My name is Leon and I have been working in 3D for about 10 years now, having spent 2 years teaching myself. My first industry job came in 2010 and saw me travel to Dubai where I worked as a 3D and then lead 3D artist creating training content and simulations for the military. It was an incredible opportunity working alongside the SAS, Delta Force, Navy Seals as well as other elite military branches from around the world and where much of the knowledge that I use to this day was gained. Due to this and other experiences my art style and work tends to be aimed at realism for next gen games, VR and archviz/simulation purposes.
While working in the UAE I was very fortunate to be given full rights to all of my assets and so began selling my work in 2010 as a way of generating passive income. As time went on I found myself doing this more to enable me to spend time on learning, improving and to work on my own game dev projects with Cryengine.
Much of my income comes from 3D sales these days since there is not much interest in 3D generalists. I am always interested in either long or short term contracts but I think much of the market has taken to purchasing 3D assets online.
For the past 2 years all of my time has gone into my own game dev projects. If I feel an asset is appropriate and to a high enough standard, though, I often place it for sale.
I try to price my work so that it is as affordable as possible. Having bought and sold work on the Unity Store it has become very apparent to me that people are rarely willing to spend large sums of money on 3D assets. Because of this I tend to price my work without paying too much attention to other vendors’ pricing schemes.
I sometimes promote work via Twitter and Facebook but have seen people following me are only really interested in game development work rather than assets for sale.
All of my work is set up and exported from Maya in FBX format. Textures are then zipped with the FBX before I upload and setup the materials, lighting and any other visual tweaks in Sketchfab. When it comes to the visual tweaks I tend to only use the SSAO and Sharpen options as I find this helps improve the overall look of the asset.
Also with Sketchfab being the only interactive viewing platform and giving customers the best opportunity to inspect models before purchasing I would expect it to become one of the main marketplaces for 3D assets as the industry moves forward. The other massive advantages with Sketchfab for me were instant payments on sales, a non-exclusive 70% royalty rate and an easy to use system in place to set up assets ready for sale.
I see the main opportunities for assets coming from VR, educational and simulation work. I think these will be the main sectors looking for assets and content over the coming years and where the most sales for vendors will be made.
About the author
Leon Labyk
Wearer of many hats
