ive had a bit of time today, so i figured i would post a texture comparison of the textures i currently own. i think i have a few more, but i have to search my poser texture folders - if i find any ill add them. these are rendered on vicky2 with the cleo power hair by hmann. the lighting, pose, etc are identical on each image - the only things that were changed were the textures, bump maps and trans maps. the lighting is the p4 default lighting, all i did is move two of the lights around a little. if a texture didnt include a bump map, none was loaded. if it didnt include an eyelash trans map, then i used the 'vicky non-clump lashes' from renderosity freestuff. all that i ask of you is to please do not post any replies to this thread until i am finished uploading all of the images, and after that i ask you to PLEASE comment :) i will post at the end when i am done uploading the pics. thank you.

and thats all for now folks. working with the textures, ive noticed a few things. hallie - good for medium-distant renders, but close-up lacks detail davin - lacks detail in extreme closeups, a little too 'perfect' carly - same as above - the lip texture seems extremely large to me lucie - same as above - but there are so few afro-american textures vicky2 light high res - a little too 'perfect' for my taste, its a great texture but the insanely high resolution seems unjustified to me, considering the lack of 'blemishes' that would make use of it. asia - one of the best, but it needs editing in photoshop to remove the 'yellowness'. it also has some strong highlights on the cheeks, the lip texture is a little unrealistic, and the skin is too 'leathery' for extreme closeups noa - far too strong highlights on this tex, you always get almost the same face no matter what morphs you use on vicky. its also very 'green', which you notice more in full body shots. i think her lips are much better than asia's. sara - great tex, but the lip texture is a little misalighed (spills over). nothing a little photoshop cant fix though. anna-maria-vampyre - this set is great, i think im going to use this as my staple texture from now on. the face, especially the eye area, is really realistic. the one problem with it is that the lip texture is misaligned (too small). this can be fixed in photoshop quite easily though if it bothers you. great in close-ups, and also very nice in full-body shots. hope this helps people in choosing the right tex. there is no postwork on ANY of the images. cheers, gabriel

forgot to mention - the anna-maria-vampyre textures by catharina are no longer available here it seems. you can get them on her site at www.renderocity.com - in fact they seem to be the best deal since for $19.99 you get a 3 month membership to her site and you can download ALL of her marketplace textures, including the new kain, tomy, dj, and all of her vicky textures, models, poses, etc.

I have carly,noa,asia and lucie.lucie is in my opion too dark. carly is the one i use most, and its because the overall look and color hits my taste most!!!

VERY interesting comparison! I think I like Anna-Maria by Catharina Przezak best.

Well, erm... let me add my opinions :-) Carly - Otherwise beautiful texture, but I just can't stand her lips. They're too... too white! They look unnatural. Davin - very beautiful, I would like to use that one too one day. Vicky2 light - just another very.. basic texture. Doesn't have anything particularly good or bad about it. Noa and Asia - very realistic. However, I don't like the highlights on the texture and I also don't like the lips in either one of them. The lips look so dry they might crack any second. Sara - absolutely lovely. I think I'll get her one day. Especially her lips are beautiful! Anna, Anna-Maria, vampire - They are all great textures. The only thing I don't like about them is that Anna's eyebrows are too high, in my opinion. I edited the texture in Photoshop and now I'm perfectly happy with it.

Oh btw, has anyone figured out how to fix that annoying eyelashes problem? That they're not really even touching the upper eyelid... sigh

yes - its called postwork :) you can do it in a few seconds by just drawing in the last few lashes in any photo editing program with a single pixel airbrush and dark color set at about 45% opacity.

I really like Magnet's textures "Sweet Emily" and "Emmanuelle."

Does anyone have a solution to Catherina's too-white nose? I've tried lighting but still find that it glows.

rain, maybe you could simply edit it in Photoshop and darken the nose a bit? You could try either airbrushing it or the burn tool... I think...

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=58927

Here's what I would do about the highlights rather than the burn tool...use the eyedropper to get the overall color of the skin, especially around the nose area (where there are no highlights. Make a separate layer and paint over the highlighted areas. Use a layer style like "Color" or "Soft Light". That way, you won't have to undo anything (like the burn tool) and you can tweak it by taking the eraser at a low setting and erase around the edges of what you painted to blend it in to the rest of the texture. I find the burn tool too harsh and rather blotchy. It's really hard to get it just right unless you are doing it on a flat color. :) Laurie

Hmmmm. Yes, listen to Laurie and not me! :) She obviously knows what she's talking about whereas I was just suggesting something and trying to sound smart :D I might actually try what she suggested as well, cos I'm not too fond of the nose either :)

Eowyn and Laurie, thanks for the tips! I'll have to dig out those textures and give it a try :-)

hmmm... I use DAvin and shiloh quite a bit, they are my favorites frankly. I may have to get Carly she is imho the best one up there. I really don't like either of the steffyzz textures. They DO look like they need chapstick, skin is too yellow for my taste and she needs a deep cleansing pore reducing mask, The second one has an oily skin look to it. Lucie is very dark, but I think she looks great, great brows and perfect lips. catharina's textures made the model look in her forties, while the carly one looks in her late 20's to mid 30's so they are out for me too.

I am very interested to see some textures by Magnet. My most used is the light high res tex by DAZ. Mazak

me to.. I'd like to see some large renders (as above) of some of Magnets textures :) especially the darker skin tone (can't remember her name) I've been looking at her lately.. Thanks

Don't worry Eowyn...I'm sure I don't know any more about Photoshop than you do ;). It's just that the burn tool might make the tip of her nose a funky color and not the color of the surrounding skin. If you want to do that, you are going to have to overlay it with the same color :). The burn tool works much better on midtones and shadows than it does highlights (it darkens to more of a gray version of the color it's burning - if that color is almost white, it will turn out grayish. Blah!). :D Laurie

I like angielyn's textures I use Mira and Zoe a lot :) I also like a few others I have, but I tend to go back to Mira and Zoe :)

I like angielyn's textures I use Mira and Zoe a lot :) I also like a few others I have, but I tend to go back to Mira and Zoe :)

I have also just done this with all the textures I own but I don't have a webpage set up for the comparison yet. Hopefully I can get around to it soon. Good work, you have many textures I don't. :o)

to fix the noses on Catharina's textures, I like to use the clone tool in photoshop, using a round soft brush, set the pressure to around 50% (depending on how bad it is) and then gently clone the white spots of with a cloned spot from nearby. Doing it this way give a perfect effect for me. I also fix other areas the same way, such as the lips, but with the lips I use a sharper brush with super soft pressure and slowly brush over the parts I need to fix. The clone tool in photoshop is perfect for fixing almost anything on textures, you just need to learn how soft or hard to press, give it a try :)

fyi on Steffyzz's textures... some people mentioned a greenish hue to them, thats easilly fixed without post work or altering the texture, set her ambient skin color to 25 red 0 green 0 blue...should be really dark almost black red...it totally changes the look of them in a good way :)!...

I like altering the ambient skin colors (a trick I picked up from Dmentia's Bobby Sue texture, and her image in the galleries - I can't remember what it's called off the top of my head though), you can get some interesting tone variations.

Thanks eowyn and fauve.. they look great...

You're welcome... I like the non-photoreal look of Magnet's Emily and the Handspan Studios stuff, because I think photorealism is a chimera that too many 3D artists chase for no good reason. Most of my stuff aims more toward natural media than being photoreal. That said, as soon I looked over these comparisons, I rushed right out and got Anna-Maria from Catherina Harders' site... :-> Interesting notes about the ambient lights, the underlying material color, etc. Does anyone else do what I do, and alter, merge and piece together textures? Most of the ones I use are a combination of three or four different store-bought or freestuff textures, plus there's a lot of my own tone changes, hand-painted details, etc thrown in. I don't think I've ever just used a texture right out of the box... I always change it to suit me first.

My fav's and now on my buy list Alex by magnet and Rayme by byte-me-ok

fauve - I do the same thing, in fact that was my biggest reason for joining Catharina's membership for copywrite free, and for learning to do the textures myself, I just knew I was going to change a texture so much that I wouldn't realize it wasn't mine and give it away.. so to be on the safe side.. I only edit Catharina's or create my own.. so many textures floating around on my hard drive I didn't want to forget about something like that.

This is shaping up well to help me make future purchase decisions :) Any chance you could post the pose, camera and light you are using so I can post my images under the same circumstances? It would be VERY nice to be able to compare them that way. When I get home I will see if I can come up with a more closely matched pose/camera set up though I will keep using Anton's lights for now. Thanks for starting this it is REALLY helpful :)

Attached Link: http://www.hickorytech.net/~dlwilder/