This is the third post in the Sketchfab Rockstar series which focuses on how to reach a larger audience for your work on Sketchfab.
In this post we’re exploring another way to reach new audiences: offering models for download.
Don’t forget to check out the other articles in the series too:
You may have hundreds of digital assets gathering dust on your hard drive. Have you considered sharing some of those with fellow artists? It’s a great way to get a new audience here on Sketchfab now that we have a download option available.
We have a dedicated gallery for downloadable content and people just LOVE finding models that they can use in their own projects. It is easy to find what you need: just select a category like characters or vehicles. We also have specialized sections like the NASA repository!
We’re also working hard to promote downloadable models. Giving away some assets increases your chance of getting selected for some external promotion.
Making a model available for download is easy: in model Properties, enable the ‘Allow download’ switch.
There’s more though: you have control over the license that governs your models. Click on the ‘CC Attribution’ link to bring up a dialogue with the available licenses. These basically determine if people need to credit you, if they can ‘remix’ your work and if they can use it for commercial purposes. You can select multiple options—these licenses ‘stack’, so you can pick and choose your exact sharing conditions.
The default option, ‘CC Attribution’ means that people are free to use your work any way they like as long as they provide proper credit. Ideally, this includes a link back to your work as described by Creative Commons. Some artists ask for a backlink explicitly in the model description.
Don’t want to offer your entire scene for download? No worries! Just upload the assets that you’d like to share separately and link to them from your scene description or annotations (I rather like annotations for that purpose).
Pro tip: If you add texture maps through our 3D editor after uploading, these will not become part of the download. Offer them as a separate download by adding a link in the model description.
Pro tip 2: If you’re uploading your models to Sketchfab in a ZIP file, you can add additional materials to them! For example, you could add a PDF with information about your project.
That’s it for this week—next week I’ll show you how you can engage with your fans on Sketchfab and in other communities!
– Bart
About the author
Bart Veldhuizen
Community Lead at Sketchfab. 3D Scanning enthusiast and Blenderhead.
