I’ve done some freelance work in the past but freelancing isn’t a stable source of income (in my case at least). I’m thinking of devoting some of my time to creating models for the purpose of selling them but I don’t want to just create models that I think people would want to buy. I actually want to know what others have bought in recent times and/or plan to buy and where better to find answers than one of the largest forums for Blender users. So… What kind of models are you buying ??
I don’t buy a lot of assets, a few things I recall was a set of interior plants and a lowpoly kit ,
the second was fitting art direction and it was faster to take the pieces and assemble the models we needed.
That said, I’m not sure you’ll find a stable source of incomes by selling models, you’ll have to make a lot of them and do a lot of self advertising to be on top of the foodchain…
I just looked at it. The article was published 8 years ago (I’ll still go through it since there’d probably be some useful information there). It’s likely that what a lot of people buy today is a lot different from what they purchased almost a decade ago.
I love to buy geoNode empowered models, so I can tweak many variations. Like tree sets, grass sets, building sets to create non-repeating forests or cities.
Thanks. It seems vegetation related models are one of the most commonly purchased. The thing about them is that there are already some big businesses that I doubt it will be possible to compete with considering how much people love their products.
If I understand you right, you’re looking to sell models to get a more stable source of income than freelancing? I strongly advise against this- selling models is a much less stable source of income than freelancing. I’ve been selling add-ons on Blender Market for 3 years. Some months I have no sales. Some months I have 40. There’s absolutely no consistency or predictability, and this is the same for model sellers I’ve talked to. Selling stuff is passive income- you have no control over it whatsoever, and it should only be used to supplement an active income
That’s the way I saw it at first but I decided to try out spending some of my spare time creating models for sale but maybe I’ll just focus on freelancing. I don’t still mind finding out what kind of models people buy so that if possible, I can still have a ‘supplement’ for times when freelancing isn’t doing well.
Blender Market models, sorted by most sales - this should help you determine what’s more and less popular:
You might also note there are over 28,000 listings of models for sale there, so… you’ve a slope to climb, to provide something that people will purchase from you, instead of another seller.
To answer your original question - I buy various addons (ie tools, utlities, geonodes, etc), but cannot recall the last time I purchased a pure model. I’m not even sure if I ever have.
On the other hand:
If you specialize in those kind of models you like to do… then this could end up in beeing a “master” in those niche… but being a “master” in an area where are dozen of even free models (because a lot of people want to enter those domain)…
…it may be worth thinking about this…
Why? because with zbrush xtractor I can extract details. I can also study the shape, modify it. I dont know, I tend to buy sculpts because there are some shapes I really want to familiarize myself with.
Price I pay for: up to 20 euros 1 sculpt. I never payed more than 20 euros. I consider it “excessive” if a sculpt costs more than 20 euros but that is just my budget, other people may pay more or less. I set the price barrier at 20 euros.
And rarely sculpts cost more than 20 euros.
I dont pay for anything else other than sculpts.
Edit: I also bought complete topology characters, advertised as “clever topology”. To learn topology. But now I dont buy them anymore because I learn it online looking at images or extracting game models. Price: the same, always less than 20 euros
I just bought several geoNodes based ivy generators and a tree generator. I don’t mind paying more for those systems than for models. They adapt infinitely to scenes in the future.
There are still a ton of models and textures inside it…
Primarily for topology - texture - material research, I’ll either purchase hard surface mechanical (guns, cars, tanks or aircraft) models or even extract content off of my favorite games when/where possible with developer requisite permissions, of course.
…