Can't think of anything to sell

I don't know what it is, every time I try to think of something to sell in the store my mind almost goes blank.
I'm a 3d Artist, still learning the ropes here and there but know most of the basics of blender, I thought about selling Low poly cartoony stuff, but I already see lots of that, weapons, lots of that, characters, out of my range of expertise.
When it comes to thinking of something to sell, it's either already been made, or it would take me longer than most people to make something for such a slim price.
how does anyone find any idea or make any sales on the 3d asset store when someone else has probably already made it?

 

To be honest whether your passion is games, tools, art, or all of the above, for me the greatest source of inspiration is new games or games you like yourself. If you think critically about why you like certain things, I'm sure you could think of ways to improve or make better things for you. Chances are that you are probably not alone in what you think is better or different and it will also give you motivation to complete your projects because you find them neat anyways.

In general if you approach an item from strictly plugging a market hole (meaning you think it will sell well) but yet have no interest in it, I think you'll find lack of motivation to be a struggle. Not to mention when you work on things you think are neat time seems to fly by anyways. In general, if you love games or art I don't think you'll have a problem of no ideas you'll have a problem of too many ideas and which one to concentrate on first.

If anything you feel is neat is beyond your current skill-set, then your probably better off self learning and making your skills better full-time so that you can start making what you really want to make sooner rather than later.

 

Then forget making stuff for the asset store. Find someone that wants to commission specific art from you. Offer them a discounted rate if you can submit it to the store.

 

Sounds harsh but I'm just emphasising it would be insulting to be sold someone's learning materials.

 

Well, the obvious choice to offer better price OR better quality OR different art style. Just don't try to exactly the same thing and it might work.

Also, I think it is better idea to stick with art assets instead of trying to develop programming assets for sale, unless you developed REALLY fun idea that just happens to be sellable.

 

what kind of art assets would you say is missing?

 

IIRC (not working with unity right now), the store could use more of the cheaper medieval (dark) fantasy assets.

You know - fantasy races (dwarves/elves/goblins/kobolds/whatever), some peasants, some animals, some monsters, all the same in art style, at the cheaper end of the spectrum.

Also, lowres stuff that is not cartoony.

Also, IIRC one of the popular dungeon construction kits had this issue where the creator decided that if he runs diffuse texture through normalmap plugin, he can get away with that.

Asset store surely has a lot of GUNS, though.

In short, store is big, but it is not big enough.

Anyway, if you're in it for the money, the right question would (probably) be "what's in demand", not "what's missing".

 

Then don't! Imho when you put the parameter on yourself that it HAS to make you money you are squeezing the fun right out of what you do before you've even really started to work in the field and watch a passion become a job. Only few people manage to keep passionate for what they earn their money with and I can almost guarantuee you that the "how can I earn money with this straight away" mindset is not going to help you in that regard. It can be paralyzing and toxic, at least for me it often has been.

http://www.blenderguru.com/
https://cgcookie.com/learn-blender/
http://polycount.com/forum

Go there and start with whatever seems fun to you. Build a portfolio, work on your weaknesses. Then when you are ready start working freelance for people here on the forum.

 

Now, I'm more into the modeling aspect, wont be getting into Texturing till i have a tablet, but when working freelance do they expect the modeler to also make the texture?

 

Tron assets (or assets that look good with the old glow shader).

 

Unity has a glow shader but blender doesn't? wow >.>

 

When someone contracts a freelance artist it is usually because they can't do it themselves or don't want to do it themselves. What they want from an artist is something finished that they can use as it is. If you can't provide that, your chances of landing any freelance jobs or selling anything on the asset store are getting very very slim imho.

And the thing about not having a tablet... imho that's an excuse and not a reason. If you are serious about becoming a 3D artist you should familiarize yourself with industry standard highpoly to lowpoly baking workflows and texturing tools like Substance Painter, Substance Designer and DDO. I suggest to start out with Substance Painter because I consider that the most accessible of the 3. If you absolutely can't afford to spend money on this yet, then use xnormal (you should learn how to use that anyway) and DDO Legacy (v5.3 if I recall correctly: http://quixel.se/ddo ). Should be obvious but just in case: you need Photoshop, there is no way around that for a professional 3D artist imho.

These are all complex things that take quite a while to learn. Take one step at a time, no need to overwhelm yourself and get frustrated. But you should know: there is plenty you can do without a tablet and I wanted to give you some hints where to start.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Blender has several ways of making things glow. Like this:

I'm not sure about BGE or viewport PostFX bloom shaders, but those are not really needed in blender anyway.

 

yeah, I've never been a fan of using composting to make a glow in blender, it feels cheap and not entirely apart of the object itself, Since i'm trying to build a portfolio, any kind of effects I would prefer to be "organically made" and not something made by the camera, unless I'm doing a nature scene which would require a sun glare or something.

I have never heard of these programs before, Basically I got a touchscreen laptop to take the place of a graphics tablet due to my inability to comprehend drawing on something with no screen and trusting my hand to make the right move and touch the right spot.
I'll look into these programs, though, for some reason Photoshop doesn't like touchscreens, which pretty much jeopardized my desire to use a touch screen instead, I ain't rich, I cant throw 2k at a big Wacom and be happy like most people that surprisingly throw money at it >.>

 

If you're making, say, architectural models, there aren't many excuses you could make there, because cgtextures.com exists.

For organic content, you'd be probably expected to either provide a highres sculpt, or highres sculpt and retopo with baked normals. I doubt that you'd be able to sell untextured character on the asset store. If char is lowpoly, you'll need to make the texture.

That's just what I'd expect if I was hiring anyone, really.

Wacom Bamboo tablet should be affordable enough to get the job done. You'll pretty much need the tablet if you decide to sculpt anything.

Blender has node-based material editor which covers materials, textures and compositing.. If there's no glow shader, you can make one.

I believe you should be able to add volumetric atmospheric effect, add emissive color to the object and let the cycles renderer handle that. Haven't done that myself, but it should probably work.

 

This makes no sense to me. Granted I probably don't make much sense to most folks either.

Anyway, this is the kind of thing I am talking about with the focus on money. Why are you even wrestling with such a problem at this point? If you are learning 3D modeling then why are you even thinking about selling at this point? Doesn't it make more sense to focus on learning and improving your skills? Gaining more experience. Then when you reach the point you do not describe yourself as "knowing the basics" and instead as "very experienced and skilled" that would be the time to think about making money from your work.

You could specialize in low poly if that is your preference. It is a nice style but take a look at the asset store and find some things that look great to you. Things you find impressive. Things others like too. Then spend time learning and doing and learning by doing until you can produce assets at the same level and ideally easily. Then you'll probably see a lot of options open up to make money.

 

In places like the asset store usually yes. When you work in a bigger production pipeline on a specific product not necessarily no, but you will be close with the texture artists as the quality of their work is affected by the quality of yours.

Understanding texturing is useful in modelling as well, thinking about things like what materials are going to be applied to what surfaces and how to best unwrap the model for texturing can affect how you design. Many of the texture components like normal maps are designed to be baked on a high quality high poly model and applied to a lower resolution version. Of course you have no idea how hot this will really look until you have it textured in-engine so its all sort of part of the same problem.

Ultimately people come to the asset store to buy ready-made components and models anyway. If you cant offer that someone else will have their business - you have to provide what the market demands to compete. Also its hard to showcase a model with no texturing / lighting, even a great model can look sub par in default-lit grey...

 

Yes - as a contract artist - you have to know how to do the entire workflow from concept design (at least) up to finished model with textures setup for PBR. If you don't have this workflow established as a staple in your toolbag - you are not ready to work on any contract art.
People who work (only) as a modeler for contract work - are top quality modelers who most likely have previously held positions at AAA companies. And all they do is model and sculpt.

As an animator myself - if I only knew how to animate, but wasn't good at rigging, skinning, modeling or developing textures, I wouldn't be very helpful to many small teams out there looking to get work done from 'the artist'.

Martin_H has some great advice. Also I'd suggest you - really focus on building up your skills, knowledge and abilities - rather than attempting to think of something to sell on the asset store. To be frank - your not ready yet - people are looking for quality work - that is complete for there projects, not a model that needs UVs and textures created for them.

Also consider the collaboration forum to get some experience working on some actual game stuff - there is a lot more to developing assets than the art software. You really need to know how things are going to look, act and react in Unity, with the lighting, and setting up a model/character in the engine to work properly.

Last - Before you even consider "making money" consider first - just submitting a model to the store for free. The process for getting a model on the store isn't just click and done - and a lot of people get declined several times for not adhering to the plainly laid out directions provided by Unity, and also because quality isn't sufficient.

Yes there are gaps in the asset store - if you look hard and think critically. Even in simple static mesh models - there are gaps that can be filled.

 

If I were to build a portfolio to house all my work which website would be the best place?
When it comes to making something I usually can't find a good tutorial on how to make it properly, like the male body, I have scoured youtube to find a good tutorial on how to model a male body anatomically correct, but each tutorial fails in an all too similar way.
right here is the completed work I have done so far, I've attempted many projects but something always goes wrong and rarely do I ever find a solution on the internet.

 

Yeah, you need to go back to basics before you consider the asset store. I'm no artist myself, but a humanoid model should be a pretty basic tool in your tool kit. If you need inspiration have a look in a mirror.

 

What does that have anything to do with what you quoted?

 

You said you can't model a humanoid figure. That means you are a long way off being a competent artist. Learn first. Sell later.

 

I could learn to model a humanoid figure if there was actually a good tutorial out there, as a video, to teach me.

 

But that's how glow works in Unity, and everywhere. So far nobody's got the ram to store photons.

 

Yes this.
The asset market is already really crowded.
If you're still a beginner, don't bother with thinking about selling art assets.
Some glowing spheres and crystals won't get you far. That is work a pro get's done in 10 minutes and most programmers could do themselves after a couple of tutorials.

I wouldn't suggest to start with something difficult like characters either.
Instead you can try to get your hands into modeling and texturing realistic props. Take some real life objects around you and try to recreate those as game assets, with realistic PBR textures.
That's a good practice and when you start to become good enough with that, you can sell those props. There is always a demand for good prop packages.
Characters are more desired as custom freelance work.

Do always one step and then another one. Rushing through something, because you need desperately money, will give you only a bad reputation eventually.

There are also sites like Artstation.com and Polycount.com where you can get a lot inspiration and education.

Good luck!

 

That's a good start, keep going! Now the only things standing between you and your professional art career are your attitude and several years of hard work like every other artist ever had to go through. There is no shortcut. You keep worrying about the wrong things, ignoring good advice and burning through the good will people here have to offer.

And as a side note because it is not obvious to beginners: stuff that you made from a toturial has no business being in your portfolio. It does not demonstrate your actual ability of what you can do without someone holding your hand and it screams "noob" to everyone that recognizes what tutorial it is from. This can turn potential clients away. If you are on a certain skill level you will know how to research new subjects and get to your result without a tutorial that is tailor cut to what you need.

Also knowing how a program like blender works and actual art skills have almost no overlap. If you want to model, take a look at books about sculpting and drawing. Books about painting have some relevance for texturing too. There are things beyond youtube videos, classical art education has been around longer than the internet exists. Make use of it!

 

Great resources - add to it cgtalk

And learning to model thing that are sitting right next to you is also great advice. When teaching colleagues 3D for the first time - there models consisted of desk lamps, dr. pepper cans, trash cans, scissors and staple removers.

Static inorganic objects are so much easier to model - than organic anything.
In the future when you are feeling comfortable with your abilities and knowledge and are ready to move onto organic models - if you select a human figure - look up the Joan of Arc modeling tutorial. It's a good resource for old school box modeling and manual processes - which help to understand whats going on behind the scenes when you perform an auto unwrap or rigify (whatever the simple blender skinning process is called)

Also - sketch (with a pencil/pen & paper) every day - its important -

 

Hey, right so, assuming you are comfortable with modeling in your present package, quick thoughts on anatomical modeling. You're gonna need reference images, you clearly haven't the ability to do this by eye (but hey, neither do I ).

Depending on what 3D software you're using you can either set the reference images up to display as the background of the editor window or you can just put them as textures on planes one facing forward and one facing right. In either case you will likely have to line both up with each other in their respective views.

From here you have endless options but I would probably suggest lumping a primitive down and extruding until you have rough 'minecraft steve' quality mesh and from there loop cutting, extruding and moving vertices in vague approximation of your reference guides until it looks kinda right. You'll likely be needing some smoothing or subdivision unless you're going for that macho, blockly look that the chicks dig these days.

Must be a simpler/better way to do this, I was thinking of going into using nurbs and isoparms rather than loop cuts but, hey sooo many ways to skin a cat, I offer the simplest I can come up with, open forum feel free to chime in with your delicious secret modeling techniques

Now as for the reference images, the whole problem of anatomical proportion has thankfully been considered over many, many (many) years. One of Leonardo's coolest designs, the Vitruvian man went a long way to helping with that. Also works as an opaque overlay for a quick sanity check against what you're drawing/compositing in your 2D app, just saying. We sent this drawing into space, to find aliens, very cool.


Then there's a more common and for your purposes useful grid approach that basically extrapolates from the feet. You can also extrapolate a proportionate profile from the same height grid lines you generate to provide the side reference image:


Of course different feature sets like human faces and hands have their own set of rules and guides. They may not feature on youtube but they're out there on the net.

You do get base models to build off of, but you would need to add significant change/value to them to sell them on as your art. That said they usually give you a good, proportionate start, and co-incidentally this one is free with the current issue of 3D-World mag in the UK at the moment.


There are a million other things you can do in refinement of your character. Hell, you can devote your life to being a character artist but I think that's kinda the short and narrow of it, the executive summary as it were. Everything else you do to the improve the mesh is probably just a different general-purpose technique, of which you need several to get a good result. Some people use symmetry extensively, some people rework extensively with sculpture tools. I mean you can get much more technical about it like the guys at MakeHuman, but then where does it end??

Now setting it all up to be rigged and weighted for animation, which is essential for most asset-store-type customers, that's another whole can of worms...

Anyway, hope this helps, hf&gl

 

okay, okay, so where would you guys suggest I start? I feel like I'm standing on a dirt road that have 1 million different roads connected to it and I have no clue where to start, what books to read, I already have the Blender: noob to pro pdf.

I kinda feel like I know all this basic stuff, yet Idk what to do with it, it's like clay in my hands, I can make anything with it, but I don't know where to start, I don't know how to start, I don't know what i'm doing.
I know I have to use my hands to mold it, but I don't know how.
(if you weren't following, it was all a metaphor.)

I feel overwhelmed by how much I have to learn just to make what I envision, just to make a few bucks doing something I like, I feel like it will take 5 years to finally make a small measly pocket profit.
I feel like i'm having to learn everything in the universe in order to make something right v.v

 

If you can't work things out on your own then I would suggest a local school. Most universities offer some form of computer art degree. Spend a few years at school, then work a few years working for someone else. Then you might be good to make money on your own.

There is no shortcut to knowing the things an experienced professional knows.

 

I have an idea that may match your skills ― a collection of models for quick prototyping. Since there's no need for realism, the models could be very low poly, have no uvs, no textures, no animation ― fast and easy to make. Since it's for prototyping, there's no need to fit any style ― literally everyone who wants to test an idea could find such a collection very handy. The models can also be used in real projects as temporary placeholders.

The requirements:

1. The shapes should be distinctive and recognizable.
2. There should be a hell lot of them, the more the better: people and robots, domestic and wild animals, plants, furniture, buildings and their parts, vehicles, tools, weapon, props of any kind... whatever you can imagine.

I've been searching through the whole internet for quite some time to find something similar but found nothing. If such a thing has a value, then there's a huge hole in the market. The first one who fills it will set a benchmark.

 

Well its really cool that you want to get into design, its definitely one of my favorite things but it is a discipline. You get varying degrees of talent but skill is learned through practice and experience. I would suggest exactly what theANIMATOR2b said. Hard surface modeling is much simpler and the best way to start. I would add that its a good idea to think in collections and iterate, i.e. think I'm going to make 5 desk lamps this week or hmm I'm going to make 3 garden tools today. Modular stuff is in demand and it keeps you chipping away refining iterating over your design and learning. Don't expect to make a quick buck right away, that joke about the starving artist is not funny in these parts lol. I'm here I think are here because of the sheer immensity of building a good quality game on a tiny budget with a micro team is the sort of crazy challenge I thrive on. If that's what you choose you learn a little every day, put it into practice and you'll totally get there.

 

Like I said, do it step by step.
It might be daunting first, but remember that even the best artists started, where you are now.
If you are doing something that you really love, time will fly. It won't be over night. But eventually you'll get there. Just practice like there is no tomorrow.

 

Doesn't work like that. If there's no tutorial, you should have sufficient drive to figure it out yourself.

Isn't that how life always works? One million directions in which you could go, with unpredictable results.

Try everything. See which one is fun for you. When something is fun, it is easier to get better at it.

I would advise to start trying to make what you "envision" and attempt to enjoy the process. Being overwhelmed won't get you anywhere. You need to start doing something first.

Also, before you start worrying about money, It is a better idea to find something you find interesting to do. Concentrating on financial aspect of the job won't give you enough motivation to improve. You need to enjoy modeling/drawing/painting/etc.

 

Plus the financial aspects of game dev aren't that good. If money is your main motivation you are better off doing something else.

 

That is a realistic scenario for any artist. If you can't deal with that, then this is the wrong job for you. I'm an artist, I've seen many people trying to be artists fail commercially, and imho anyone that can be discouraged by outside voices should be discouraged, because they never had a real chance in the first place. Making good art is harder than programming. Making good gamedesign decisions may be even harder, I don't have the experience yet to have a clear opinion on that.

I have studied design and would not recommend that to aspiring 3D artists. Aplications to school capacity rates are like 10:1 where I live and I feel like the ratio of students that enroll and end up being able to live doing what they like is roughly another 10:1 (actually in the first semester a professor told us it is 20:1). You will learn something useful there, but in terms of making you a good freelance artist and preparing you for the reality of working in that field I have learned an order of magnitude more from forums. Your milage may vary.
I don't full on regret it, but I often wonder if I shouldn't have studied computer science instead.

That's actually a very good idea. I'd add to the requirements that stuff should follow some form of grid to be placed more easily and that it should be easily replaced with production quality assets.

Same goes for most artists that don't even have anything to do with gamedev. It's a tough and oversaturated market.

 

I might be nitpicking here, but ...

I honestly wouldn't say something like that.

The problem with programming is incredible speed with which technologies are improving. In case of programming, 5 years from know most of your knowledge will become obsolete and completely useless. That's because most of the programming knowledge does NOT correspond to general principles, algorithms and data structures, but to ins and outs and various quirks of this or that api. The fun stuff is that API you're studying today will be dead and forgotten in few years. The industry is extremely demanding - you'll have to be devouring insane amounts of information all the time, in few years this information will become useless, and last time I checked that is not the case with art.

(AFAIK) In traditional art especially, you can pretty much pick up well known techniques and they will serve you for many years. Yeah, you'll have room for improvement, you'll be progressing, learning something new about styles and approaches etc, etc, but it is not like one day you'll visit a studio and people say so you that drawing and sculpting are now obsolete and instead of silly 3 dimensional and 2 dimensional medium everybody is morphing 7 dimensional space using brand new thingamabob that runs on unicorn blood and requires brain chip implant, 15 prosthetic eyes and at least 5 cyberarms to make it work.

 

I have to agree with @neginfinity . Art is better that programming. I bet soon those games engines will be even more click and drop = game ready. But art.. nope, you have to do it.

 

and the games we'll get will be the same game but with different art. Many of moderns games already are.

 

I'd just use the polycount forums for personal growth as an artist. It's a baptism of fire and they'll soon whip you into shape.

 

All you say is true. Maybe a bit neglecting the aspect that arstists need to learn the ins and outs of ever changing software and workflows too, but true nonetheless. The point is that if you need to understand a new tech or new API you can read a book on it and that alone has a high chance of solving whatever practical problem you have. If you are an artist noob and the anatomy of your character drawings looks like crap you can take the best anatomy book on the market, read it start to finish and your next drawing will still look like crap. No one in art makes magical jumps over night, everything needs insane amounts of practice, it takes years till your skills are marketable and the mistakes you make will always be visible in the final product. There is no "It works fine, but oh god, don't look at the source code", every lack of knowledge carries through to the final result. What I find the hardest about art is that it's hard to quantify if anything got better or worse through something you change. It is hard to put your progress into numbers. There's always a vast ocean of possibilities in front of you and you have less rules and guidelines to go by imho. Maybe I'm wrong and the fact that my art experience outweighs my programming experience many times over certainly colors my vision. Your programming experience may or may not outweigh your experience as an artist, and color yours as well. I can't know. I certainly don't want to make it sound like programming was trivial and anything but an art itself.
I just can go by my personal experience and I think I have come a lot farther in the little time I spent learning about programming than I did in the same amount of hours practicing art. Or to phrase it differently, I think if you start with zero knowledge in both disciplines I think it is a lot quicker to get to a level of programming where your indie game "works like you want it to work" compared to "looks like you want it to look". And I mean just mechanically "working", putting the fun into it is another can of worms that I know very little about.

 

Programmers also produce crap, it's just invisible. It reveals itself as stability, performance and/or maintenance issues.

 

programmers produce the most crap by far in this industry.