Who Owns Textures.com?

Marcel Vijfwinkel, a Dutch digital artist, launched CGTextures.com in 2005 after recognizing that 3D artists lacked a large, accessible source of surface photography. He began photographing textures himself and offering them free, filling a gap that had forced artists to shoot their own references or buy expensive CD-ROM collections.

The site became standard infrastructure for the games and VFX industries through word of mouth. Vijfwinkel incorporated CGTextures B.V. in October 2007 and introduced the freemium model: free accounts got a daily download quota, while professional users bought credit subscriptions for high-resolution files.

The mid-2010s rebrand to Textures.com accompanied a shift to production-grade assets: systematic photogrammetry scanning replaced simple photography, producing tileable, calibrated PBR materials for physically based rendering in engines like Unreal and Unity.

Through the 2020s the library expanded into 3D scanned objects, foliage, ornaments, decals and HDRI skies, passing 150,000 assets. The company explored a generative tool called TextureLab in 2023, though the trademark filing was later abandoned. As of 2026 it remains independent, adding content weekly.