Creating textures

As many textures in texture archives have licenses which are not compatible with the ISC licence we will use for OpenClonk, you will have to create many textures on your own. But don't worry, it's quite easy and there are some really good tutorials on how to create quality textures from photos:

There are different methods how to create seamless textures, that's why you will find many tutorials who tell it differently. A rather good one is the tutorial on Game Artist: Create Tilable Textures. The basic procedure is to first find an eligible photo without any too noticeable inconsistencies at the border or changes in lightning / color and cut it to a square. After that, press Ctrl+Shift+O (in GIMP) to displace the image from the center. Now all you got to do is to make the seams go away, preferably with the clone brush.
Another good one including tips for how to photograph right is From photograph to normal map, how to....

More tutorials:

• Creating Normalmaps (Very practical but little background information)


• Creating Normal maps from images Part 1, Part 2 (Excellent and complete tutorial)


• Baking normal maps from High poly models using Blender 3D


• Normal Map - Tech Artists Wiki How to create Normalmaps from High-Poly models - Excellent and complete tutorial with links to tools etc.


• Quick way to mask tree leaves

Texture archives

Free / Public Domain
That the libraries are without copyright is without engagement. Most of these just don't mention any copyright, even to American law this does not (anymore) mean it is public domain. To ask the author about the license would be a good idea. So please double check by yourself.

• LuGher Texture (3400+) - free to use in personal and commercial projects


• Accustudio (~1000) - free of any copyrights


• The Texture Barn (~500) - Royalty-free textures for computer graphics, illustration, game design and everything else


• Texturenwelt (400+) - mixed licenses: see single images


• Ben Cloward (~300) - free but author would like to be notified where it is used


• Free3dsTextures (~200) - mixed Creative Commons Licenses - Attribution license would be compatible


• Blender Texture Library (~200) - Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Free with License
The most and the biggest free texture archives offer the textures free for any purpose, but it is not allowed to redistribute them as a texture pack. So, in all cases, we would need to print the license with every redistribution, in few cases where the texture comes from. As this license differs from the ISC, 3D models created with these can not be licensed with the ISC as a whole (with the textures). Thus, a OpenClonk package containing textures of these archives can not be redistributed with the ISC as a whole but has to mention these exceptions.
So if we want to make use of these textures at all is something we need to discuss. I don't see a too big problem there, though.

• CG Textures (30000+) - explicitly forbids use in open source project as the licence is not compatible. However, I don't think this is a problem, see above


• Image After (~10000)


• Mayang's Free Texture Library (3800+) - says something about max. 30 textures may be used, I will ask the author


• 2Textured (2700+) - "you can't reselling or redistributing the textures in another sites. And yes All textures can be freely downloaded and used in you commercial or personal works. Use any textures for your purposes."


• textures.pedramk.com (~1000)


• Freetextures.org (~1000)


• Texturez (800+)


• Free Texture Site (600+)


• Back of Beyond (~500)


• Noctua Graphics (400+)


• Zen Textures (450+)


• Texture King (300+)