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.

Previous Page « Guide to Selling 3D Models
Next Page » What 3D Models Should I Make? (Coming Soon)

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?

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

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

There are two ways you can get this data, one is by appending “&limit=” to the URL the other is through the use of In-Page Analytics Inbound Sources and Outbound Destinations. This post will detail both of these methods.

Navigation Summary – URL Row Limit Variable

1.  In the old version of GA select  Content > Overview > Navigation Summary.
2. On the Content dropdown select the page you would like to analyse.
3. Replace the “lts” variable and # in the URL with “&limit=50000″.
   50000 denotes the number of rows you would like to export. Hit return to refresh the page, you will noticed that it looks like nothing has changed.
4. Click Export > CSV or TSV.
   PDF, XML and CSV for Excel will not export all of the rows.

So there you have it, a complete list of Previous and Next page paths exported to CSV with the percentage of visits for a given path.

In this next step I will show you how to view up to 100 inbound and outbound pages while browsing through site.

In-Page Analytics – Inbound Sources and Outbound Destinations

1. Start by selecting Content > In-Page Analytics in the old version of GA. The reason for selecting the old versions is due to the missing inbound and outbound sources pane in the newer version of In-Page Analytics. I know, frustrating that they would remove functionality.
2. In-Page should display an overlay of click-through percentages from your homepage. If you are not seeing data then please ensure that your GA tracking code is setup correctly [Replace with link to another article] and is not replacing any of your URLs with custom variables.
3. Open another browser window and proceed to your website, you should now see an overlay on your site. You are free to navigate to any site page where you will see In-Page analytics overlayed on your site.
4. Navigate to the page where you would like to see inbound and outbound navigation.
5. On the Page information window scroll down and select Inbound Sources or Outbound Destinations. From here you will see a list of 15 URLs. To view the next/previous 15 click on the right and left arrows located below the URL list.(entrance) denotes the number of users who came to the page from an external source.

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!

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!

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

This will be the first time I have been able to attend the conference, although is something I have wanted to do for many years, especially as the conference is directly related to my industry and will be a fantastic way to network with other passionate individuals in the field.

More exciting still, I have been given the opportunity to present a studio talk with fellow TurboSquid colleague, Michele Bousquet. We will be presenting Standards in 3D Modelling, revealing key research, the challenges faced when getting artists to adopt these standards and showcasing a case study of how we put these new standards into practice. This is an area that we are very passionate about and has been an ongoing discussion in the industry for some time, especially with regards to the quality of 3D content sourced on marketplace sites. Without revealing too much we do feel this will be a big step in the right direction and we have been extremely happy with the adoption rate of these standards from 3D artists.

The studio talk will be taking place in The Studio/West Building, Ballroom A on Sunday 7th August at 4:30pm. It will be an excellent opportunity to meet the a few of the TurboSquid team and get a behind the scenes look at what we have been up to.

There will be a number of other studio talks taking place in the same room from the likes of Pixar Animation Studios, Industrial Light & Magic, NVIDIA, Sony Pictures Imageworks and Dreamworks so I think this will certainly be an exciting and jam packed day.

There are a number of popular naming conventions that can be used when coming up with a name for your startup or product. Note that none of these are considered best or worst practice, however they do have their pros and cons, many of which are discussed in this post.

Naming Trends

Over the past few years I have seen a number of naming styles go in and out of fashion.

The dropping of vowels was one of those interesting trends that has exploded recently. It is likely that this was started as a response to the lack of availability of the broader domain names or was created just for flair. The likes of Flickr, Tumblr, Scribd, Etsy are following this style of naming and it is now associated with a number technology based web start-ups.

Another relatively new naming adoption comes from the use of domain extensions. Bit.ly, Del.icio.us, Fast.fm and others are following this naming convention, opening up a new market of available domain names. Bare in mind that you may need to shop around for your desired domain extension as not all domain registrars offer the ability to purchase domains with lesser known country codes.

Earlier to these two examples it was highly common to see colours being used in naming. it wasn’t hard to find companies with obscure names like Yellow Monkey, Green Fire, Purple Kiwi, Blue Noodle etc. This trend has recently subsided and I have not heard of many new company names containing colours. I will say that if you do intend to go down this route please read into the psychology of colours.

Abstract and Metaphorical Naming:

• Apple
• Shell
• Orange
• foursquare
• Steam
• Hulu
• Amazon
• Twitter
• Kayak

When using this naming convention it often helps to keep the name short and apply words that have diverse connotations. Amazon is a fantastic example that conjures up images of something vast in size that is powerful and diverse.

Twitter is of course the language of a bird and when we think of this style of chatter it suggests the use of short, sharp speech. For me this also promotes the image of mass conversation, after all it is not uncommon to see dozens of birds all chatting together in a group.

The main challenge with abstract naming is that the word is almost certainly going to be taken when searching for the domain. Not only that, you are then tasked with the somewhat difficult job of associating the abstract word with your start-up or product. However, once established you could potentially set yourself up for a powerful and widely known brand.

Literal

• Money Supermarket
• Go Compare
• Compare the Market
• Weight Watchers
• Facebook
• MySpace
• Word Press
• Live Journal
• Slide Share
• Microsoft

I have included facebook here as it started life as a literal meaning; it was simply a book that contained the faces of fellow university alumni. Microsoft has also been included in this section. In the early days this literally meant micro software. This name is somewhat ironic these days as the company and the software are far from micro!

There are a number of benefits to literal meaning, for one, it is easy to understand what the company or product offers. It is also possible to add positive and/or possessive adjectives such as “My”, “You” and “Your”.

Literal names are not always the most memorable and can easily become confused with other literal terms. Names containing the literal terms can also be perceived as bland. Go Compare and Compare the Market have cleverly beaten this bland appearance using clever gimmicks to help set them apart. Go Compare with their somewhat annoying but catchy jingle and Compare the Market with Compare the Meerkat campaign.

Invented and Misspellings

• Tumblr
• Flickr
• Scribd
• Etsy
• GroupOn
• Google
• Squidoo
• eBay
• yfrog
• Technorati
• Delicious
• Bebo
• Digg

Google are obviously the most well-known name in this group. The Google name began life as Googol, which is the mathematical name given to describe ten raised to the power of one hundred (10^100). Realizing this was a somewhat convoluted word they decided to append the more commonly used suffix –le, also known as the final stable syllable.

Other examples previously discussed here are Tumblr and Flickr, which drop the vowel from the suffix. This technique often only works well with single word names, applying this to multiple worded names can have a negative effect; it also becomes harder to remember.

Domain Extensions

• bit.ly
• Adf.ly
• Del.icio.us
• Last.fm
• About.me
• Blip.tv

As previously discussed in this post there are a number of names constructed using domain extensions. Offline these names become harder to communicate, bit.ly for example becomes bit dot ly, Del.iciou.us becomes even harder to communicate, although delicious.com is now their preferred domain.

Including the domain extension opens you up to hundreds more naming options, many of which can be shorter in construction, but can be somewhat harder to optimize for on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Mixing Conventions Doesn’t Always Work:

Try to stick to a single naming convention where possible. The use of abstract and literal meaning combined does not always work well and can send mixed signals.

Combining two of the popular names in the examples above highlight how mixing can weaken the name. For example, “Hulu Space” (combination of Hulu and My Space) could be taken literally as a place to talk about hulu. It is no longer abstract enough to be memorable and it has confused meaning when considered literally.

Issues with Adjectives:

In some cases positive adjectives can help establish the image behind the name. For example, “The Dependable Accountants”, although not a particular sexy name, does communicate one of the positive attributes behind the company. The main issue with this style of name is that it can be very hard to make it stand out from the crowd and is potentially not very memorable.

In my previous start-up we adopted the use of “Falling” in the name; this was primarily to promote the concept of motion. It quickly became clear that people were confusing this with the alternate adjective “Fallen”.  It is easy to see how “Dependable” could become confused with “Trustworthy”, “Loyal”, “Reliable” and other commonly used positive adjectives.

Soft vs Hard Naming

There are certain letters and words that have the power to promote a given psychological response.

Letters like m, o, p, s and b are all “soft”, that is, they look smooth and rounded and are softer to pronounce. Letters like this can also be extended vocally, for example: “ooooo”, “mmmmm”, “ssssss”. Moo.com is an interesting example of the use of soft letters; it is easy on the eyes, has friendly connotations and is very easy to spell.

“Hard” letters like t, f, v, x, z are more abrupt. It is hard to extend “t”, for example. However, this letter construction can have positive connotations within certain industries. Lawyers and accountants may be interested in promoting a highly professional and formal company; the use of more defined words can certainly help give the name this tone.

It is important to understand that our mind-set and expectations can change depending on a given industry. It is not surprising that we commonly find serif fonts used on legal documentation and san-serif on blogs. Serif is often seen as formal and professional while san-serif promotes a less formal aesthetic.

The same can be said for logo design. Using soft and rounded shapes can work well for companies that want to promote their friendly and approachable nature, but it can be seen as playful and unprofessional when used in the wrong context.

Search Engine Optimization:

Having the keyword term in the domain name itself can carry a lot of weight with the search engines. It is considered highly relevant to the service offered, which works well for literal naming, but of course not so well with abstract naming.

Google puts a lot of weight on this. As of writing, 7 of the 10 results for the term “Supermarket” contain this keyword in the domain name, the 3 that lack this are found as the last 3 results on the first page.

That said, you shouldn’t let that put you off. It is entirely possible to optimize for the keyword term of your choosing through the use of on page and off page optimization. Landing pages with the keyword term used in the URL can also help establish the keyword term within the SERPs.

Social Media:

There was a time when we only had to worry about acquiring a single domain, however, nowadays we have a plethora of social media services that should be considered when selecting a name. The trouble is that these social media usernames are easy to register and tend to get snapped up very quickly.

Be sure to check LinkedIn Groups, Facebook Pages, Twitter Profiles even forums for the same use of the username. The last thing you want is to start appending numbers to your name so that you can have your service on these sites.

Services like namechk can help you to determine what usernames are available on a large bank of social sites. Remember that if just because you do not intend to use social sites to promote your service today, doesn’t mean you wont in the future!

Trademarks and other Legal Considerations:

It is important to find out who is using the name. Spend a bit of time searching the web to find out if the name is in use, who is using it and why. If you are searching for Lloyd’s Widgets ensure you also search for the term with and without spaces  .Encapsulate the term in quotations in most search engines will also find an exact match on the given name.

You may come across a company product or service that uses the same name. While they may or may not have a trademark, but ask yourself if you would be adding confusion to the marketplace by using the same name, especially if they are operating in the same industry.

It is possible to use archiving sites to delve deeper into the history of the usage of the names used on a particular site. Perhaps they have not been using this a long time or perhaps it’s an old product no longer offered.

Remember, if you cannot find the product used on the web this doesn’t mean that someone does not hold the trademark term. Be sure to check your local patent and trademark office for more information. The US trademark database and UK trademark database are quite comprehensive and worth checking out.

Naming alternatives:

When constructing a name be sure to write it down and spot for any hidden words that can be derived from the name. The web has some hilarious examples of naming fails, the likes of:

Winters Express - Winter Sex Press,
Childrens Wear - Children Swear,
Speed of Art - Speed O Fart,
Pen Island –  Penis Land,
Experts Exchange - Expert Sex Change,
Who Represents - Whore Presents

My Own Examples (Pros and Cons):

Another Band:

Back in college I used to play in a band. For a long time we couldn’t think of a name, but after some deliberation we settled on “Another Band”. It wasn’t catchy or memorable and worse still in caused great confusion.

During a gig this came to into full light after the MC spoke out, saying: “Next up is another band”, to which we heard a number of people shout  “Yeah, but what is your band name”. It could have been a fun gimmick, but to all intents and purposes it didn’t do its job.

Circular Studios:

Later name failure came with the first start-up I co-founded. The name, Circular Studios, seemed good at the time; after all we were a studio so it did carry some literal meaning. The trouble of course is that there are hundreds of studios in the world that work in very diverse industry sectors and our name simply did not communicate what it was that we did.

Another issue we later ran into was that it seemed more common to hear people refer to “Studio” as opposed “Studios”. Of course the idea behind the plural was to promote our size, something along the lines of Pixar Animation Studios.

For this reason we found that the name was often mistaken for “Circular Studio” and, to add insult to injury, “Circular Studio” was already a company operating in the same industry sector, but far more established.

The final name fail here was that the word “circular”, although abstract, was simply not memorable. It would often be confused for circle, or worse, other shapes.

Jonpolygon:

Jon Polygon is not a fantastic name for those who are outside of the 3D industry. Polygon is commonly a technical 3D term that refers to a plane that has 3 or more sides. Poly means many, while gon is a noun referring to a shape with a specified number of angles.

The use of Jon is also not fantastic as it is commonly spelt as John.

That said, I think the name Jon Poly Gon Dot Com is fun and could potentially be memorable. Apart from the common name mistake of Jon to John, I am confident that people can spell the name without any trouble.

Falling Pixel:

My previous start-up, Falling Pixel, was also not without its naming issues either. Like Circular Studios we found similar failures to our naming (You would have thought I would learn from my previous mistakes!).

One such issue was in the word “Pixel”. Earlier on in this post I expressed that “Studios” was more likely to be mistake for “Studio” as it is not common to use the plural. Well, it turns out that “Pixel” is more commonly communicated as a plural. It was not uncommon for us to be introduced during networking events as the guys from “Falling Pixels”.

We also found that “Falling” would commonly be replaced with “Fallen”, this was a less common mistake than the plural issue, however it still plagued us.

The idea with this name was to promote the use of motion in the name and to tie this in with the animation industry, which was our target market.

Although this is perhaps not the strongest name it did become somewhat well known in our industry niche. You see there were a number of companies that competed over highly literal naming in our industry: the likes of Exchange 3D, 3D Export, High-end 3D, 3D Links, The 3D Studio, Archive 3D, Top 3D etc. While it is certainly possible to build a successful brand using literal meaning it can become a lot harder to remember, especially in industries where a number of companies are operating using similar naming convention.

It wouldn’t be hard for someone outside of the industry to confuse any number of the companies.

Closing Comments:

It is not always possible to establish the perfect company name, but it is entirely possible to make some names work for you and in your target industry.

Don’t let the name hold you back and don’t be afraid to explore other names, even if you feel you have stumbled on the best name for your company. I would also recommend involving other people during the naming process. Note down all idea no matter how good/bad you initially  think they are.

When you have the name be sure to test it out. Type it, read it and say it out loud.