Keeping your own texture library

[Wikivic]

Hi out there!

As an aspiring Environment Artist (who has chosen to focus, for the moment at least, on realistic assets) I obviously need access to as much good quality photo reference as possible. I already use sites like CGtextures a lot, but after I finish each personal project I tend to delete the massive bitmap images I had downloaded for texture refs in order to save on hard drive space...and apart from taking overall photo refs of exiting buildings if I want to model them exactly as they are, I've never gone out and taken high-res photos myself to use for making the actual textures...

So I've been wondering for a while whether I should start trying to compile my own texture reference library, perhaps on an external hard drive I can just plug in whenever I want to look for something?

Do a lot of professionals (or students for that matter) go out and take their own texture reference photos? And do you always keep all of the texture references you have downloaded for previous projects in case you need them again? Is it useful to do this, or does it work just as well to use stuff from CGtextures and other websites in general and just take a photo of something in particular if its hard to find images on the net?

I also have a similar query about Photoshop brushes - I tend to make custom brushes as I need them but have never really compiled a set of my own brushes or thought that much about it. Is it best to also keep a personal library of Photoshop brushes, or does it not really matter that much?

Thanks for reading! (sorry about the long post :o )

[LowRez]

I fall into the same catagory as you, I generally don't have a massive library on my PC at any one time, I really should however,

Im intending on upgrading my PC as Windows 7 comes out which is the ideal time to get a new HDD just for resources, definatly worth keeping brushes all the time though.

[cookepuss]

Keeping an image library is essential.

I snag photos of everything and everything. Some textures I create based on web searches. Some I hand make. Others I just go out with my camera and shoot myself.

I keep everything, including the references. Right now, my library is up to about 70,000 images or so. That's a meager 30GB of images, give or take. Having a large HDD is important, but not nearly as important as having a good cataloging system.

I tend to organize stuff in terms of people, places, things, brushes, panoramas, etc. From there, I sub-categorize into groups like famous or not famous people, rural or urban settings, organic or sci-fi, and so forth.

Once I had my directory structures down, I just used some basic image cataloging software to create contact sheets that I can use to find the textures or references I need. I still have to set up a more convenient way to cross-reference, but that's a much bigger project best left for another time.

[Mrpearlzildjian]

For the most part my memory serves as reference for harder to find things, but I can't tell you how many times I wish I had a digital camera to get the really hard things to find(it's astonishingly hard to find a pic of a side profile of a cat with it's mouth open), but I can typically get by with Googling most of it, but hell, I save almost everything I google. But to keep it from getting cluttered, I usually only save the quality images, or ones that I know will come in handy for other times, but I would suggest keeping a good size library of general references(anatomy humans and animals alike especially). Images don't take much space at all, so you could easily have something like Cookepuss's library and still have plenty of space. I don't think they even manufacture internal drives that small anymore, lol.

[grimdc13]

I like doing both. I have a digital camera for taking refence photos or my cell camera when Just need to take a quick snap. Others I use photos or look up Tutorial on how to make textures.

A word of caution: If you have and anti-virus and or malware that can scan each picture before or after you save it to your comp. I had found 3 worms and a highlevel trojan slowed down my comp after a reference spree. I spent five hours scanning and cleaning them out of my system.

I have good freeware programs like Avast! (to scan for viruses) , Lavasofts -Adaware to scan for spyware, malware, browser hijacks and dataminers, and Spybot search and Destroy to get bots, dialers and anything else. They've saved my computer time and time again.

[Frump]

I would say it is essential to do both!

Deleting your textures? What size is your Hard Drive, 10GB? Even huge images do not take up much space. It's definitely worth it to keep them. Having a library, it will save you a lot of time.

And about photos, it's always good to get your own shots of buildings and odd concrete and different things. I've used a lot of my or my friend's photos for textures in the past. All of the ones on CG textures were taken in the same way, there's no magic to it. Your camera doesn't have to be top of the line either, to get the job done.

Although, it's hard to carry a camera around all of the time. I always see dozens of things I'd like to photograph and use while walking or taking transit. :doh:

[Lamont]

Keep a library and collect ref. If you're hard up on disk-space, make it web storage.

[cookepuss]

HDD storage is cheap nowdays. You can get an external 1TB drive for as little as $99. A lack of storage space is not really an excuse anymore.

[Wikivic]

Thanks for all the responses, they're really helpful! I think I was secretly hoping people would say I should keep my own texture library, as I'm now pretty excited about starting it :D

I guess I had just assumed that having a folder full of massive images would be a drain on HD space, without really checking how much space they actually took up :o I've still got 174GB free on my internal data drive, so I could almost certainly just use that

I would like to go out soon and take some of my first texture ref photos. I'm going to read the '10 Texture Photography Tips' article on CGtextures before I go, but I don't think they mention resolution there. What resolution should I be taking my texture photos at for the best results? Does it need to be as high as my camera can go, or can I scale down a bit?

As someone who enjoys a bit of traditional artsy 35mm photography on the side, I usually hate days with diffuse sunlight as they lead to flat photos, but now I'll have a reason to go out then too :D (which is good as we've had a pretty overcast summer here this year :rolleyes: )

@grimdc13 - I keep an up-to-date version of Nod32 antivirus running all the time which sometimes can pick up on things as soon as I click on a webpage that turns out to be dodgy. I also run a SpyBot sweep pretty regularly. But thanks for the reminder about virus scanning - I'm often downloading refs and I don't think I spot-scan images enough after big ref hunting sessions, must remember to do that more *nods*

Thanks again folks, I'm pretty excited about this!

[grimdc13]

See if your camera has a Macro lense or Macro mode for taking magnified pics of little things up close. Most Digicams have them. I say 300dpi for me is the resolution I like. As I might have to crop in on the texture late or do some adjustments.