Wave Issue 9611 10/25/96 Article 4-01

***Texture Libraries
By Jonathan Sunberg

Textures, as bit map images, have many applications from backgrounds on
Web pages to desktop screens on PCs to an emulation of real surfaces in
3D models. At 4th Wave, parent to Wave, we set out to find what texture
resources are available on the Web and found 30 sites. The sites range
from small collections of 6-12 textures, to large collections up to 600.
GIF and JPEG are the most popular formats, but a few sites also offer
TIFF, RLA, RGB, Targa, etc. Almost all of the libraries are free, but
most do put disclaimers on their web pages to combat royalty-free use.

Although most sites offer textures that can be incorporated into 3D
applications, only one site, 'Texture Library", is primarily 3D oriented.
This site was built for use with Pov-Ray and offers a superb assortment
of textures, all with descriptive titles that can be clicked, in order to
view.

After speaking to 6 different texture web site managers, they each stated
that their textures were meant for web page design, but have been taken
into the field of 3D. Greg Schorno, of Texture Tiles explained how some
of his wall textures (bricks, wood, etc.) and floor and landscape tiles
were being used for a Doom style clone. These types of textures can
already be seen in games like Quake (which uses texture tiles to create
skin on its characters) and Virtual Worlds (which use texture for
landscapes, walls, etc.).

The collections we found were quite diverse. Files ranged in pixel size
from 51x44 to 1396x700 and in byte size from 1 kilobyte to 50 kilobytes.
The ease of use in the various sites also ranged greatly. Some sites were
found to be difficult, because of a lack of descriptions or previews.
While others like the ones we point out on our web site offer easier
navigation.

We've decided to go a step further, though, and offer a ranking of the
Top 5 sites that we found offer the most selection with the best
navigation capabilities:

1. BAX - Background: 118 Images that contain title descriptions and a
color editing application which allows over 16 million possible color
combinations for each image. They are also placed categorically by
content type.

2. Texture Station: 391 images, contained in categories by color family.
Very realistic textures. Easy to navigate.

3. Realm Graphics: 338 images placed in 12 categorical themes. 10
pictures per level offers easy navigation through the site.

4. Net User Web Art: 4 categories (clouds, textures, patterns, weird).
Navigation easier due to thumbnail imagery previews.

5. Texture Tiles: 4 categories (small, medium, large, extra large tiles).
Over 300 images. Somewhat slower navigation due to category by size, not
by content.

For those with more interest we have links to all the sites at the 4th Wave
web site. Try visiting:

www.fourthwave.com/textures/