Sugestions on where to get 3D models

Hi there.
As the title indicates, I'd like some recomendations on where to get some free 3d models (asside from the unity asset store).
All the other websites I've tried allways come with problems when importing them to unity (usually material problems).
Are there any reliable places to find some models for small school projects?

 

There are zero places to get good free models other than the asset store.

You can find free models on the internet, but they're not 'good'.

 

I haven't used it myself to actually import into Unity, but what about mixamo?

For info, here is a tutorial to import mixamo models into Unity.

 

They used to have a plugin that handled bringing Mixamo stuff into Unity. I guess Adobe canned that?

 

There's lots of places to find good models. There's lots of places to find free models. You generally choose one or the other, not both.

 

Sorry, but @LaneFox and @Joe-Censored are wrong. To some degree.

I have a pretty large collection of models I've picked up for free, and none of them are crap. In fact, some of them are AAA quality, and a lot of them are better than stuff you might pay for. You've just got to have some idea about technical aspects regarding 3d assets, and you have to know how to search like a pro.

For starters, you can get tons of good freebies from turbosquid. Yes, there is more crap, of course, and the more complex models you are looking for the harder it will be to find good freebies, but they are out there. I've got some excellent vehicles, weapons, and even a few AAA quality game characters all from turbosquid for free.

Secondly, assuming you are only using the models for personal use, you can get the mod kits to games like Squad, Conan Exiles, Paragon, and some others from the Epic Games app. Does Unity have any modkits like that? Worth looking into. Thhat is a great learning resource to be able to look at AAA games and see how they did things.

Third, all 3d programs usually come with a few or a lot of freebie starter models. Even if you have no interest in the 3d app itself, you can download a trial version just to get the models to work with. Zbrush gives you some really good anatomy models, a couple great base character models, a dog, a gun, lots of S***. Also, check websites like Substance Share and you can find a few awesome models for free on there as well. I got a badass armored fighting vehicle from substance share, and i think a nice pickup truck model as well.

You just have to get good at searching. I picked up an entire games worth of character, prop, and weapon models from an old forum post in which somebody just gave them away because their game could not be finished. They only ask that if you use them commercially, you give proper credit. These are really nice, AAA quality fps models. Seek and ye shall find.

 

about material problems -- yeah if you aren't pulling from the asset store, there is no guarantee that your materials are set up for Unity. But if you are going to make some games, you need to know how to basic stuff like convert texture files to suit your engines needs. It seems complicated at first, but it's just a matter of google searching to find one solution at a time.

Usually your texture files won't be an issue except for the normal map. So when you import a model and it looks funky, and you've determined the normal map isn't displaying right, you search about normal maps and Unity. Maybe you need to flip the green channel? You google how to do that.

Maybe the models materials don't import correctly? Well, no big deal, you just set them up in Unity. Don't know how to do that? Google it, check the documentation, check the learn section.

Point of all this? There isn't an easy one-click solution to getting assets into engine and have them work perfectly. Even getting stuff from the asset store, you are going to have to do some learning and troubleshooting to get them set up properly. That's just game dev.

 

I've found many good free models at places like the Unity asset store, turbosquid, cgtrader etc. but often they need tweaking in a modeling program. Too little or way too many vertices is common. Just depends on your requirements. Models with non movable parts (separate meshes) are disappointing or ones with 100's of unnecessarily separated ones poorly named overwhelming to manage. Models with flipped normals and badly thought out position origins are common too. Inheriting other peoples messy undisciplined work is typical. Beggars can't be choosers. You get what you get.
The original source of the models, therefore copyright issues are at times ambiguous but for prototyping they are fine.

 

Thank you all for your replies

 

blendswap has a ton, the licences vary, some are CC0

some are fanart though too so you cant really use that in a good project, like i see front page there is a character from Sonic IP

oh yeah and some are rediculous # of polygons because they just make rendered pictures from it, or use it in a movie

sketchfab has alot of suuper quality cheap (cost money but really cheap for their quality)
and alot are free too
theres alot of non-downloadable though too, not sure how to filter dl or not

i only really use sketchfab to reference art styles, so idk really how many are free dl

 

Thanks! In your experience how well these models import to Unity?

 

depends
some have blender's cycles materials .. which then they wont have textures
and some are suuper high poly which you wont want anyway

 

DAZ3D is free and you can get models you can use in free games, but to use them in a 3d video game commercially you have to buy the interactive license, and little known fact, you can render the 3d models out to 2d graphics and use them in a 2d game for free