Okay, I understand, frob, thank you. I don't mind working for a few weeks on a product, but to make 5$ for those weeks of effort, doesn't sound like something you could live on.

If I can do it myself in 4-8 hours, then my own personal value on it would be a few hundred dollars. But to reach that state of general purpose usefulness it will require much more effort. It will need to be vetted against a large number of different uses, become a little generalized or have multiple useful specializations.

That would take multiple weeks of development time to create the component. So 80, 100, 120, or more hours for the component developer. Not 4-8 hours, especially if you are planning to make money on it.

Okay, I understand, frob, thank you. I don't mind working for a few weeks on a product, but to make 5$ for those weeks of effort, doesn't sound like something you could live on.

That is why you need to sell it to 1000 people if you price it like that and spend weeks on it. That was Frobs point above.

If you cannot sell it to 1000 people, but you expect only 100 people to buy it, and you spend the same amount of time working on it, you have to raise the price to 50$.... and so on.

That is exactly why sales statistics or prior expierience with selling similar goods is worth so much... if you price your product wrongly, you will face desaster either way.... you might have created an amazing deal, but because of its niche appeal still only 100 people will buy it. Or you overpriced the item, and instead you loose most of your customers because of that.

Frobs point is basically to look for the economy of scale. Try to sell it to as many people as you can, and choose your price accordingly (A product that should sell in volume needs to be cheap)...

There is also the strategy to instead target the premium segment and try to create something that is good value to a selected few people even with a high price....

In 3D Models terms that would be either "Create something many people need and sell it cheap" (A good strategy, as long as you can either undersell the competition or have the clearly better product, because you will most probably not be the only one targetting that market), or "Create something few people need but is hard to find, and sell it at a high price" (Also a good strategy, though more risky, as you need to anticipate a demand that nobody has yet tapped into, or create an incredibly valuable product).

A good example for a "Premium 3D model" would be the extremly detailled human models you can buy on turbosquid or similar sites targetted at the advertising / movie sector. These models are sculpted with the highest details, have an incredible amount of polygons and most probably very complex rigs to make them as lifelike and believeable as possible. A 3D modeller might have spent weeks or even months working on it, and the demand for that is most probably not THAT high (these models cannot be used for games (yet), so they will mostly sell to movie makers and advertisers... this is just me guessing, but seeing how these haven't switched yet to a 3D rendering only pipeline, but use 3D renders mostly to enhance real footage, their demand for 3D models will be much lower than the one from game devs).

These models cost 500$ and more.... which sounds very expensive for a stock model. But if you factor in (rough guesses here) 10x the amount of time spent creating it compared to a low poly game character, multiplied by 10 because the amount of people interested in such a highly detailled, but very high poly model is 10 times lower, 500$ suddenly doesn't sound like a bad price anymore.

Thank you again, Gian-Reto. Yes, what you say makes sense, but since I am a beginner, I imagine I can only aim to sell cheaply what I make. I looked at what is on offer on turbosquid, and its very hard for me to reach that level of quality very soon. Maybe after months, or even years of practice.

Thank you again, Gian-Reto. Yes, what you say makes sense, but since I am a beginner, I imagine I can only aim to sell cheaply what I make. I looked at what is on offer on turbosquid, and its very hard for me to reach that level of quality very soon. Maybe after months, or even years of practice.

Yes, that is pretty much what I would have said. You will find lots of very expierienced 3D modellers on these sites, which are basically your competition.

So you will need to become a very good 3D artist yourself if you want to stay competitive. See it as a good motivation to keep improving your skills... and in the end, putting your models up for sale is like the best test to see if how your models are rated by others AND if your own rating was right:

IF you put it up for 5$ and it sells like hot cakes, getting good reviews, not only must the model be more than just decent, you most probably underestimated how good it was... on the other hand, if you put it up for 50$ and nobody buys it, the model is most probably not that good, and you yourself overestimated its worth (could also just be a niche model not in high demand, but you get my point).

When people need to put spend their money, they tend to be very honest. Brutally so, sometimes.

See it more as an additional incentive for learning than as a revenue stream for now.... you will most probably not make much at the beginning. But just like the internship of a college / university student, the expierience you gain is much more important than the money you make. Don't let such learning expireiences drag you down... its part of becoming a professional in any line of work.

See it more as an additional incentive for learning than as a revenue stream for now.... you will most probably not make much at the beginning. But just like the internship of a college / university student, the expierience you gain is much more important than the money you make. Don't let such learning expireiences drag you down... its part of becoming a professional in any line of work.

Yes, you are right, Gian-Reto, thank you. At least I can keep the hope that if I get good enough, there is a real possibility to make money. My goal of releasing a complete game will most likely take a lot of time, and so, any source of income while learning, no matter how small, is very welcome, and highly motivating.

I think this may be my first post here so if so - Hello to all.

I'd like to add a couple points which are relevant to the discussion.

Background - I've been working in 3D since 2001. I've been a (paid) freelance animator since 2008 and before that I participated in several mods and total conversions.

I have a couple assets currently in the submission process for the Unity asset store and one which I put up last year.

One point I'd like to make is - most 3D assets on the Unity asset store are created by developers who have at the very least, a working knowledge of how Unity handles those assets. 3D model development has it's standard workflows modeling, sculpting, UV, retopo, texture, material setup, rig, skin, and animate. But developing an asset for a specific game engine requires the artist to know how the game engine handles those specific assets. This is especially true when dealing with complex assets - such as fully rigged, and animated characters.

3D creation is only half the equation. If an asset doesn't work as intended in the engine, the community will not use the asset and will let other developers know the asset isn't top quality.

Slapping a character onto a animation rig and skinning it up, creating a couple animations without knowing the specific game engine character setup process, is a reciepe for failure - and a lot of wasted work.

Unity 5 has PBR lighting and shaders. PBR lighting and shaders/materials have a different texture setup than the common diffuse, spec, normal, texture game development process of Unity 4 and other engines.

The second point I'd like to make is - it's probably best not to expect to earn any money on any asset store, simply because the people who are earning money creating 3D assets for asset stores are professional 3D artists, modelers, texture artists, animators and fx artists. There stuff is top knotch work and they are rewarded by the community with purchases. There are a lot of assets created by less experienced 3D artists but they are usually denied through the submission. If they do make it through the submission process there assets don't sell as well as the professional assets, simply because - a good game developer can tell the difference in quality of assets.

It takes time to become a quality 3D artist. Don't give up.

If you want to create assets for a particular game engine, I'd suggest learning how the engine works with specific assets, how the lighting engine works, and how the character pipeline works.

On the Unity asset store - it isn't against the rules to give your assets away for free. The one asset I have on the store is available for anybody who wants to use it for free. I wanted to give something back to the community for allowing me to use a kick butt game engine for free!

My asset is a standard prop asset - with built in LOD, high resolution textures, and texture variants. It has been downloaded approximately 30 times per month for nearly a year. If I had placed a 1 dollar price on the asset - I maybe would of made 360 dollars, but whos to know if it would of been downloaded 30 times per month.

Don't forget - giving away a nice asset for free is a very good advertising mecanism for future (better) assets that you can put a price on.

Good luck.

Thank you for your suggestions, theAnmator. Yes, I was thinking in working in the game engine as well, since I am planning to release my own game eventually :) .

Yes, thank you Ravyne, it makes sense to focus on what you are good at, and find a niche.

But I am curious, are all the professionals that sell various things in the Asset Store experts in art? For example people that finished Art School, and other studies that are similar? Because my education is in a totally different area, and I am mostly interested in game design. I plan to invest some time working to develop something to sell in the Asset Store, to be able to get some funds while learning.