I’m considering making some models to sell through the Asset Store, but would like to work out what it is that people really want to buy. You are all people (hopefully), so it struck me that the best thing to do is just ask!
I’ll readily admit that I’ve no wonderous qualifications or portfolio (my degree is in zoology), but that’s why I’ve opted for the assets store as opposed to freelancing to specific clients. This way you buy the product itself, not the potential product so if people don’t like what I make then they have no obligation to buy it, and I just have to sell a model instead of myself.
The things I’m after are along the lines of;
What objects do you want to see up for sale?
What kind of optimisation needs to go into them? What target poly counts, texture sizes and so on?
Related to the previous question, how detailed do people want the models, and are things like normal/parallax mapping applicable?
Where should my balance between the specific and generic lie?
How much do people want to pay? (Well freebies are nice, but you all know what I mean.)
I’ve decided against character modelling, because it’s too game-specific and massively time consuming, and I don’t reckon vegetation is the way to go either, now that the tree editor makes lower-mid quality stuff so accessible. All the same, feel free to correct me if you think I’m wrong. Some potential ideas I’ve had so far are;
Simple, more down-to-earth weapons packs. I see a lot of uber-mystical, twirley, knobbley-bits and magical things out there, but would people want to see more realistic, gritty and practical equipment? I thought one with interchangable parts (think spears with different shafts, heads and so on, or swords with different blades, guards and hilts, all with alternate textures with varying decoration and materials). I’m quite into battlefield history, so they could also be accurate to specific time periods and cultures, or just plain old all-over-the-place fantasy.
Maritime objects, particularly sailing ships, good for reinacting the Battle of Trafalgar, or various acts of piracy. Alternatively more modern battleships, trawlers and tankers.
Science fiction vehicles (again quite chunky and ergonomic, as opposed to the curvey, spindley things you often see). Not so much spacecraft as dropships, tanks and suchlike.
Cheers JRavey, that seems like a sensible suggestion. You reckon it’d go down well if I just completely made them up? Or would it be better for them to resemble genuine car designs? I might start doing up some quick prototypes to see how it goes.
So long as they aren’t the actual cars in question. For example modelling a porsche would land you in trouble as all cars are actually licensed media these days.
Yep, that was kind of what I meant when I said resembles. I wasn’t suggesting they were identical, though I’m now edging towards something I completely invent myself for the sake of simplicity, as JRavey suggested.
I could see people using particle packs or sound packs.
Particles can be hard to make look good at close and far, yet use minimum particles for the best effect. Snow, fire, dust.
Sound packs - a added bonus if they have examples for Unity Pro.
@ wingdexglow - I hadn’t thought of that, but must say I like both these ideas. I’d made a lot of particle effects before, particularly snow and moving water, and although my old computer died with all hands lost I’m confident I could make them again quite easily. As for audio I’ll be getting hold of some sample libraries and recording equipment in the next few months so a bit of foley could be a laugh.
@ JRavey - Aha! A target audience mayhap?
@ tateax - Noooo, I’ve made several fully animated characters for my own project and it was hell! XD The main one has taken me months already, and is still ongoing. I think I’d only consider character modelling/animation if I could be sure it’d be worth my time, and I suspect it wouldn’t be. Also, although people might not care if their character’s coffee mug was spotted in another game, I think people would care if their main character was used in various other titles. For those reasons I think this is best left to the freelancers on a per client basis. All the same I’m sure I could be wrong.
@Wolfie: apologies if this is too obvious but… animals? Presumably the zoology degree would give you an advantage here and animals are generally not specific to the game they appear in.
But I think you can get away with it.