Checklist for selling stuff on artstation.

oraeles77

i was going to hold back from selling stuff on artstation, however it would be nice to see if my stuff generates any interest.

the current thing im working on, I intend to make a few variations of the mesh, and to make a nice sbsar file to go with it, as well as some exported png maps and then upload all of that to artstation with an fbx file, or maybe an obj file? is that ok or is there anything else??

Zack Maxwell

Do you have a portfolio? You need to be a relatively experienced artist to have any success selling art, but not being sure what assets someone would need leads me to believe that you don't yet have that level of experience needed.

oraeles77

"but not being sure what assets someone would need leads me to believe that you don't yet have that level of experience needed."

just to clarify, i didnt ask 'what sort of assets someone would need' I asked about if there is a preference for a particular file type etc, or perhaps things like level of detail enabled meshes etc.

of course I have a portfolio of stuff on artstation already, Im not interested in making that the highlight of this particular discussion because Im sure you could nitpick at it and find a fault with  my portfolio if you need to.

recently, regarding the artstation shop, I've noticed a lot of (politely) 'lower quality' stuff is being pushed on there by people who seem like they are trying to make a quick buck.

I was thinking of item I need and I realised other people could find that useful and I know I could do it to a level better than a lot of the (lower quality) stuff I see on there already, I will do that over christmas and I thought it was be interested to put it on artstation for the lowest price, (I  dont really want to give my stuff away for free cause quickly you will find people just take your stuff and misuse it without giving you credit.)

Alex_J

I doubt many artist who have been practicing the trade for less than a few years will have much benefit from trying to sell stuff on artstation. 

Seems to me that with artstation, you are mostly selling to other artist. So it's not the same as selling on unity or unreal stores or turbo squid. Your items need to have real practical value and the people buying them know what's what as well. Jonas Ronnegard and Zac up there ^ are good examples to look at for content that has real practical value to other artist. 




personal context : 
Here is a weapon I made awhile back after I had been doing 3d about 7 months or so. I put this on the unity asset store and turbosquid for $3. It has LOD's setup and map sizes from 4k to 512k, all organized neatly in a unity bundle. It sold one copy (which i am extremely proud of!), and I can't even find it on turbosquid when i search for it by name. 
There is just a ton of stuff out there and if you haven't been in this game for awhile chances are good there is somebody doing the same thing as you but better. So what to do? Get better. If there is any gold in them thar hills, it's buried deeeeep.

oraeles77

BIGTIMEMASTER said:

I doubt many artist who have been practicing the trade for less than a few years will have much benefit from trying to sell stuff on artstation. 

Seems to me that with artstation, you are mostly selling to other artist. So it's not the same as selling on unity or unreal stores or turbo squid. Your items need to have real practical value and the people buying them know what's what as well. Jonas Ronnegard and Zac up there ^ are good examples to look at for content that has real practical value to other artist. 




personal context : 
Here is a weapon I made awhile back after I had been doing 3d about 7 months or so. I put this on the unity asset store and turbosquid for $3. It has LOD's setup and map sizes from 4k to 512k, all organized neatly in a unity bundle. It sold one copy (which i am extremely proud of!), and I can't even find it on turbosquid when i search for it by name. 
There is just a ton of stuff out there and if you haven't been in this game for awhile chances are good there is somebody doing the same thing as you but better. So what to do? Get better. If there is any gold in them thar hills, it's buried deeeeep.

do you mean 7 months ago or do you mean 'after 7 months' ?  that rifle looks pretty good for somone whos had only 7 months experience of doing 3d.

yeah, thank you for your example of how you sell models, this is exactly the sort of information I want, im not trying to get rich!

Alex_J

well from me you can only learn what not to do. The main point i was aiming to make is that I tried to jump into the game too early. No big loss or anything but that was quite a bit of work to get the thing compliant with Unity asset store standards. 

The rifle looks okay for what it is, but I am sure that if I go back and study it now I will find tons of technical mistakes. At that time, I don't think I knew about straightening UV shells or anything like that. So it's certainly not professional quality work. 

oraeles77

BIGTIMEMASTER said:

don't think I knew about straightening UV shells or anything like that. So it's certainly not professional quality work. 

is that what you mean by UV straightening?

Alex_J

https://polycount.com/discussion/107196/youre-making-me-hard-making-sense-of-hard-edges-uvs-normal-maps-and-vertex-counts#latest


check this thread out ^^^

Jonas Ronnegard

I think it's not a bad idea to use the marketplaces to give meaning to your work, I know it helped me in my early days, I made some "shitty" stuff and put it on turbosquid etc, didn't get many sales and that was probably for the best, but it gave my work some meaning and it helped me finish the work faster and made me try to make it better as well as keep it organized for potential users.

As for actually making it into a career, for freelance or content/tutorial creation I would always recommend someone to start after they have had a career that have boosted their name value and credibility, selling stuff yourself is 60% about getting seen/PR/presentation, and the rest is skill and quality, so already having a big following is very important if you are thinking about making a living on it.

If you are thinking about selling assets for use in games I would probably recommend you to sell it directly on engine marketplaces such as the unity asset store or the unreal marketplace, for gumroad or the artstation marketplace it's mostly focused on selling content/tools to artists, so you would have better luck on marketplaces advertising towards people looking for assets to use in their games/movie etc. Still doesn't hurt putting it up there as well though but might not be worth the time.

oraeles77

several months later...

I just discovered something which is useful to know if you are trying to share/sell/distribute stuff online, with fbx files being exported to UE4, there is somesort of silly shader problem if its exported from Blender (which is what I use) therefore you need to make sure under the export... geometry tab, you need to select smoothing, then either edge or face, not normal which is the default and screws up everything in UE4.