New Tile Materials

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In the past, creating realistic CG tiles was a pain, because all other texture sites only offered photographs. 

Which is a problem when you try to convert them into material maps, as the software usually struggles to understand the material correctly.

We've been there, and we wanted some better tiles.

So instead of starting with photographs, we created them digitally with Substance Designer.

It's incredibly time consuming, but it's the only way to get realistic material maps, as we had full control over every aspect of the material.

So we created beveling, height and tilt variation, wear and tear, glossy variation and a bunch of other subtle tweaks to make the tiles look gorgeous.

There are 33 new tile materials now available on Poliigon:

Members get them at no extra cost. Download them now!

Not yet a member? Sign up here.

PS. What do you think the next texture pack should be? Vote here.

New Wood Materials

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We've just released another wood collection including five seamless, high-res cabin wall materials!

Check out this new fence type with three variations :)

We've also added a sweet cutting board with the side edges included and more!

New Feature: Sky HDRs

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Lighting is a big deal.

It can mean the difference between an image that feels unnatural, and one that feels alive and welcoming:

But unfortunately, most outdoor lighting setups look pretty terrible.

 

Why most outdoor lighting looks bad

The most common approach to outdoor lighting is to use a sun lamp and a blue environment light. Which is a step in the right direction, but it's too simple. Because - as with many things in CG - the real world is much more chaotic.

A sky isn't just blue. Thanks to clouds, and the physics of light, it's a million different shades of blue, white and yellow. All with differing amounts of saturation and value.

Run an eyedropper over a photo of a sky and you'll see what I mean:

That's a huge amount of variance for something most of us perceive as "blue"!

When your sky lacks this detail, it impacts not only the lighting but also the reflections.

And since all objects are reflective, a solid blue color looks pretty laughable in a reflection:

Simply put, without a real sky, you're missing out on glorious detail in the reflections and the lighting.

So how can we get all this extra complexity in our renders?

 

The Solution: HDRs

HDRs are a completely different approach to lighting. Instead of using lamps, it uses a single image to light the scene that looks like this:

And while it looks like a standard photo, it actually contains valuable light information (captured in multiple exposure ranges) that your rendering engine can use to create light:

(Remember: this is without any lamps whatsover! It's controlled entirely by a single HDR image.)

They show up in reflections too:

HDRs are the most photorealistic lighting solution, because there's no fakery. It's taking an exact lighting profile captured in the real world, and bringing it into your 3d software.

That's the reason they're used by hollywood and most architectural renderers.

But unfortunately HDR Skies aren't cheap. They typically range from $10-30 each online, which means a modest collection of just 10 Skies would cost $100-300.

Until now!

As of today, Poliigon now has HDR Skies available to all existing and future members. There are 40 HDRs so far with plans to add more in the future. 

And all are available at a whopping 15,000 x 7,500 and 12 EVS :)

Enjoy!

New Wood Flooring Collection

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Wood is a popular choice for architects, as it's both visually interesting and an easy way to breathe life into the decor.

But when it comes to texturing, wood flooring suffers from the same problem as marble: it's very difficult to capture, and as a result most texture sites have a very limited range.

Unlike concrete or bricks (that are readily available in public spaces) wooden flooring can only be found inside finished interiors. And unless you want to break into dozens of homes, it's unlikely you'll find suitable flooring to photograph.

As a result, most texture sites have a very limited range of interior wooden flooring available.

So instead of giving up, we proactively created them from scratch. We took dozens of photo references then recreated them using Substance Designer. 

And after 50 man hours, we're pleased to present this pack of wood that's identical to photo textures.

Here are all 28 of the new wood flooring textures:

For each texture type we created 3 types of wood: light, medium and dark:

And since we had full control of the arrangement, we went an extra step and created unique wood patterns like diagonal parquets and diamonds, that are very difficult to find online:

These are perfect for architectural use, as well as scene building.

Here's how our in-house artist (Guilherme Henrique) used the new texture collection:

These wood textures are now available, to all Poliigon members. Enjoy!

New Marble Materials

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Good marble textures are surprisingly hard to find online.

They're either tiny in real world size (20x20cm slab anyone?) or riddled with highlights.

But there's a reason for this: marble is actually very challenging to capture. 

Marble is heavy and therefore expensive to transport, which means even in the real world most are cut into small pieces. It's also highly reflective, which means photographing it without highlights is nearly impossible.

So rather than photographing them, we tried something different: we collected dozens of photo references and then made them by hand using Substance Designer.

It was a challenge that took 86 man hours to complete, but we're pleased to present this new collection of the best marble textures available online!

Initially we were skeptical that procedural textures could match the quality of photographed ones. But after weeks of fine tuning by our team, we were amazed that they looked identical to photo equivalents. Even zoomed in at 100%.

You can download these new marble materials now!

Look forward to seeing your gorgeous marble scenes!