3D

Who Uses 3D Models?

It may sound obvious, but the types of industries that use 3D models are also those that typically purchase 3D software. The two largest suppliers of 3D software, Autodesk and Dassault Systems, supply a range of products to suit a diverse number of industries. You can get a good idea of who they are typically targeting by visiting the Autodesk Industries page and Dassault Systems product page.

The demand for 3D content is certainly not evenly distributed amongst those industries. I have ranked them below according to their level of demand for stock 3D models.

  1. Gaming

    The gaming industry is dubbed to hit $70 billion by 2015, unsurprising then that this segment continues to drive significant revenue into the 3D industry. Computer games are getting increasingly complex and the majority of games today comprise of 3D content. The demand for increasing levels of quality and complexity mean that games companies will often suffer from extremely tight deadlines. Games companies are turning to outsourced content to help meet these challenging deadlines. Unlike popular belief, we are seeing a much greater demand for high-polygon 3D models and not the lower-polygon counterparts, this is likely due to the development of increasingly powerful GPU processing and through techniques that allow artists to bake detail into a lower polygon model. Learn how to bake normal maps in 3ds Max.

  2. Film and Media

    Like the gaming industry, the film and media industry also a big proponent of utilizing 3D models. The history of computer animation in film and television goes all the way back to the 1960s and has continued to grow from strength to strength. 2009 saw the release of Avatar, which was a pioneering step in the use of 3D. Now it is not uncommon to see VFX utilizing 3D models in most feature films. Companies in the industry will often source a variety of 3D models from marketplace sites. Over on the TurboSquid blog you will find some excellent posts on some of the uses of 3D content in Film and Media sourced from available 3D models on the site.

  3. Advertising and Marketing

    Advertisers are increasingly turning towards digital media to help them communicate their message and make a product or service stand out from the crowd. 3D content is a powerful medium that allows advertisers to do anything from a simple product rotation to a full animation. 3D is also highly customizable, which allows the user to change the geometry, material or texture properties of a given 3D model. Also remember, there are no real-world constraints in 3D, so you can really put your imagination to work. The video below showcases a plethora of advertisements created in 3D and rendered using Chaos Group’s V-Ray render engine.

  4. Architecture

    You don’t have to be an architect to know that constructing any real-world structure is an expensive and highly iterative process. Architects have to communicate a wealth of information often not apparent in 2D architectural drafts. 3D is the perfect medium for showcasing a build and helping to communicate the look and feel of the work far in advance of laying bricks to mortar. At TurboSquid we have found that architects will purchase everything from street elements to interior objects, vehicles to plants and even entire cityscapes.

  5. Education

    When I first attended school, which was not that long ago, there was a single lonely computer available to all students. It wasn’t very powerful, but that didn’t matter much as very few people even knew how to use it. Nowadays we have technology all around us. Students now take laptops to school with them and have access to a lot more information at their fingertips. In recent years education has taken a few more steps into the digital age and there has been a breakthrough in 3D content being used for a multitude of applications. The video below shows just how powerful 3D anatomical models can be for educating students about human anatomy.

  6. Manufacturing and Product Design

    Manufacturing the next radial aircraft engine, or any mechanical object for that matter, poses a massive challenge for the engineer. The hundreds of moving parts have to work seamlessly together and ensure that the product continues to function as expected. Add to that the cost of manufacturing each part, testing and then revising and you will understand very quickly that the process is incredibly costly. 3D not only allows the product designer or engineer to visualize the product, they can also animate and rigorously test the product before any physical object is created.

  7. Government and Military

    Government projects, including road and highway design through to building management and restoration, can be incredibly costly and, like architecture, it is incredibly important to communicate the vision and scale of a project. 3D has become an excellent tool doing just that. It is now possible to build and render photorealistic images and animations from civil data. Other tools can even provide real-time hydrology and hydraulic analysis to simulate drainage in instances of varying weather conditions. Military and government agencies are also increasingly using 3D in simulation to train police officers and troops for combat engagements and first response management. Due to the development in realism of gaming engines, military simulations can now be conducted through the same platform.

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Guide to Selling 3D Models Online

I’ve been working in the 3D industry for six years, while this is may not be an exceptionally long time, I have been very privileged to have served in positions that have given me a great deal of visibility of the market. In 2006 I co-founded and assumed the role of Managing Director of Falling Pixel, an online marketplace for the sale of 3D content. In 2011 the company was acquired by TurboSquid, a much larger and more established 3D marketplace. I have since become a part of the TurboSquid management team. Since then, I have learned a great deal about the 3D marketplace industry, it’s customers and the artists that sell 3D content.

Why should I sell 3D models?

Selling 3D models online on marketplace sites like Falling Pixel or TurboSquid can be very lucrative for the artist. There are a number of individuals who earn a very respectable income from the sale of 3D models, some have even built businesses and employ artists to create and sell 3D models online. There is also a wealth of 3D content that is yet to have been made and customer demand for this content continues to be very high.

3D modelling software is still fairly expensive and it can take many years to master the art of 3D modelling, which means there is not as much competition in the market, especially compared to other digital mediums such as stock photography. If that wasn’t enough, artists can get anywhere from 40% – 70% royalties for selling 3D content and charge prices upwards of $100 per 3D model.

All that said, there are a great deal of newcomers to the industry, many of which are unfamiliar with selling content. It is not uncommon to see artists blindly deciding what models to create with the hopes that there will be a customer out their who will buy their creation. Thankfully our customers are a very creative bunch, they will often consume a diverse range of 3D models from tiny insects to full blown cityscapes and everything in-between. This makes it much easier for the average artist to produce content that will have a good chance of selling. Still, there are a number of artists who create content that is completely unsalable simply because they are not thinking about the intended use or value to the customer.

 Next Page » Who Uses 3D Models?

Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards

TurboSquid, the company I work for, supplies a number of 3D models to clients around the world. Models are used in everything from computer games to architectural visualizations. It’s always exciting to see how the content is used. The video below is particularly exciting to me as it is almost entirely comprised of content sourced from TurboSquid.

I also happen to also really like Metal, making this video all the more enjoyable! :D

The video took eight weeks to produce using 3ds Max 2012 and Adobe After Effects CS5.5. Music by metal legends ‘Anthrax’ roars in the background while effects from the wildly popular ‘World of Tanks’ online game adds an authentic sound to the Tiger 1 Tank model that rumbles through the video.

— Trevor Witt, Head of Multimedia for Future PLC

Real or CG?

If you are a 3D artist then it is likely that you have experienced the frustration of trying to explain what a computer generated 3D model is. You have probably even argued that a 3D rendering is far from being a photograph of the real thing, and you would be right!

Now imagine that conversation with someone who has already convinced themselves that it is real and is determined to purchase that product even after being told it’s digital. To some people there is just no explaining, they are convinced that they will be able to order their military grade rocket launcher at the bargain price of $99!

All of this is a true testament to how far along the industry has come and to the incredible work of 3D artists. If you do happen to be a 3D artist and can’t fathom how anyone could mistake a rendering from a photograph then I encourage you to take Autodesk’s Fake or Foto challenge, even the most experienced 3D artist can be stumped.

Before I end this post I’d like to send a shout-out to Michele Bousquet for putting together this video. I’d also like to give a shout-out to the support team for their incredible professionalism – those guys always seem to keep their cool even during the most frustrating calls. Good work guys!

3D Modeling Standards at SIGGRAPH 2011

TurboSquid SIGGRAPH 2011

This year I had the great privilege of co-hosting a studio talk on standards in 3D modeling at SIGGRAPH with fellowTurboSquid colleague, Michele Bousquet. This was an area that we are incredibly passionate about and, more interestingly, is an area that has been largely overlooked. The talk aimed to outline the current situation in the industry with the lack of universal standards and went on to outline how TurboSquid is attempting to change this with the advent of CheckMate, the industry’s first standard for 3D models.

Why 3D Modeling Standards?

The 3D industry is constantly evolving, production pipelines are changing and there is an increasing demand for content  that meets the expectations of the client, both in terms of suitability and quality.

Now you may be saying that this all of this may sound obvious, but for some time now we have seen a disconnect between a client’s requirements and the artist’s production. This is due in part to the increasing use of 3D models in a diverse set of industries, projects and pipelines. Artists will also find creative ways to build content that suits a given pipeline, for example they could produce content that renders well in an architectural visualization, but the model would not be suitable for real-time application. Couple this with the growing complexity of projects and pipelines that require seamless transitioning between suites of software packages and you start to see where problems can arise.

Interestingly there is very little information available that details what a good quality 3D model is or even what production artists should be producing to fit a given pipeline. With that, one of the aims became to research and verse artists in the ways of creating 3D models for the broadest industry pipelines.

This research on industry best practices has subsequently been produced into the TurboSquid 3D Modeling Series and includes detailed instructions on producing content to real world scale, avoiding and fixing n-gons, ensuring your scene organization is up to scratch and other useful tools to help artists improve the quality and usability of their end product.

Formalizing the Standards

Naturally the next step was to formalize these best practices into a coherent 3D modeling standard. A detailed specification was formulated and opened up to artists during an extensive beta testing period.

At this stage I would like to say that in our experience we understand that artists do not like to be told what to do, after all this is their creative freedom we are talking about. For this reason certain aspects of the specification were contested and artists would often detail that this simply is not the way they have ever worked before and that they have never had any issues from clients. The difference here is that we are opening up 3D content for a multitude of project types and pipelines and we want to ensure that the model works right out of the box and not just in a given instance. It was important to demonstrate the pitfalls of what could happen if content is not built to a specific standard and for the artist to understand that clients are crying out for consistency and standardization.

That said, it became clear that artist would need some choice in this matter and so the discussion turned to the minimum specification that would be acceptable to customers at large. One of the highest priority modeling aspects was that 3D models should be hand-checked and open error-free. This would enable customers to begin working with the model in the scene without the worry of having to locate missing files, reassign textures and other unnecessary additional work. In essence this standard would produce ready and reliable 3D models.

We kept the original standard and made some limited compromises, this specification became a full 44-point standard, required flawless quad based topology, real-world scale, well named objects and hierarchies, beautiful HD renders and of course the ability to plug into your existing pipeline and begin working with the content. This content could be categorized as the highest quality geometry and textures.

Much of these standards were build on the notion of allowing customers to understand exactly what they are getting without any nasty surprises. These two standards were later defined as CheckMate Lite and Pro certification.

People Care!

TS at Siggraph 2011

This is the first time that we have announced these standards to the industry at large and we are thankful for the turnout and great reception we got at SIGGRAPH 2011. We honestly expected around 30 individuals to turn up and instead there were around 300 people joining us for the talk. Individuals ranged from aspiring artists through to industry thought leaders and company executives. There were also fantastic questions asked and a lot of interest in the standards and how it applies to their own companies and pipelines.

The CheckMate program has been two years in the making and the byproduct of countless customer surveys, interviews and industry research. The idea is to encompass a multitude of internal industry standards and best practices, producing one coherent and universally acceptable standard for creating 3D models. I believe that CheckMate is well on its way and I hope that this is just the start of big things to come for this program. I know that the team at TurboSquid have worked incredibly hard to get this out and so it comes as great pleasure to see this hard work validated by the industry.

Find out more about CheckMate Certification

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