Is Selling 3D Models on the Unreal Marketplace actually worth it?
I was thinking of buying a substance painter license and selling Assets on the Unreal store but is it an oversaturated market?
Posted Feb 17, 2023, 3:10 PM UTC
1729
Definitely not over saturated at all. This is really still a niche of the world.
9
It probably depends on what assets you are making, the number of variations of those assets and what quality level they are.
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Just a quick google and I noticed there isn't an environment for a stereotypical Prison, for example.
Is this something people would really buy?
3
Dev here. If I were in the process of making a level, needed assets and yours came up at a decent price, I'd get them, even as a placeholder. They would need to be decent quality with high modularity in mind. The more variation and things you can do, the more value it has.
I generally don't expect support or updates though so I never pestered creators. I'm of the mind that what I bought is what I got and if there's issues I should have looked better before buying. I even fired off blender to separate models at certain points, because compared to creating the model that's nothing in terms of effort. Guess I'm thankful for the packs being there in the first place because it gives me something to work with.
That might be a me thing though, I know client behaviour can vary and some expect you to owe them the moon just because they sent money your way.
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To add a little to that: Products that have been recently updated add to the value of the pack in my eyes. It makes me think that you're still active and actively taking care of your older projects even though I know full well how hard it is to go back to something you consider 'done'.
That being said, I wouldn't fault anyone for not updating their old work. I'm sure that project was considered their baby at some point and that hasn't lost the passion the creator put in or its value.
In fact, I think Epic should add a 'last gen' tag, where it's made clear that the pack has reached their 'end of life', no further update is done and whatever further sale is made comes 'as is' and as a bonus to the creator. Obviously support is out of the question.
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I guess it depends on the graphical style you're planning on making, but for me, I'm surprised there's not more large buildings available, for somewhat large prices. There's a ton of modular building pieces that you could theoretically make your own hospital, school, airport terminal, etc. but most people looking at assets don't / won't make them from small pieces.
Selling larger scenes (like a full prison, shipping yard, college campus, hospital, etc) as long as the pieces themselves are reusable, would be awesome I think.
8
They should definitely make the full environment as a bonus to all the modular pieces making it up.
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Virtual Production is eating up marketplace assets. We spend thousands of dollars on kits and end up having to go to Turbosquid or even Sketchup or manual modeling because we can’t find what we need on the marketplace.
6
Ah interesting!
I assume you'd be looking for extremely high-quality assets that are still optimised for real-time performance?
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I think everyone is looking for that?
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When it comes to environment props for games they're usually not very high fidelity
We have the term "hero asset" which means any object that is made to the same quality as the "hero". For the rest of the environment assets they're made to a much lower standard
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All the same rules apply as games in Virtual Production. We still use LODs and lower poly and lower texture resolution on distance objects, though Nanite handles most of that now anyway.
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i payed rent for a while iff ue4 asset store, just get a good volume up, and don't be afraid to compete with similar assets! make some sci fi props and guns maybe... those seem ti be my best sellers.
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For weapons I'd assume people would expect it to be rigged and have firing animations at least?
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oh yeah! it helps. but its not a must.
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For any asset creators I strongly suggest them to learn material editor to the least. Dont just be a blender , maya, max artist. When you prepare your assets make sure you set the materials right. It alleviates the quality of your assets and will reward you on reviews.
Remember your assets will be used in an interactive environment in most cases so they need proper setups.
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Yeah for sure
I'm a 3D art student so I'm familiar with the whole Unreal pipeline
1
If you produce decent quality assets then yes they will get purchased. Will you make few bucks, yes. Will you get rich quick, no. So as with game dev, don’t go into it thinking you are going to make a ton of money. If you like doing it, do it and hope for a bit of cash in return.
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i
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Nope. Almost all models with a very bad grid and awful textures
1
I was looking at assets on the store this weekend and I can definitely say more diverse assets would be very welcome.
Unity's marketplace is one area where they definitely compete against UE. UE seems to have a lot of assets, but it feels like most of the come from a handful of people that spam the marketplace.
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No, probably not worth it especially since even if you're successfully selling your stuff it's a one time purchase that pretty much comes with free lifetime support.
So whenever someone has (or even thinks they have!!) Aa problem with your asset you're kinda forced by marketplace guidelines to check the issue out, at least to the point where you can tell them that their issue has nothing to do with your asset.
But that's subjective. Judt because i'd go crazy doing that it doesn't mean it can't be for you :)
-8
I mean I wasn't expecting to make a living off it that's for sure. I know that sort of stuff is only possible in places with crazy conversion rates like ASEAN
I was thinking if I'm going to be making assets in my free time between Uni years that I might as well try to sell my work.
My main worry is that I wouldn't even sell enough to cover the £130 substance painter licence :')
2
You'll probably cover the 130 i wouldn't be worried about that. What i'm getting at is that even if you dont wanna do it full time stupid (sorry guys but you know its true) support requests will figuratively force you to spend more and more time with customers even if you're just selling static meshes.
Good luck, no matter what you're gonna do tho :)
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I wasn't even aware people would make those sorts of requests...
What sort of things do people often ask for support with?
I mean I get it if you have a large environment with complex materials but how do you need support for a static mesh?
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It's really hard to predict unfortunately and who knows, maybe i'm wrong and selling some small assets is actually the way to go.
One thing i could think of right now is someone asking for help with importing the mesh and only admitting after 2-3 back and forth messages that they're actually trying to import it to maya and not UE - which helping with isn't your damn job.
0
The trick with assets is not to limit your self to one platform I think. Get them on Epic, unity, artstation, itch, wherever.
I'm curious, why is it better to only sell them on one platform?
It's not. Once a 3D model is sold there's really nothing stopping the buyer from selling it elsewhere, as wrong as that is.
So you may as well make sure you're selling your asset on every market place you can.
I've had assets on CGTrader not sell for years yet made incredibly good cash from Adobe Stock.
Yeah ok, that's what I thought