Good texture packs for builders?

Hi,

I find that everytime I try to build anything in SL, I end up spending all my time trying to find the right texture for what I need. Searching in-world is overwhelming, and often I come up empty handed. So then I spend hours in Google images looking for something I can use. I get stuck doing this, instead of actually building.

I have lots of free textures I've picked up along the way, but they are pretty random, and often named so oddly that you have no idea what the image is.

So, my question is, are there some good/reputable sets of textures out there that can be purchased, to cover to basic needs for building things?

Thanks for any feedback,

Princess Ivory

When you view your texture archive on your computer, use a folder view that shows thumbnails or "filmstrip" or whatever, so you can see what they are without opening them. Spend an evening sorting into sub-folders (wood, stone, fabric, etc). If you have Adobe Bridge, that's good for this, or just use your system's folder options to select the best viewing. If you're on Windows, the filmstrip view allows you to preview images by just clicking on them. Thumbnails view allows you to see many images at once, but they're harder to view at a larger size (you have to open them).

There are probably dozens of free thumbnail organizer thingies available if you find your computer's built-in capability lacking.

I find it useful to separate the textures for which I have permission to distribute from those that I don't, in case I want to sell stuff made with downloaded textures. If you've dumped all your textures together it's already too late for this, but for new textures consider it.

In short, though, organization is key. Don't go by file names, because as you've discovered they tend to be worthless.

I've got a texture organizer. I'm in the process of getting all the junk I already have sorted into it. It is impossible to find anything, otherwise, as I have discovered!

and if you can get your hands on the script that allows you to preview a texture on a prim, get it
then store your textures in a prim, and just click the prim to scroll through them
(of course with the script in the prim)

I've a lot of freebie textures in my Texture Viewer, way too many to use sensibly. What I tend to do for bigger builds is have an empty viewer, then go though and copy likely candidates into the empty one before starting the build. Spending an hour or two doing this before a week's long build does seem to save time in the long run. It's still not ideal and I'm planning a better way for v2.0 of my viewer when it eventually gets to the top of my todo list.

I've gotten some good feedback about using texture organizers to keep myself organized (and I do have one), but my original question pertains to builders texture packs or sets I can purchase so that I have a good variety of fences, walls, railings, ground, and anything else commonly used. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks,
Princess Ivory

I bought some textures made by Lauren Fox, they come in handy sets and are quite nice.

do a search for textures are us or TRU... they have looooooooads of textures, nice ones too

I don't buy textures in world or online. I either take photographs of what I need to I go to high res wallpapers and clip it.

You can always go to the office that's in my profile under picks. There are a few texture organizers there with over 4k textures loaded in them that I collected from all over SL.

If you click on the prim above the organizers it will give you a notecard with categories and stuff like that. Download as many as you want.

I also have a Textures R Us catalog in the office if you can't find something that you like from the free textures.

Let me know if you need help with the organizers or anything else. Good luck.