Duion.com has been updated over the last few years with lots of new textures, such as photos as well as some finished materials and even some 3D models I made, all totally free to use under CC0 license:
The difference on my website compared to most other websites for textures is that there is no nonsense like license restrictions, traffic restrictions, required logins or paywalls etc, just free to use without having to worry about anything.
So I just wanted to remind you that it still exists and lots of new content has been uploaded and hopefully more will still be uploaded in the future.
Thanks, I definitely appreciate this. It can be hard to manage licenses when everybody and their brother wants credit for a material that got baked into an HDRI render that was used to bake a texture for a background object… Even just maintaining a texture library is difficult when you need to keep a readme for every image.
Don’t know if you’re looking for ideas. I can find a bazillion floor tiles. Where I end up having to make my own stuff-- which isn’t as good as stuff that other people might make, since I lack talent and energy-- is when I’m making tiling normal/bump maps. I find these extraordinarily useful for generating materials but I haven’t found more than a handful of textures, usually under unclear licensing.
Yes no PBR materials yet, but for seamless textures such as sand, bricks etc you probabably get fine results by just applying roughness and metalness to the whole texture, since usually it is all the same material across the texture, only if you have mixed textures like wood with metal on it, you will need a roughenss and metalness map to tell which part of the texture is metal and which is wood.
However most textures are just texture photos as I only convert them to materials when I need them myself.
Like what? So far it is very simplistic, fast and efficient. Only the frontpage I think of the art section could use some updates like preview images of each category or so, since many people cannot read.
Thanks for the link. I like the ease of finding textures.
One thing I can’t figure out, and maybe I’m hi-jacking your thread, and this isn’t anything about your site, just images/textures in general… how does someone use one like this https://duion.com/art/photos/cfdsc01907jpg in a 3D scene?
Well it is a skyscraper so I cannot get a frontal shot obviously, however you can adjust perspective in your image editing tool like gimp, so you cut out the skyscraper and use the perspective tool to pull the lines straight, so that it wills a rectangular texture. If you are lazy you can just load it in blender and align the UV maps with the skyscraper, but thats a not so nice solution, but may work for quick render scenes probably.
I didn’t think he took it that personally after reading his answer. Maybe I’m mistaken, but let’s assume Duion is asking for detailed critique, which would be understandable since you just told him to improve his design, but not what or how.
I personally would suggest modernizing the design, if a full redesign is an option at all. The page seems to have aged a bit.
Here are some things I would consider when designing your webpage. These might heavily depend on my opinion.
3D and “glowing” effects are rarely seen in logos and webdesign currently. The logo shape is pretty good and might be easily converted to a simple black or white version. I would remove any Text shadows or glowing effects.
Most content on your site is very readable, but some areas show a lack of contrast. You might try to get higher brightness difference between links and background, to make them easier to read.
Links have different colors. Especially on the homepage there are different colors for links depending on what box they are placed in (Header and topics are orange-ish, content and rest of sidebar is blue/purple). Maybe make all links orange or a lighter shade of blue.
Borders on your page are strong on their background. Consider using thinner, solid borders (also on input fields) in order to push them more into the background and rather use negative space to visualize layout.
You are using very little padding, which pushes the content to the border of their boxes. I like to use at least 16px between border and content as padding. You could also constrain the with to something like 70% on a widescreen. This helps to reduce line length (should be about 65 characters per line for optimal readability) and creates some relaxing space at the sides.
Style elements like rounded corners are sometimes in, sometimes out, just like box shadows or 3D effects. I usually use a 3px border radius to use sharp, but still rounded edges to compensate that.
Consider using a light theme. Dark themes are often used in art themed websites, but create a strong contrast to the browser’s top bar and scrollbar. A light theme can sometimes be much easier to look at. Your dark theme is pretty good at this point, but the background might be lighter.
I played a bit with css styles in the browser and here are two example design you could use as inspiration in case you really want to redesign your website. If not, I hope this is still a helpful post.
well, I don’t think he took it personally either, just to make sure. But yes you are right I should have told hime more spesific. What I meant was the design i general, you have given a very good 7 point tip. I realy don’t care so much how a webpage look as long as it work, and Duin page do by all mean work. But sadly many people surfing the net I finding a page like this doesnt see the quality content, they just have q quick look and go away.
What is modern? Just copying what everyone else is doing, because that is somehow considered “good” now? No, I wanted a unique design and I made a unique design from scratch, so I have something that nobody has. The page has not aged, since it was created that way and never was different and it is intentionally that way.
In your example you just removed everything that is cool, like 3D, glow, colors, backgrounds, styling methods and replaced it with the most basic text where the only style element left are a few basic lines, no way to disginuish text from buttons from links, how is that supposed to be art? That is about as artistic as your local newspaper.
Light theme is also no option as the website design is matched with my game’s GUI design, which is also dark, which also slightly matches with blender GUI design as well as this websites design and most importantly I wanted a dark theme.
What I can agree with however is the borders, which I’m also not happy with, I tested various versions when I made it, but nothing looked right, this was a good compromise, maybe could be a little bit less rounded, but sharp does not feel right.
The padding on the left I may actually increase, since it is quite short. The blue color for links is a bit on the edge of readability, but I still think it is fine, it is all lower contrast by design, so it is easy to look at. Orange for links does not meet the design concept since orange are only active objects like hovered and also would be too aggressive on the eyes if everything would be like that.
Oops, we might have misunderstood each other.
I didn’t want you to redesign your website now or even answer to my suggestions. There is no need to justify your design decisions to me or anyone as long as you’re happy with it.
After your reply to esimacio I just thought you would like some ideas on what to change, so I tried to analyze your design’s problems.
So I listed every little issue I could find within a short time and left out all the good things that don’t need to be changed.
Everything I listed was meant as an initial concept, to start thinking about things in case you planned to change anything.
To answer your questions/answers:
“Modern Design” really IS copying what everyone else is doing, with adjustments of course. Trends are just temporarily defined guidelines that change often and repeat over time. 3D designs were modern for a long time, currently all major companies are choosing flat shapes. This is what is generally recognized as modern. New things have a certain look -> this look is modern.
It’s true, I removed a lot from your styling. For me as a first visitor, there was no obvious connection to your game or Blender’s GUI. For me, only the content was important, text and images first, then the navigation. I understand that you have certain reasons to back your decisions. My approach to designing your website was not supposed to be art, but to be content with layout, nothing more. Reduced to text and images, just like a local newspaper should be.
I personally like dark themes, too. The light theme was just a change to consider. With more ideas, the perfect solution is easier to find. Change things radically to find opportunities.
Sorry for bothering you, I didn’t want to start a longer discussion about the design when the thread is about the content. I hope you’re not leaving this conversation angrily or disappointed, this would be the opposite of what I aimed for with my previous post.
Well I can understand that people may be turned off when they see something that is not a copy of everything else that is supposed to be modern now, but I did intentionally chose not to copy that design as I want to be artistic and have something truly unique.
The style is intentionally a bit like the 90s mixed with some modern elements, since I consider it to be the golden age of the internet and I want to bring people back to that a bit, that is also connected to the color theme that comes from a secret inspiration source I will not name.
I think “normal” people are probably fine with paying for their commercialized restrictive license content that is high quality and “modern”, so I don’t have to appeal to that audience.
