Blender and Turbosquid

OK, so I decided to finally try and get some cash for my modelling efforts. I have a lil bloody axe game model here that I made just to see how Turbosquid works and all. But there's a problem... None of the formats that I can export from Blender 2.63 seems to look good in Unity (I use it just to see how it would look in game). So if it doesn't look good in Unity it probably won't look better anywhere else (except for Blender). What do I do now? Any help with exporters?

Firstly; somehow I missed this. I have not seen this until just now.

I'd like to ask; why did you choose Turbosquid? I have used the Falling Pixel, tSquid, and The 3D studio for quite a while now. Years ago, it was a case of tSquid having the lowest commissions, but the greatest amount of sales, so it balanced the income across the three. But then tSquid introduced it's exclusivity program -which you may have heard of- which made everyone's commission % go down even further unless they signed a contract stating they would sell exclusively with them. In short, tSquid is a draconian mess. After they huge changeups, many informed customers left them, and many sellers did as well causing them to loose market share. Currently, I'm getting more and more sales on my 3D Studio store which when combined with the much higher commission rate is a really good deal. This may not interest you as much, but T3DS is a family run company, with excellent client/customer support, and strong business ethics. I really appreciate the way they do business.

Last I checked, the tSquid offered 30-40% commissions, and on The 3D Studio I get 70%.

If you want to check out T3DS, I wouldn't mind it at all if you use my affiliate link.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
(this gives me a few % on sales you make, out of the company's pocket; not yours.)

Radialronnie wrote:I'd like to ask; why did you choose Turbosquid?

Well really, there's not a big reason behind this. You know, a friend of mine, he's a weekend 3Ds Max amateur modeler, preffers game coding much more, told me that from February 'till now got like 30$ bux on his PayPal for selling his stuff on TurboSquid, so I got interested. Nothing more, nothing less.

Radialronnie wrote:I have used the Falling Pixel, tSquid, and The 3D studio for quite a while now. Years ago, it was a case of tSquid having the lowest commissions, but the greatest amount of sales, so it balanced the income across the three. But then tSquid introduced it's exclusivity program -which you may have heard of- which made everyone's commission % go down even further unless they signed a contract stating they would sell exclusively with them. In short, tSquid is a draconian mess. After they huge changeups, many informed customers left them, and many sellers did as well causing them to loose market share. Currently, I'm getting more and more sales on my 3D Studio store which when combined with the much higher commission rate is a really good deal. This may not interest you as much, but T3DS is a family run company, with excellent client/customer support, and strong business ethics. I really appreciate the way they do business.

Last I checked, the tSquid offered 30-40% commissions, and on The 3D Studio I get 70%.

Actually, that's some interesting stuff to hear. I thank you for informing me on all that. Though, I'll run an account on both TurboSquid and T3DS just to see how things are going there.

Radialronnie wrote:If you want to check out T3DS, I wouldn't mind it at all if you use my affiliate link.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
(this gives me a few % on sales you make, out of the company's pocket; not yours.)

I didn't really get how that'd happen.

Btw, here's the model that I was talkin' about imported in Unity. It seems that the import problems were something within Blender. I exported it again without touching anything on the model and it's all fine now. No messed-up normals anywhere.
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Both color and normal map resolution is 512x512. Poly-count in Blender is 82. It's a game model, as you can guess.

Though, when I upload it to a model-selling site, I should post the poly-count from Unity, not from Blender, right?
Another question is, what price should I put it on for? I think 2 bux is OK, right?

You may have accidentally altered the export settings (those are finicky).
It looks good, but I'll say along with the pros that the money is in 'bigger' models. This one may net you enough pocket cash for a monthly chewing gum, but if you build a 50-pieces-strong set in the similar style, and market it at 75$, you'll likely get much more money.

About the affiliate link; it simply gives me an extra buck or two whenever you make a sale. This extra money comes out of the portion that's kept by The 3D Studio; not your commission so you still get the 70% as before.

One more thing, I'll unabashedly tell you this right up front; don't get up any hopes of even getting remotely rich, or even having a steady passive income without putting a huge amount of work into it.

I think you would agree that my selection is [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], and yet the money flow is very sporadic (months go by without sales, then I get several per month), and it's not very large in the first place. I use the little bit of money to donate to some micro-finance philanthropic organizations (kiva) and the occasional game on steam.
I have read of some people who get 10-15k per year, but their selections of models is upwards of 500-1000 or even more.

and just *one* more thing, make sure that each model that you export has at least an .obj file. .obj is readable by practically every 3D app and its cousins. Since you....have 3DsMax, you can also export in its formats since they're also popular.

Radialronnie wrote:It looks good, but I'll say along with the pros that the money is in 'bigger' models. This one may net you enough pocket cash for a monthly chewing gum, but if you build a 50-pieces-strong set in the similar style, and market it at 75$, you'll likely get much more money.

Hmm, now when I think about it, that'll be pretty much what I'm going to do.

Radialronnie wrote:About the affiliate link; it simply gives me an extra buck or two whenever you make a sale. This extra money comes out of the portion that's kept by The 3D Studio; not your commission so you still get the 70% as before.

That's what I wanted to know. So tomorow I'm going to register from that link you gave me.

Radialronnie wrote:One more thing, I'll unabashedly tell you this right up front; don't get up any hopes of even getting remotely rich, or even having a steady passive income without putting a huge amount of work into it.

I think you would agree that my selection is [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], and yet the money flow is very sporadic (months go by without sales, then I get several per month), and it's not very large in the first place. I use the little bit of money to donate to some micro-finance philanthropic organizations (kiva) and the occasional game on steam.
I have read of some people who get 10-15k per year, but their selections of models is upwards of 500-1000 or even more.

Never thought about getting rich through that sort of work. But if I could, let's say, earn money for monthly food, I would be happy. About your selection of models, it is indeed respectable.
One thing I noticed is that some of your models lack textures and they still get possitive reviews, which I find to be quite confusing. Do you at least UV map them? Why would someone buy a model which doesn't have a texture?

Radialronnie wrote:and just *one* more thing, make sure that each model that you export has at least an .obj file. .obj is readable by practically every 3D app and its cousins. Since you....have 3DsMax, you can also export in its formats since they're also popular.

The last time I had 3DsMax on my PC was a couple of years ago. And I don't think I'll be "getting" it again just to export models. And you're talking about the .fbx format, right? I remember Blender's fbx exporter was good, so I'm just going to use it. Other thing I noticed is that artists sell models in .blend format as well. So there I have it - 3 formats for my models (obj, fbx and blend). But if Blender's Lightwave exporter is good, I'll even have a forth one.

The axe is curently in obj, btw.