professionally run on line site and store is it not?? 

I love freebies!!!! And I am so grateful to those who have the talent, time and generoosity to make them and then make them available to us.

However, I do have to agree with the importance of a thumbnail. I'm sure there are a whole lot of wonderful items out there that I haven't given thought to using because I just don't know what it is and while there is a few words of description, a picture is worth a 1000 words.

There's one category of freebies that doesn't benefit from thumbnails: scripts. Especially scripts without user interface. What should such a thumbnail look like?

When it comes to meshes, morphs or textures, thumbnails are VERY useful.

I'll go one step further and say not only should a thumb be required, it should be hosted here. Surely rosity can tuck it into a hidden gallery or something like that. There's nothing more frustrating than the freestuff page not loading because it's waiting for a timeout from some obscure site where the creator stashed the thumb two years ago. It wouldn't hurt to host the thumbs here, pages load faster and the thumb never disappears.

Hear hear!!

Thanks for posting this!
I too am very thankful for all the generous free stuff which people offer but also like to see what's being offered!

I've noticed that the last week in particular that there seems to be a greater lack of thumbnails OR ones with broken image URLS.

Even the latest/first page or the freestuff area looks like a old neglected archive...

Half of the fun for me besides making a freebie is making a cool thumbnail to go with it. Smiles

Would also like to add that I'm suprised of the number of thumbnail images that have been removed due to nudity. I would think that after the first few it would occur to people to do something(put pasties or simply cover up certain areas of the image)so that doesn't happen. I respect all those who choose to produce freestuff and only want the same respect for their creations to be given.

I offered a free pose for v4...... and due to the fact i have no clothes, lol I rigged jessi's bathing suit for her so there could be a non nude thumb.  LOL

When i get more clothes, I'll make more poses :)  Cant have a nekkid Vicky running around posing all over the freebie gallery!