Hello everyone!
I was enjoying the playtest for About Fishing (a game by the creator of Arctic Eggs!) and I looooove this style of retro low poly models with photographic textures 
It reminds me of PSP era games
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
When I do textures, I usually grab free images, linear scale them down and maybe grunge them up, but the work done here on the raincoat is sooooo clean I’ve just no idea how they did it.
I guess for a lot of these things just walking around outside and taking pictures with your phone is a good source of textures, but I’m not even sure how to search for resources or tutorials on this …
In the given picture, for example: those trash bins don’t exist where I live, how would you go about finding (or buying, IDK) pictures of every face of a trash bin ?
So yeah, do you guys know of places where one can get these kind of specific pictures?
I know they have a Discord server, and you can send a pic of your face to become a background NPC, or pictures of your fishes and things like that, but I don’t want to just come in from nowhere and start asking about how they do things, that’d just be rude 
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I wouldn’t consider it rude. I’d consider it quite flattering.
Programmers, designers, and artists of all kinds are nerds at heart. I’m sure they’d be happy to explain how they did things if you asked nicely.
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I know what you mean, but they are “famous” enough that I reckon it’s not a good vector - as much as I’m sure they would not mind talking about things like that I don’t really wanna join a Discord for the development of a specific game and start asking general gamedev questions 
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I’d say if they don’t respond well, or not at all, then that’s on them. Not you.
Also, you might find some other artist who wants to replicate the effect and you could team up. You never know until you ask.
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I guess … IDK, I just don’t really feel comfortable going to some else’s space to ask directly.
I’ll do more research and I’ll watch the responses here, if nothing comes up I might muster the courage to go ask 
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I send you a DM. That place should really get your courage up.
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I agree, there’s no harm in asking 
As for how to get textures, there are plenty of sites with free photos, and you can search Google by usage rights (tools → usage rights → creative commons licenses). It sounds like you’re at least a little familiar with image editing, which is very useful for processing raw materials, that may need straightening, cropping, color adjustments, etc.. It’s a little tougher if you need highres originals - if that’s the case you could consider AI upscaling, which will work fine for gritty textures.
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Can’t promise I won’t be mostly lurking 
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Right, I always forget that that’s a thing
This does generally describe how I usually go around to get textures, but the issue I encounter often is that the immense majority of pictures taken of most random things tend to be a 3/4 pose (so at a 45deg angle) and then you generally have only one picture of that specific object…
So you kinda have to pick and choose from many sources.
What I imagine the perfect tool for this job would be :
A website where you can search for an object, have a list of 3/4 picture of the objects matching your search, and then you can get a pack of front/sides/top/bottom of that specific object.
You know I think I might build it. I’ll take pictures of random things when I go for walks and if I end up with enough things I like I’ll try to make a website where people can get them.
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More members are more members. Dontcha agree?
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Unfortunately you may have to pay for that kind of convenience
There are free resources to find though, like this textured little dumpster:
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Justade a post about free resources to use.
Here: Resources I use for game development
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A few places I would usually look, not everything here is necessarily in-style, but you can adapt many of the textures/materials you find to your liking:
- itch.io has plenty of free + royalty free assets including textures (but not only!), you’ll find many photorealistic textures as well as already stylized low res textures, and you can search by tags (i.e. https://itch.io/game-assets/free/tag-royalty-free/tag-textures)
- textures.com, as the name implies it has plenty of textures on it, only some are free though.
- ambientcg.com - huge library of materials, including decals, both photoscanned and procedural, as well as some 3D models, and it’s all CC0.
- polyhaven.com, another big library of materials and models, as well as some HDRIs, once again everything is CC0, and you can download the textures in scalable resolutions.
- free-images.com, as well as similar sites with copyright free pictures, perfect for gathering reference, and some of them might be easily usable as textures.
- sketchfab.com - almost forgot to mention it, but you can look for low-poly stylized models on there for reference, you can also find some copyright free, downloadable models on it too.
As well as some general knowledge: I know that a lot of games simply use reference images and handpaint the textures to look as realistic as possible with the limited resolution, it depends on the style heavily, sometimes games mix real images with hand painted details to create the desired style.
And as others have pointed out, you shouldn’t be afraid to ask how things are done in games, passionate developers often love talking about their process and are happy to give pointers or at least some insight. Good luck!
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I think that’s the solution there, and my nomination for comment of the day
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Absolutely incredible!
Thank you very much
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