CGBookcase vs Texturelabs

CGBookcase is a free web resource for physically based rendering textures and material guidance. Its catalog lists 566 free textures with filters for 1K, 2K, 4K, 6K, and 8K resolutions. Textures use the CC0 1.0 license, allowing free use without credit, including commercial work. A listed Manhole Cover 16 material includes Base Color, Height, Mask, Metallic, DirectX Normal, and Roughness maps. The site also provides the open-source Texture Tiling Tool, which helps make photoscanned surfaces seamless and repeatable through surface-aware blending, clone patches, and lighting equalization at seams. Guides cover Blender and Unreal Engine setup. The Blender guidance notes that DirectX normal maps need green-channel inversion for Blender’s OpenGL format. Sample Rock and Bark downloads are offered in 4K and 8K, with file sizes from 118MB to 958MB. Patrons can access a Google Drive folder containing all textures.

Texturelabs is an online source of free original textures, tutorials, and custom tools for art and design. Its library spans subjects such as brick, concrete, fabric, glass, paper, stone, water, and wood, alongside atmosphere, film, grunge, and ink and paint. Tutorials cover Photoshop and After Effects. The Tools section includes Photoshop actions, brushes, gradient maps, patterns, and plugins, plus After Effects templates, bulk downloads, and lossless textures. Retratone offers print-style halftones, pattern styles, custom inks, and 100 built-in presets that users can save. Distressor is a Photoshop panel with 14 distress styles based on real-world samples. Textures can be used in personal and commercial work, including film, advertising, print, apparel, and video games, subject to restrictions against resale, redistribution, repackaging as competing design products, and AI training use. The plugins require Adobe Photoshop and Creative Cloud installation. Free textures and tutorials cost nothing; plugins and downloads are one-time purchases.