These sites provide models, textures, and other materials for 3D image production.
Daz3D – Generally great place to obtain the basics at a low price, Daz3D has long been known for producing awesome Poser models at incredibly reasonable prices (like FREE). Although they maintain a series of programs that can be used to produce digital artwork, such as Daz Studio, Bryce, Carrara, and Hexagon, their real strength is in their content. The size of the library of figures and add-ons there is truly staggering. Having said that, because of a series of negative experiences (mostly stemming from issues involved with rolling out an ill-prepared site upgrade) and a general feeling of discontent at the direction the company is going, I do not shop there much (if at all) anymore.
Renderosity – Like Daz3D, Renderosity focuses predominantly on Poser models; however, I find that Renderosity has a greater diversity of appearance and options available. Renderosity also carries models and resources for other programs, although the pickings are much sparser. Unfortunately, Renderosity has also recently “upgraded” their site with a buggy interface; in addition, they seem unwilling to recognize that the way the site upgrade was carried out *cough*without any warning*cough* might have inconvenienced some of their customers. I am currently waiting for the other shoe to drop; if this turns out like Daz3D’s site it will be a tragedy for my muse. (Not so much for my wallet, however.)
Runtime DNA – Runtime DNA (or RDNA) is like a smaller version of Renderosity without the website issues. They have some really cool stuff, including the absolutely amazing content by AlfaSeed (formerly Aery Soul). You’ll find support for a lot of alternative characters here, too.
These sites provide extensions for Daz3D’s Carrara software, and allow it to do new and amazing things.
Digital Carvers Guild – I cannot say enough good things about the plugins that DCG makes for Carrara. I personally own about half of the plugins they’ve produced, and I can say that they’ve been worth every penny. I can’t think of the last image I produced that didn’t incorporate the effects of at least one of these plugins. If you’ve decided to focus on Carrara as your medium of choice, I highly recommend that you look over the offerings at DCG. In particular, I highly suggest Anything Goos, Enhance:C, ShaderOps, and Terrain Tools. You may not use all of them in every picture, but I can almost guarantee you’ll use at least one.
Inagoni – Inagoni makes (in my opinion) more specialized plugins than DGC (above); however, for certain tasks they’re absolutely awesome. In particular I own ArchiTools, which is basically a building creator. (Imagine building, from the blueprint up, a copy of any building you choose. Yeah, it’s that cool.) How often do I use it, however? Not so much. Most of the time it’s easier to find a model that someone else has already built, or to cobble together something simple out of primitives. Their plugins used to be quite expensive as well, but last year they cut the price by half. Every so often I get tempted to pick up a couple more of their plugins; now I really don’t have any excuse not to.
Sparrowhawke 3D – Another amazing set of plugins, Sparrowhawke’s stuff is fairly specialized (like Inagoni), but super useful. In addition, they’re all free! (It’s hard to go wrong with free.) Make sure you look through “The Laboratory”; some of the stuff there is even more amazing and useful than his publicly released stuff. Just beware that you’re using those at your own risk, as they’re often very much “work in progress”.
Fun, interesting, or otherwise memorable websites, these folks have nothing in common other than that I like them!
Be warned! If you click on these links and buy something, I might get paid! (Also, leprechauns might grant me wishes, and gold might fly out of my — well, you get the idea.) I haven’t edited or revised my thoughts of these sites because of this; the only reason I put them up like this is because I’ve been impressed by them. If you want more information on any of these, please feel free to Contact Me.
Dropbox – At this point who hasn’t heard of Dropbox? The only reason I’m including it is because as I’ve recently found that Dropbox and TrueCrypt go hand in hand with creating a secure off-site backup solution for personal and business files. If you sign up using one of the links on my site you’ll get extra space! (I’ll also get extra space — and who couldn’t use more space?!)
Last updated: Tuesday, February 23, 2016