A day or two ago somebody from the BlendFab team reached out to me via email and wanted to do something together for my YouTube channel.
I think I’ve heard of it before, but the website (www.blendfab.com) doesn’t look familiar so my brain might just be mixing BlendSwap and Sketchfab.
Does anybody have any experience with using the website? If so, what are your thoughts?
I have considered to subscribe to their website, but I have just found out that they have no manners. And I do not want to support such behaviour.
They are taking others peoples stuff and presenting it as their own. I do not agree with this.
Just read the comments in this post
Or this post
Wow, even the logo is, let’s say stretching the boundarys.
Good thing this is generally a well informed and critical community. I don’t think they will be around for long.
Pissing people of on BN is sure fire road to nonexistence.
Hello, It’s Tolga. I’m owner and worker of ShareTextures.com
I have some bad experiences with Blendfab. I know they will threat me legally because of my words but I want to say 
Ilvins connected with me via facebook and ask me join their website as a texture source.
They integrated all of my textures their databases and they said they can calculate the usage of textures and they will pay me yearly based of this usage.(They called this system DUC(Data usage counter) But they don’t have a fronted version, so I have to believe their words.
Because of that agrement I share my personal archives with them. 50 Gb Lighting fixtures, 500 Special Marbles etc.
A few days later, Ilvins contact me again and ask me another agreement, He said he will give me 10% of yearly subscriptions. And he asked me to show their advertisement on my homepage and I did it. I show their advertisement for a week I guess. A few more days he contacts me again and he gave me a PROMOTION CODE “SHTBF” He said if somebody gets subscriber with this code, I will get 15%, So I make some advertisements about this on my facebook page.
I run a campaign for a week and ask Ilvins, Isn’t it any subscriber? He said 4 people get to subscribe and paid me 10€ via PayPal.
But something was wrong. Some websites and youtubers makings adversitements about them but nobody was sharing Promotion Codes. I always trust the words Ilvins said, but I never tried to get a subscriber with this code. I opened their website and try to get a subscriber, there is no place to enter the code. I get mad, really really mad. Because at the same time, Blendernation, few youtube channel making advertisements for Blendfab. So they didn’t know who is the referrer.(He said they are asking people via e-mail ) We argue with Ilvins for more than an hour and I stop working with them immediately. But I already shared my personal archives with them. Ilvins promise me they will not use any of my content anywhere, They will only use marble collection because they already prepared them. I didn’t want it but he said I will pay you 15€ for it and I didn’t a choice. We argue + 1 hour too. And he decided to pay me 35€ for 500 marble textures.
(Link of my marbles : https://www.blendfab.com/marble-texture-and-pbr-materials/)
And he immediately fixed their payment screen and add there a promotion code section.
There is an another Youtuber’s e-mail about Promotion Code.
https://imgur.com/ORzJ3jg
1 month later, I see somebody get accessed my archive.(He was a youtuber, I guess he didn’t know anything about this situation.) I check the files and see they shared my archives with somebody. I immediately delete all of my archives from Google-Drive.
And send them an e-mail about “don’t use, don’t share my archives”. Ilvins keep spamming all of my Facebook page post with their own advertisements. I asked him don’t do that and he replies.
Long term short, I had bad experiences with Ilvins. I want to say I feel like Ilvins use me and my sources to get free/cheap adversitements and free/cheap files for their archives etc. ( I am not saying bad things about company named Blendfab. I always contacted with Ilvins and all of my conservation between Ilvins and mine )
All regards.
Holy fuck, I dodged a bullet here. He contacted me through my YouTube channel wanting to advertise (or something, I don’t really remember). I think he promised me percent of subscriptions with referral codes as well.
It seems BlendFab was on a major advertising push at the time as right after I heard from him I started seeing BlendFab advertisements everywhere. Actually, after seeing the advertisements it almost convinced me to work with him. Problem was he wanted me to make a video 100% about how to use Blendfab, and I just simply wasn’t going to do that.
On a side note, this is why you always get a contract. Never do ANYTHING without a contract unless you are willing to risk that the person is going to screw you over. If the person gets angry and questions why you are sending them a contract, odds are they were the ones who were going to violate your agreement. The people who were actually going to pay you and do what you agreed to will never question you sending them a contract (outside of them questioning a specific clause or such) because they know the drill.
I asked for contract first, but he said he want to try how things are going next three month 
I have no problem for now. I am looking some peoples comments about them most of them unhappy. I have all chat histories so I feel like safe
dayummm that site is kinda shady huh, plus all that hardsell 
Holy what???
I am so sorry you had to make this awful experience.
@zachThePerson why don’t you make a whole video about not using blendfab? The blender community needs to know about the messed up practices of this site!
I think this topic needs more attention, because those kind of buisness practices are just inacceptable.
What do you think about making a 3D-Artwork similar to this one? A dystopian cyberpunk factory with grim architexture and a warning sign. Please tell me if it’s inappropriate, I am sometimes bad at judging stuff like this.
I think it’d be highly effective at warning users to not go to this site.
I’d also ask them for a statement about all of it before publishing the artwork.
[Satirical image, that has been removed by author due to being inappropriate]
While I appreciate your loyalty and support for the good, I am not so sure if this is the right way to deal with this.
I’d rather not like seeing this to turn this into a crusade against anyone.
The information is right there. We would let us down to same level and would give another example of immaturity of this community. It’s all fine and fair, of people sharing information about the situation so everybody can make up his own mind.
The situation is imho a bit to serious for ‘meme-ification’.
I’d rather keep this dry, informational, civil.
But then again, this is only my opinion.
Fair point. this can turn into an ugly shitstorm really fast and I don’t want that to happen. But I still think it is important to spread awareness about this whole situation, because there’s a lot of potential of blender artist getting hurt by blendfab and so far they have shown very little good will and responsibility. 
My reasoning behind the “concept” was: satirical approaches to dealing with this kind of stuff are a very effective way of critique while also spreading awareness quickly. And I really want this artwork to be celarly satirical and not a meme.
But I agree with you in regards of the potential negative side effects this couldt have so I’d like to see a better diffrent idea being tried first. I am open to more constructive ideas, altough I don’t have that many. 
As stated before a video/post by a blender creator might also be a good idea, but I am not sure, if this is really a great idea because of the possibility of a SLAPP-lawsuit. Making a satirical artwork is safer, because it is more abstract and this whole discussion is just an inspiration for a story I’d like to tell with blender.
I’m not convinced cosntructive feedback towards a company showing so little basic human desency is effective.
I encourage you to think of something else, that might help.
I totally see where you’re coming from and under other circumstances wouldn’t have said anything about it. But as you are pointing out, this could seriously hurt people. Their careers, their businesses… therefore we should treat it with the seriousness that is given.
Sarcasm and irony are indeed good media to treat certain problems and I don’t want to challenge your motive. Yet I see the danger, just as you, for an epic shitstorm just for the sake of one. You know how hard some people here can get out of bounds over far less serious stuff.
But all in all I think we agree and I’d really welcome if more people share their experience objectively.
Education is the first step to prevention.
Regards,
Markus
I’d still love to hear a way to bring this to more people’s attention. Because I don’t know, if simply posting in this thread will do the trick.
Well, I read it! 
And I think it’s interesting and important. It would be great to hear other people’s experiences as well, though.
Jeez. Blendfab seems like a real piece of work. Thanks for the heads up guys, I don’t usually use other peoples assets anyways, but always good to know when a business is acting sketchy and scummy.
Sorry betalars, I really don’t see what your motivation is in this.
People who dealt with them are sharing their experience and they (Blendfab) or at least that one guy are acting so foolishly in the open, that anyone with a bit of critical ability can see what is going on.
Every form of actively campaigning against them, I personally would highly discourage. For several reasons:
That said, if you really want to start a campaign regarding this, then my suggestion is to find a good slogan and imagery, then go over to the big social media site and make some noise. It will get out of hand pretty quick.
I specifically mention other sites, since my understanding of our rules here is that coordinated action against an entity is unwanted. And I consider that a good thing. We can’t afford double standards on that.
Now I think I made clear where I stand and don’t want to derail this thread into if or if not anybody should start blowing the whistle. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s serving the bigger picture of the deception of Blender any good and I won’t take part in any effort.
Anyways all of this is just my way of handling things like these and was ment as a suggestion. Feel free to pick the fight if you see the necessity for you. There is no right or wrong.
P.S.: On a more personal note. From the posts above, I get that you yourself haven’t had a direct relation with them? If that is the case my friendly advice is to really think your actions through before going public. Especially consider how other people will perceive your efforts. The net is a rough place. You might harm yourself more than you help others.
Thank you for the adivce and you’re probably right.
It’s just … they have gained a lot of attention and have been promoted by a lot of blender outlets and it just feels wrong to just do nothing and let them build a buisness on such a foundation. And this is not just naive:
Such behaviour works, because it gives competetors an advantage over “fair players”, wich leads to everyone having a worse time while those predatory companies rise, because they have a litttle bit less worse time. And I am worried about possible problems arising for blender communities and buisness culture down the line.
Especially since such behaviour is also an indicator of a lack in responsibility, wich often correlates with bad quality control in general and this can lead to many more problems users of this service might encounter because of that.
That’s what makes me concerned and that’s why I don’t want this buisness strategy to succeed.
All fine and fair, and actually reasonable. I can relate to your ‘fears’ but let me give a little more optimistic view on things.
First we have to see that the existence of a market around Blender is the probably biggest achivement of this very community. Yes we did this. Not any corporate identity not an abstract capitalistic system. We users started to build our own ecosystem in which we can live and grow.
And believe me, sure as hell, we’re gonna protect it!
While you are right, that it is unfortunate that their adds appeared on the big and known Blender related hub sites at the same time it is the best thing that could happen. Let me explain:
For one, when they appeared there the site owners couldn’t have known who we are dealing with so everything’s fine there. When I saw them featured over at Blender Nation, my first impuls was: “Oh no Bart what have you done? Remove it so they don’t get the publicity!”
Then I read the comments and I soon realized, that there couldn’t be anything cooler than this feature so they can shovel their own grave in the open. This is a very small and very tight community and in general it is composed of very smart people. Folks see and know what is good for them.
This thread is the best example. Someone sees something shady, he comes here and asks about it. In general people are pretty good in doing their homework about where or where not to buy. Especially those who are not actively participating in these conversations.
Blendfab will vanish. Creators will be aware of the situation or learn a valuable lesson.
What you actually can do is just share the topic or others. Uncommented, just send it out and say:“Now this is interesting…”. Write a blog post about your concern where the market is heading and take this case as example. Spread that together with the sources, people will get it.
In the end, Blendfab aren’t the only ones that wanted to flip a quick few dollars. See those asian add-on stores that are reselling/ pirating other peoples work. You are long enough around to remember the panic about the re-branded ‘3d wonder softwares’.
Is it a PITA? Yes it is, for some more for some less. Is it hurting people? Certainly the people who tried to do business with them. ( And I sympathize with them) Is it immoral? Hell yeah, it is.
But is it gonna kill us? Is it gonna stop the evolution of that wonderful phenomena that Blender is? No. They will loose interest because it’s not gonna work out. People who burned their fingers on them will recover and the community will develop a better awareness. This is not the first time, not the last.
That said, if you see the situation as an inspiration to create art, I consider that a good thing. I’d be very welcoming of more ‘expressional’ ‘critical’ CG. But, don’t get me wrong on this, not such a cheap shot as above. Explore yourself and let the picture do the talking. Don’t let some Jackasses somewhere let you degrade your work to some reactionary piece of anti-propaganda.
This time their own words tell more than thousands of your pictures could.
In friendship, good will and now no longer scrambling the signal of this very thread,
Markus.
@chalybeum That’s actually what I was planning on doing myself: Just posting a link to this thread with something like “Read this before getting involved with BlendFab,” to share it around. I even sent a message to Bart from BlenderNation since I seem to remember that website having an advertisement for it awhile back.
