Maxwell Tutorial, Tips, and Know-How

For those of you experimenting with Maxwell...we have located an invaluable resource. This user offers his insight into the real life lighting characteristics of the program. VERY HELPFUL! Because Maxwell uses actual physical lighting parameters to light it's scenes, the lighting must be approached just as it would for a photographer. This article goes over basic physics of light, lighting principles of photography, and then tells how to apply them in Maxwell. Check it out here.

This image is several Gigapixels...Click to Explore

You too can create huge images like this one with your own digital camera. Check out our Digital Photography Blog to see how.

Inspirational Portfolio

I know that a few of the members in our flickr group are really interested in digital painting and photoshop manipulation. For them, this portfolio is truly inspiring. This artist has created some of the most striking images I have ever seen using photoshop. You must check this out. Enjoy!

Free 3d Cars - not the highest quality, but free

Check out Tirad.com for links to free 3d cars. As you can see, they aren't the best quality, but if you are looking for background cars or something, they are not bad. There is about 10 of them.

Check out other free cars, plus some super high quality ones, by clicking the tag below "free 3d cars."

ZBrush Charachters

Another example of a very talented professional artist offering tips and tutorials on their personal website. This time the tutorials offer examples of how to model charachters using Zbrush. Amazing stuff here.

Building Environments

This site offers some interesting things. There are many good textures including nice plants and some people. Only one of the plants is offered for free, however there are also some really great models here, and most of them are free. There are great chairs, coaches, all sorts of furniture, and other models. Overall, the models make this a valuable resource. Here is the link.

David Revoy Tutorials

David Revoy, a professional concept artist, offers up his many insights for your benefit. He does incredible work, and really uses some unique techniques to get the job done. You will learn a ton from the various tutorials he goes through. Many of them are in French, but the pictures are the most important part. There are some in English too, plus some that are all pictures. Programs included are Photoshop, blender, and painter. His tutorial page is here.

The Best Free Texture Site on the Web

A vast library of free textures can be found at cgtextures.com. Talk about a great service to CG professionals! These textures of the utmost quality. You can find all sorts of super high resolution and high detailed images for all your graphic needs. The one seen here is one example, but there are textures for every situation. The only thing they ask is that you don't mass download, or you will be banned.

Gallery and Flickr Group Launched!

Free CG is proud to announce the debut of it's new gallery and Flickr discussion group. For those of you that aren't familiar with Flickr...shame on you! You need to be. It is simply the best community on the web for sharing images. We here at Free CG are all about images, so it only make sense that we would love flickr. Sign up for Flickr now to become a part of this great site. Of course, you can also use an existing yahoo account if you've got one.

Once you are a member of flickr, we invite you upload all your computer graphics images, and add them to our group. The group is of course called freeCG...naturally. As more and more of you post here we will all be able to see CG work from artists around the world (See the bottom of this page for the very first additions). The goal is to get hundreds of members so our artwork can get the exposure it needs. In this way we can receive constructive criticism and constantly improve our skills.

Along with the gallery comes a discussion form as well. Here we can post any topic we want. Best of all, we can share knowledge about computer graphics.

The best part is its all Free...as always.

Got3d.com is one of the best free texture resources on the web. Obviously, they have many textures for sale. For these products they offer free samples like the one seen here. There are free shrub, people, and tree downloads.

In addition to these great free samples, there are also thousands of free "raw textures." In other words, lots of images that can be made in to textures with a little work. They are actually quite useful.

http://www.got3d.com/index.html

Ambient Light Textures - free samples

Well...here are some more free samples from another professional texture studio. Ambient light makes super high quality stuff, and they are generous enough to offer a lot of it for free. The texture pictured here comes in a pack of samples along with 13 other textures, all very high quality and very useful. This pack even includes a very useful road texture that I have used many times for projects. In addition to this pack there are several other free downloads of trees, plants, and grass. My favorite is the tree line download. It is an entire group of trees to be used for you backgrounds. Very Helpful!

To download the samples all you have to do is set up an account using your email. It's worth it. Check out all the texture bundles while you are there. If you are looking to buy some good stuff, there is plenty to choose from here.

http://www.ambientlight.co.uk/

Evermotion.org

My favorite feature of this website is the free tutorials. There are some really good ones in all different types of catergories. There is something for every 3d program, plus compositing and Photoshop. Check them all out. There are even video tutorials. Of course, there are always the galleries and the forums to check out.

http://www.evermotion.org/index.php?unfold=tutorials

Excellent Quality Free Car

Dosch Design doesn't only offer some of the nicest 3d products on the web, they also offer the best 3d car sample available...for Free! It is equivalent to something you would be paying $100.00 for on Turbosquid. Don't miss it. Make sure to check out their full line of cars, HDRI skies, and textures...all of which are amazing quality. The link for the free car is at the bottom of the page on this link:

http://www.doschdesign.com/products/3d/Cars_2004.html

Awesome Free Models - Low Polygon 3d

Unfortunately for us, lowpolygon3d.com is down right now and you can't purchase anything from the online store, but check back frequently because they offer some of the best free samples on the net. Great cars and people...the stuff we all need but can't afford to buy. It's all low poly. Make sure and check out all the products for sale too, it's all excellent. Check this link regularly, I'm sure it won't be down long.

http://www.lowpolygon3d.com/cat--Free-Samples--Free+Samples.html

An Amazing Resource - Lots of Free Stuff

3d total is one of the best 3d resources on the web. It has tons of tutorials, textures, and other resources for free. There are also many great textures for sale. We have all seen the great products created with these textures, including our previous post.

The tutorial page has so many great learning opportunities. The tutorials are broken down into all the different programs and all the different catergories you need, including:

• Beginners
• Complete Projects
• Modelling and Rigging
• Animation and Rigging
• Lighting, Rendering, and Effects
• Texturing

There is also some 2d stuff including Photoshop and Digital Painting. You just can't beat this site. Check out all the free textures too.

http://www.3dtotal.com/textures/

ARROWAY - The Nicest Textures on the Net...Free!

Well...they're definitely some of the nicest...especially for architectural visualization, and they're actually for sale, but a lower resolution version of every texture has a free download. Arroway does ask that you don't abuse this privilege...so feel free to purchase some of their textures. It is really nice stuff! Each texture comes with accompanying bump and reflection maps making for very realistic textures.

http://www.arroway.de/en/index.html

Professional Grade Free Samples

From the same people that brought us animated 2d people for our animations comes some great free samples available for all. Marlin Studios is a professional texture studio that focuses on creating high quality content for all types of 3d projects. This link provides access to one of their most popular items...a free tree (complete with alpha map).

http://www.marlinstudios.com/samples/sampvtf.htm

Search the site for other free samples. Marlin Studios also offers a lot of great products available for sale on their site, plus an enormous library of textures on www.turbosquid.com

Concept Art

Awesome collection of work from artists around the world.

read more digg story