Sketchfab Launches a 3D Assetstore
Sketchfab just launched a marketplace! It was a logical step forward and the most often requested feature by the community of over 1.3 million artists.
With the 3D viewer and model inspector, not only do you get to see the 3D models, but also their anatomy. You know for sure how a model is made, and what you are paying for.
Alban Denoyel writes:
Almost 6 years ago, we embarked on a journey to let people easily publish, share, and discover 3D content; and become the ultimate home for 3D on the web. We evolved from web only to embrace mobile, VR and AR, to cover the entire ecosystem of platforms relevant to the 3D world. Today, our community is made of more than 1.3 million members, who’ve shared more than 2 million 3D files, and this content has been viewed by over 150 million people.
As we’ve grown, two things have become more and more clear to us:
- To be a successful creative platform, we also need to help creators monetize their creations.
- Our aim to distribute 3D content everywhere also means distributing it outside Sketchfab.
We’ve seen a growing need and market for 3D assets, especially as VR and AR have become more mainstream. We introduced a download feature in 2014, leveraging Creative Commons licenses. This feature has proven to be very successful, and today we see more than 200,000 downloads every month, for a cumulative total of more than 2.5 million downloads. These have been used for every conceivable use-case from 3D-printing to classroom education to video games and experiential VR.
The natural evolution – and one of our most requested features – is paid download: a way for our creators to monetize their work, a way for us to push the distribution of content outside of Sketchfab, and an awesome way for people to find great content.
I am happy to introduce the Sketchfab Store today.
PS: I work for Sketchfab ;-)
What about an end user like me ? I’m not involved into some kind of commercial activities. I do 3D for hobby. My main activities is the psychology study. I can’t for sure spend a lot of money buying the 3d models. what can u do for me ? Can i get your 3d models for free ? thanks.
While you can’t get the ‘paid’ models for free, there are still tons of free, Creative Commons models you can download:
https://sketchfab.com/models?date=week&features=downloadable&sort_by=-likeCount
there’s always blendswap.
“Sketchfab can, in its sole discretion, decide to apply a discount on the license fee paid by the buyer. In such a scenario, and unless otherwise stated explicitly by Sketchfab to the contributor, the discount shall impact equally Sketchfab’s commission and seller’s revenue.”
*record skip*
Hold up a sec!
So I could spend a hell of a lot of time making something very complex and detailed, like a finely detailed hyper realistic model of a tiger, complete with fur and rigged muscles and whatnot, upload it and set it for a price of say, $200, and then without warning or consent, Sketchfab can decide it wants to discount MY product, and make it say, 90% off, for $20 only. There’s no specified limit to how much something can be discounted, how often, or if such discounts must be available to everyone or only specified users.. who says Sketchfab can’t do a month of free downloads as a special event?
If Sketchfab wants to offer a discount on MY products, they should do so at their own expense!
Hmm, I’ll talk to the team and get clarification on that. At any rate, it’s not in our interest to upset sellers, so any such campaigns will always be communicated and agreed on before we launch them.
Doing extreme things like a 90% discount or giving away models for free would not make sense for us as all, if you know Sketchfab you’ll know that we respect artists and we’d never do such a thing.
No offense intended by this, but ‘We’d never do such a thing’ isn’t much of a guarantee if it isn’t in writing.
I’d want to see clauses added first which specify either the warning period before discounts, or some kind of ‘Do you approve of this?’ option, or at least the limits on the extent of discounts, before I’d feel comfortable listing models for sale.
Of course, and that’s why we’re already working on changing it. I’ll report back here when the new text is up!
I, for one, welcome our new Sketchfab overlords.
Sketchfab just keeps growing. Man, I still remember when it was just an upstart! ;)
Cool news!