Virtual worlds like Second Life make it easy to create our own content, but not all of us have the time or talent to create our own textures. As educators we often find our budgets rather limited too. In addition to the various free textures you can find in Second Life at flea markets and yard sales, there are quite a few sites on the web with great collections of textures available for download – free. The majority of these sites make their images available for personal and non-commercial use, but many allow commercial use or their content.

• TextureKing – A repository of photo textures of stone, paint, plants, and more. A project from REH3design.
• StockVault – A photo-sharing site with free downloads for personal and educational use.
• Image * After – Free photos available to download for personal or commercial use.
• Grunge Textures – CreativeCommons-licensed photos for personal/non-commercial use.
• CGTextures – Downloadable textures for use in personal and commercial use. The license on the images only restricts the reselling of unmodified textures or of derivative textures.
• stock.xchng – A great photo-sharing community. Images are individually licensed, though most of them may be used in personal and commercial work.
• ShareCG – Textures, animation, scripts, tutorials, and more