I've been noticing that a number of packages I have, either from free stuff or the marketplace, contain the same texture bitmaps for things like rusty metal, wood etc. There is a particularly common wood texture called Wood621.jpg that keeps cropping up. There are also some common reflection bitmaps that appear in different products. Are these textures actually public domain? Or are they being used by vendors with the permission of the originator? If there is a source of public domain textures, could someone post the address please?

Some may come from KTN3D: http://www.ktn3d.com/copyright.htm Some maybe from Lemog3D: http://perso.club-internet.fr/lemog/ Some from imageafter: http://www.imageafter.com/ Those are the three resource site I use most, but then I don't do commercial work. I would hesitate to redistribute anything from the top two. KTN3D states "not for commercial use" and the terms at Lemog are a bit vague.

Always be leeerly of freeware textures. As we have seen with freebies, anyone can slap their name on something and allow use without authority to do so. If you don't buy it you could be the one held liable.

some are David Gurrera's textures but they shouldn't be in any commercial product. He doesn't allow that.

A lot of them, (such as Burloak.jpg, oldwood.jpg, stucco04.jpg, and others) are the textures that come with 3dStudio Max. When you use max to create and texture a model it is allowed to include the textures when you distribute the model.

We have some wonder texture artist/merchants here in the Renderosity marketplace. Some of their products are only $5.00. I have boght lots of them for commercial work and they are fantastic. You will be 100% safe and legal with them. Do a search in the marketplace for textiles and you will find an abundance. Make sure they state that they can be used for commrcial work. If you are in doubt IM the merchant and they will let you know for sure. cheerio lululee

... but presumably not if you have a model created outside Max.

ugh! I have bought some of those textures too - some are good (and I really appreciate the zipper and button packs) but many of those are simply done with free filters in various paint programs and utterly useless to me personally as a texture artist. Just be sure to look over those packs carefully to be sure they have what you need/want, many don't even tile seamlessly

I have noticed on some sites the textures are called seamless tiles and they obviously aren`t seamless in any way.

The other day I was trying to texture a door in Vue using a "seamless" wood texture and it came out looking like the door was made out of about 20 small squares (which obviously did not blend together seamlessly)

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