I’m interested in learning to make models to sell. I’ve been looking at existing ones and have become confused about the pricing of some. One that I’ve listed is quite cheap while most are quite expensive. I do see some differences, but I’d like some input from experts. Obviously, people price them however they wish, but are there more reasons for the extreme differences that I’m seeing? Thanks.
In theory, you would expect a difference in quality, that is, low vs high poly counts, sculpt detailing etc. They would be factoring in how much time it took them to make and what they feel their time is worth. However, in reality, that may not be the case, it could even be that someone comes from an area where their price is, to them, equivalent to a higher price for someone in another country. Mainly though, I do think some people charge what they think they can get away with, you even see it on eBay and Amazon, the same product with vastly different pricing. I’ve seen product which average for say £20 being sold for £100, though I find it hard to think those people ever actually get any sales!
“The market price of an item is whatever a willing buyer will pay a willing seller.” That’s the extent of it. There is no “exchange,” so far as I know, that might help to standardize either prices or expectations. Therefore, “let the buyer beware.”
Well, alas, number of polys doesn’t equate to quality. Some people can use a huge number of polygons but the topology is terrible. Same for textures, it’s too easy to say “8K textures”, but if the quality of the map itself is poor, it doesn’t matter how big it is. Looking at the wire mesh on those, the expensive one has ribs built into the mesh, but you could easily sell the same effect with a normal map / bump map. Depends what exactly you want it for, personally speaking, the “cheaper”, ( not that 199 is cheap per se), is more than suitable for most needs I’d say.
I’ve been selling for years on multiple platforms now. I think each artist is different. It’s kind of like Fiver, in that some artist will put up work that is amazing for free…perhaps to use the free models as a calling card, which brings them to the store which has paid stuff (my method).
Of course you can’t charge based on the time it took to create an asset. A junior artist makes $30/hr…some assets take days to make. Heck, weeks or months. You can’t sell the model with that in mind–you have to consider a price that is attractive and fair. If it’s a good popular model, you will recoup your time at some point. This could take weeks, months, or years.
Don’t low-ball everything. You have to walk a fine line of ‘what am I worth’ to ‘what’s a competetive price’?
All of my for sale models go for around $5 to $7. Out of 60 models, half are free.
If you are making something ‘low poly’…make sure it’s good low poly. If it’s medium poly or high poly try your best to clean up the topology, especially if the asset will be deformed in any way.
Thanks. That’s most of what I’m looking for. I thought the cheap one looked fine and got confused on the prices. I also noticed the rib detail on the expensive one and thought it was silly. Too many things about these objects are odd.
The main difference in price between those two is that the expensive one is rigged with animations. Both processes, the rig and animation are very time consuming - and also valuable!. And between the models you linked that is the main difference.
I would say in general the difference in price is going to be quality and quantity. Generally I find I have to pay more for quality. Something like a city kit bash might be cheep and in high quantity of assets, but the quality might be low.
So in my opinion all other considerations aside those are the two main factors. How many assets or the overall size of the object (mansion or castle verses small house, city etc.) and the quality (time spent making a realistic or detailed work of art).
Then with characters, rigged or not, and with animations or not.