I'm creating PBR Textures and 3D models since 2018 and sharing them for free | Hacker News Reader

I'm creating PBR Textures and 3D models since 2018 and sharing them for free

sharetextures.com

485 pointstolgaarslan100 comments

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!

Bloody idiots ruining something because they can't find a market for it or bc they are incompetent.

Come to our discord and say hi. I'll love to discuss the idea

This is great! I added the link to my list of free game dev resources: https://github.com/aaron9000/c-game-resources

Is there a tool you used to create these materials that you would recommend?

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

Thank you, I will check these out - love what you are doing. Please keep it up.

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!

I'm not planning to share them because they are so complicated and need to be edited and standardized one by one. I'm focused on creating scanned assets right now.

Thanks for the response. Sounds great! Again, thanks so much for sharing these resources, it's always good to have more free assets out there.

Browsing the models is a bit of a trip. Potato, chair, onion, lamp, medieval torture device, banana, couch...

What are atlases used for? https://www.sharetextures.com/atlases

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).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_atlas

Atlases are a set of small elements grouped together in one asset. It's usually used for trees and terrain objects.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license#Zero_...

https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/

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.

And their point is that saying “copyright free” will probably be more immediately understandable to people who don’t know that and don’t want to read a small comment about copyright ‘intricacies’ (even if it’s not that intricate)

By saying copyright free, more people who need freely-licensed works like this are likely to use it instead of being warded off by “this does has a license, it’s copyrighted, but it’s actually free because of the license”

Colloquially, it’s the same thing.

CC0 a license that relinquishes copyrights. You’re right that it’s a license and not public domain, but otherwise making a distinction without a difference. The stated explicit intent, and the rights granted by the license, are to provide a version of public domain that is unambiguous and works globally.

Your terminology is a bit funny when you say “I still own the copyright” or “all of these works are copyright”. Works aren’t copyright, works are protected by copyrights that authors have… unless the author waives those rights. The copyright one has by default is the exclusive right to copy and distribute the work. Once you give that away, either via license or public domain attribution, it’s irrevocable and permanent, and there’s nothing of value in the idea that you’re still the copyright holder, since there are no longer any copy rights retained nor copyright protection under any laws.

In short, it’s perfectly fine to call CC0 attributed works “copyright-free” because that’s what the license actually does, it “waives” all copyrights and “related rights”, and allows the public to copy at will, forever.

BTW I don’t think it’s true to say that there’s no such thing as relinquishing copy rights in many countries, that’s too strong of a claim. It is true to say there’s no such thing as public domain, but copy rights (or “related rights”) can be transferred and/or waived pretty much everywhere.

"To the greatest extent permitted by, but not in contravention of, applicable law, Affirmer hereby overtly, fully, permanently, irrevocably and unconditionally waives, abandons, and surrenders all of Affirmer's Copyright and Related Rights [...]"

It being "to the greatest extent permitted by applicable law" I think you are imprecise here:

> there’s nothing of value in the idea that you’re still the copyright holder, since there are no longer any copy rights retained nor copyright protection under any laws

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.

Exactly. This is why CC0 is was created- to make public domain available to jurisdictions that don’t already have it.

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.

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.

What would you replace that line with?

I guess "PBR" means something different to you.

Patrol Boat, River

Pabst Blue Ribbon?

Yeah. Been a mindfuck ever since I started 3D stuff.

Professional Bull Rider?

Wait, we're not all on HN to discuss Policy Based Routing?

Peanut Butter and Radishes?

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.

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.

Beware those assets are high poly and are better suited for rendering work than for realtime rendering in games: https://i.imgur.com/KX2FVzv.jpeg

While resources are listed as 1k, 2k, and 4k, and download with files like:

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.

Thanks for the explanation. I don't need to add anything to this reply :)

Great work to publish your work into public domain. I saw a couple more people in the thread trying to do the same thing.

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...

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.

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.

Yes, how dare they give out their work for free. The audacity of these people!

Architects get paid for making models, so why is it not fathomable for the poster that they should pay for the textures they use? Or, why do some workers deserve to get paid and others not?

Edit: And reading the reply from the architects, you can almost smell the entitlement.

I don't get it. How is this any different from programmers who create open source software that they release for free?

There is no difference. Programmers keep making open source software for free, and people making money on that software keep acting entitled to it.

What don't you get? DO not work for free, because it kills yout income stream. Open Source is the perfect example. Fuck, and these individuals even have a patreon where a few individuals pay for this. I mean, this is bonkers.

I'm confused. Who do you think is not being paid here?

Here's their argument (which I disagree with, but I believe I understand what it is to the extent where I can explain it):

1. Person A starts creating work W and selling it as a profession

2. Person B also starts creating work W and giving it out for free (with some Patreon income, but that is not the point here)

3. Person A can no longer compete with person B, because free is free. Person A is no longer paid

I also want to add; It's not like selling a physical product. Digital products usually need to be edited to fit your design. Person A still paid because they will always have customers who like their style & creations. We are not creating and sharing "Kitbash or Evermotion" level assets. These works require thousands of work hours and it's impossible to live sharing them free.

Nope, you are killing an income stream for others. That's what you have to understand, but I think you know it, just want to ruin the ecosystem. FOSS has the same issues, and now you are making sure another area heads there.

Could you elaborate on why you think it's appropriate to dictate what others sell their work for, or whether they sell it at all?

If that's the case, I guess my confusion comes from how one can assume this position and in the next breath complain about people acting entitled to others' work?

We, who cheer on the people who give out stuff for free, are "entitled" when we think we "deserve" the free stuff?

I don't know, man.

If someone can create or reproduce the same kind of work that Person A produces, then that work effort (not the work product, the work) holds less value. Person A should do something to add more value.

A similar argument can be had for something that can be made cheaper than a more expensive option. If my company makes a widget that takes 100 people to make over the course of a year, and then someone comes along and finds a way to make it at substantially less cost (not labor costs) via technological improvement, then seems like OP would similarly be against this, which doesn't jive with nearly any definition of capitalism.

We understand your concern, but we believe in the power of sharing and accessibility. We aim to support the community by offering free materials and 3D models. Our creations are simply tools to aid talented artists in creating their main products.There are unlimited options to create a digital asset. (style, design, year, condition, etc.) We can't create all of them.

Much of open source software is given away free, as in beer. Would you rather that be paid for and possibly also closed source?

Yes, much open-source software is free, enabling more people to use and contribute to it. Paid options might offer extra perks. Personally, I appreciate the accessibility and collaborative spirit of open-source software. It fosters innovation and community involvement, which I value. For example, if you check ArtStation's or Unreal Engine's Learning sections, you will see free tutorials from real experts. This exemplifies the power of the internet.

And makes people vulnerable, since they will have only one option to get more income and that is from a company. Because this will be a race to the bottom. You provide something for free, while you are getting paid by some nefarious entities who pay for your work on patreon. Race to the bottom, because there is now way to compete with you. Either offer better work or offer your time and resources for free in exchange for some exposure.

> while you are getting paid by some nefarious entities who pay for your work on patreon.

Spooky Patreon supporters!

> because there is now way to compete with you

How about YOU offer better work?

This is like "old web" versus "platforms".

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.

I used to wonder why studios had their own foley sound stage, musicians, photography and concept artists...

Then one takes a trip down the deep rabbit hole of modern copyright liabilities. Finds a web marketplace filled with potential copyright submarine lawsuits, DMCA take-downs waiting to happen (youtube contentID will eventually flag the work of that cheap asset pack off Unity marketplace), and draconian EULA.

People are often unaware resale/transfer of many production Asset licenses is prohibited even if you buy the old CD/DVD media sets, "royalty free" can also mean hidden per-user seat-fees and can't cover public performances of sheet-music that must be cleared with local performing arts organizations to make sure the original rights holders get paid.

What this means, is even if you pay for something 3rd party... you don't own the primary rights to the content. And there is usually a bunch of per-file legal conditions that are impossible to keep track of in a production environment.

Ultimately, even CC0 may not necessarily protect you if the source makes the wrong judgement call on the original primary work. There is a similar argument about ML generated works as algorithms cannot own IP, and therefore cannot be transferred or licensed properly...

This is one of the primary reasons I financially support OSS related projects that do procedural textures/shaders that can be baked in 4k later.

It really sucks the fun out of building anything aesthetically beautiful for cheap... as your budget ends up mired in licensing fees even before 1 line of code is written..

I supported Polyhaven as they curated a truly unrestricted library of CC0 content, and offer it without any hidden fees/subscription BS for everyone.

Remember to have fun, =)

How is that done? What more than a camera and a computer do you need to create those textures and associated maps?

I've been creating for 6 years and adding new assets every couple of days. There are several technic to make them. You need a computer indeed but some creation methods don't require a camera. You can generate textures procedurally using software.

Let's say I want to "texturize" an existing brick wall of a building.

I make high-quality photos, but then what? How do I create bump maps and so on? Do I need a stereoscopic setup? Do I need polarizing filters or something like that? What software is used?

IF you want to make it high-quality, there is a technic called photogrammetry. You need to take hundreds of photos under same light, without shadow or reflection. Then you create the 3D model of the facade using photogrammetry software like metashape or realitycapture. After you have the 3D model, you need to transfer 3D data to 2D texture. It's called baking. After baking is done you endup with basecolor(diffuse/color), height(displacement), normal and ao(ambient occlusion) maps.

If you are looking for a basic way, just take one clean photo(without visible shadows or reflections) There is method called Bitmap to material. Basically, you grayscale your image and using that grayscale data to create other maps like bump, roughness height etc. If you've experience in that area you can make them in Photoshop. Adobe Substance Sample(Substance Alchemist) has great abilities to generate using that method + AI.

To clear reflections you need circular polarization filters. You can also use cross-polarization method to clear all unwanted reflections. But It require addinational light source and linear polarization filter.

Thank you, these are great keywords to google.

If all you need is normal and bump maps, then https://github.com/azagaya/laigter is pretty good for quick creation. (Free)

Spriteilluminator is not bad also https://www.codeandweb.com/spriteilluminator (Free for general use / viewing, but not save without money.)

Texturelab is also pretty decent for a node-based texture design software. (also Free) Only issue is it hasn't been update much, yet relatively feature complete. https://www.texturelab.io/

Most can guess the paralax, bump maps, ect...

Example using the above methods (took longer to upload than make)

32x32 pixel roses (found online) texture: https://i.imgur.com/uanHc0e.png

32x32 pixel rose normal map (took ~5 minutes, Laigter): https://i.imgur.com/QX0EygO.png

32x32 pixel roses rendered (Spriteilluminator): https://i.imgur.com/VYTcFuQ.png

32x32 pixel roses side-by-side: https://i.imgur.com/uKA2Su8.png

Substance Designer is a defacto industry standard in procedural texture creation. As of 5.4 UE also has a texture graph editor. They're all node based editors combining a bunch of PCG techniques and patterns to produce textures in parametric, non-destructive way.

The website is completely broken with Firefox. Search results do not appear on the screen - you must scroll down to see results. Clicking on the asset images does nothing so they cannot be downloaded.

When using Chrome the layout and interaction works, but even then browsing is a poor experience as only four items can be seen at once so lots of scrolling is needed.

Sheesh... modern web design is a disaster. This sort of collection could really use static pages with labels as links and small thumbnails showing at least 50 items per page.

[Edit] I recommend https://ambientcg.com/ instead as that site is much more responsive.

Works fine for me on firefox 125.

Works on 124.0.2 as well.

I'm running 120 (released five months ago). If people wrote web pages rather than web programs these sort of issues could be avoided.

Other than being a bit slow to load and lacking a "please wait, still loading..." message it works fine on Firefox 125.0.2.

Sorry to hear that. We don't have a developer on the team. Lennart (from AmbientCG) has great skills in development, and he perfected their website. We're hiring freelancers to update our website, but with limited resources. Still, we're always looking for ways to improve our website for our users.

Fantastic resource! I actually stumbled across it organically a few months ago, and couldn't believe my luck. There's really nothing else out there as high quality that's CC0. So thank you.

You could try https://polyhaven.com/

You can also use 3dassets.one It let's you search 3D assets based on the license or creator.

Quaternius[0] and Kenney[1] also has lovely low-poly 3D models, all under CC0.

[0] https://quaternius.com/

[1] https://kenney.nl/assets/category:3D

This is amazing. Back in the 1990's, when I worked in 3D, a resource like this would have been an immense force multiplier. Back then we had BBSs to share models, but nothing like this.

Slightly (?) on topic: I'm looking for some collaborators for an opensource project using Babylon.js (where PBR textures could also be helpful): https://github.com/r-follador/CubeTrek_Babylon

It's a GPS track visualization web app for outdoor sports; any help would be appreciated (see here for the hosted app: https://cubetrek.com)

Is there a high demand for models of gallows, electric chairs, and head stocks? I now know where to go if need to create a model of a torture chamber with some added fruits and vegetables.

It's probably an "if you build it, they will come" kind of thing. I'm pretty sure a few HN readers that just saw this site have already run off to re-create the Butcher level from Diablo in WASM.

Seem like this project's goals and the goals of polyhaven.com are aligned. Is a cooperation possible? Each other's libraries could totally benefit from more 3D Models under CC0

Polyhaven creates textures using only photogrammetry(scan). It's doubling their quality also, equipment, and human resources. I'm adding some scanned textures too but it's not my main focus.

I love how it is supported by patrons rather than charging everyone.

Lovely. Just about any sort of texture map I could think of, and great variety. I especially like the glassy/stone textures. Any Blender add-ons that integrate with the site?

You can find our assets on BlenderKit.

the problem with acronyms... his PBR is a completely different PBR than I was thinking...

What is PBR? Not Pabst Blue Ribbon! Here's a brief description from Adobe:

Physically based rendering (PBR), sometimes known as physically based shading (PBS), is a method of shading and rendering that provides a more accurate representation of how light interacts with material properties. Depending on which aspect of the 3D modeling workflow is being discussed, PBS is usually specific to shading concepts while PBR refers to rendering and lighting. Both terms describe the process of representing assets from a physically accurate standpoint.

That is true but not whole story. I believe when people talk about PBR Textures they most often use PBR synonymously to "Principled Shader", "BSDF Shader" or "Disney Shader" (all meaning roughly the same thing).

Here is my whole comment. Somehow the last part I posted in an edit magically disappeared:

When it comes to 3D data, exchanging geometry has been possible for a long time. Essentially and most of the time we just use triangles as the lowest common denominator. Most of the difficulties are more or less accidental complexity because of different formats.

When it comes to textures this was not possible for a long time, because every renderer used its own algorithm and they all had different parameters. There was no lowest common denominator.

When Disney invented BSDF it allowed the exchange of realistic materials for the first time. The "format" won and is what is sold or given away as "PBR-Textures".j

[deleted]

PBR textures don't include just the usual colored images, but also other surface properties that influence how specific surfaces interact with light. Like roughness, glossiness, elevation (surface normal vectors), whether the surface is a metal, whether it has specular highlights, whether it appears fuzzy, whether it is partly translucent (like skin) and so on. The combination of such textures is called a (PBR) "material".

It's called "physically based" because there exist simple physics formulas for these properties, so it luckily isn't necessary to simulate the all microphysical details that cause them in real objects. Similar to how one can describe a gas with a few parameters from thermodynamics without considering the molecular details that explain those phenomena.

In old 3D renders everything looked like plastic because they had only very primitive surface properties.

Is there any software meant for casual users for displaying and walking around these objects? I'd love to have some sort of VR room with the simplicity of "The Sims" where I could add these, plus perhaps some connections to the rest of the internet. A fake TV that displays the frontpage of HN or a 24-hour Twitch feed. A radio object that can play Spotify streams, with 3D audio enabled.

Don't know of anything like this, but this is a really good idea! It would be sweet to have a scene and renderer with well-known properties (which could be adjusted to account for style; realistic/toon/dynamic lighting/baked lighting, etc) which could be dropped in to a webpage so that users could mess with it. That way, developers could independently include it and write their own ways of injecting the assets.

The end result being a web widget that is a 3D environment with whatever the developer wants to put in it (with some defaults like "sunny outside", "sun room", "basement", "cave", etc), and drag-and-drop asset selection for users to view the showcased assets in the scene. Could even double as a code-guide, based on your idea of including functioning TV and Radio assets (an example of how to include this functionality into the assets). Overall, just a really great idea!

I've considered something like this for years. A simple, casual, social space to just decorate, hang out, do basic stuff like what you outline. I think there's a lot of potential there! Not so much money though, I imagine...

Second Life is still a thing, or OpenSimulator if you really do want to do it all yourself :)

FWIW, SL is finalizing the addition of PBR textures now and may go further WRT scene imports.

I know one shouldn't judge an entire community like this, but every interaction I've had with SL has been... strange, to put it lightly. Still, I have a lot of respect for those devs and their commitment to the game

OpenSimulator looks like a cool idea too!

That Virtual Room can easily created with Unreal Engine. I believe you can find some ready environments like this on Unreal Engine Marketplace.

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