Want to sell models? You may think everything’s already made, but the technology develops fast. Many models made 10 years ago aren’t usable professionally anymore. As time goes, only the things that lots of people love to make get updated, leaving big holes in the marketplace. Holes that you can fill if you’re good.
If you’re scared of AI, don’t be. It’s at the stage where it can help you produce faster, but it is not nearly good enough for most professional uses out of the box. Someone still needs to make them high quality.
That, by the way, is a key word. Quality. It’s easy to come by bad models. Harder to come by good ones.
Some tips.
Go above and beyond for each model. Make model variations, split it into usable pieces, rig it, make texture variations, animate it.
Make sets that go together. When I need to buy models, good packs are amazing. I’d much rather buy one pack of ten props than ten separate props.
Here are some ideas for categories where I think there’s more demand than supply.
Good nature environments that are not a forest. Ideas: tundra, jungle, savanna, arctic
Rigged male characters. They’re all girls. If you just start making guys, you’re instantly cutting competition in five.
Rigged animals. This is hard to do, but if you nail it, then you can demand a high price.
Clothes. Extremely useful when I buy a character and need to clothe them, or for use in an ad for a clothing brand. Hoodies, socks, T-shirts, and caps are surprisingly hard to find when it needs to look like a specific brand.
Large realistic buildings. Preferably modular.
Foods. Stressed 3D artists working on commercials will always pay for the foods they need. Go to your supermarket, write down some generic foods like fruits, pasta, bread, meat, and see if there are good models online already. For many of them, there are not.
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If you want a sense for what goes into a good animal model, this breakdown is great. I was surprised how much of the time was spent on the groom, but it does make a lot of sense seeing as 90% of what you see is hair.
Last week I linked to a video about a big project, which reminded me of this gem. Jason Pargin is a comedy writer. In this video he talks about his experience with finishing books. It applies to all big projects.
This is a niche annoyance, but you’ll know it if you work with GeoNodes.
When I’m working in a node group, I duplicate the group input node all around and Ctrl+H to hide the inputs I’m not using. But then when i add a new input, that is added to every single group input node and I have to go over them all again and hide.
Finally I realized you can select similar by type in the node editor. Then press Ctrl+H to do it on all of them at once.
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