Selling Assets on Unreal Marketplace Part 1: Creating Assets and Understanding What Sells

[Applause] [Music] so

so hello everyone and welcome you're joining us today at cg spectrum for a webinar looking at how to sell assets on the unreal marketplace

my name is zoe robertson i'm the digital media producer at cg spectrum and i'll be monitoring today today's webinar and working behind the scenes to help out with answering any questions that you have so we do have a chat box

but we also have a q a box down at the bottom of the screen here so be sure to put any questions you have into the q a box i'll be keeping an eye on it on that throughout the presentation and we do have a section for q a at the

end of the presentation but feel free to put your questions in at any time throughout as they come up or as you think of them and we'll try to answer a few throughout and then whatever we don't get to we'll answer at

the end of the presentation and in the chat box i'll also be sharing any important links or information that comes up during your presentation so before we launch in i'll tell you a

little bit about cg spectrum just if you can hit the slide so we are an entirely online animation vfx digital art and game design school helping students pursue successful

careers in film and games we're a rookie certified school and we offer the most up-to-date specialized job-focused training placing our graduates in demand on the job market our curriculum is taught by

industry mentors like our host and guest today who have years of experience and have worked on blockbuster films and games and we have a range of opportunities from beginner courses all the way to advanced

diplomas our classes are offered in small online groups with maximum four students or you have the option to do one-on-one mentorship privately so i'm going to tell you a little bit more about our modeling

courses at the end of the webinar but first i'll introduce um your host and the rest of our crew here so justin uh is hosting our webinar today he has over 18 years of experience in the video game industry

and has helped bring dozens of game titles to life while at studios like disney interactive epic games robomondo midway games and forward studios and has work appearing in legacy franchises like

tony hawk kingdom hearts and mortal kombat among others justin's also the acting creative director for the rookies which is the industry standard for animation visual effects and the gaming industries

he's also a game development producer and author at epic games and last but not least he's a foundation mentor at cg spectrum and has been helping to put together a brand new real-time course at cg spectrum starting later this year and i will definitely

put a link to that in our chat box a little bit later we're also very lucky to be joined by our two guests today the first is clinton crumpler hi clinton how's it going clinton is the studio

head owner and creative director of decagon studios previously he was an artist at microsoft studios the coalition bethesda's battlecry studios kicks eye army game studio midwinter entertainment

and various other independent studios clinton's primary focus is environment art shader development and art direction his credits include gears of war 4 and 5 scavengers and a textbook with a focus on game art

development for unreal engine and finally we're very happy to have carl shed joining us today as well carl has worked in the industry for over 17 years he's currently a world building director

at gearbox software which is where he started his career as a level designer for the brother brothers and arms franchise later he was part of the team that was integral to evolving the borderlands art style into what it has become today

and carl has also worked at gearbox to create and lead their level art and lighting art departments his game credits include brothers in arms the borderlands franchise and rage so you guys are in very good

hands today to learn all about tapping into the unreal assets marketplace and with that i will hand over to our host justin and our two guests clinton and carl um

cool thank you guys for coming up um for showing up uh this is something that uh we've kind of loosely been talking about for a couple months now i've known carl and clinton for a little

while now and i've worked with both of them and you know at first before i even started talking to clinton i was always aware of his decagon studio and just if anyone's

ever gone on a marketplace you'll see decagon assets and it's not just the amount of decagon assets on there it's the quality of it so i thought it'd be fun just to kind of

like talk about not only what it means to sell on the unreal marketplace but also to create and everything that was wrapped around it and then bringing someone like carl who just does amazing draw-dropping

art and actually utilizes some of decagon's assets more of the way just because you know the working and friendship between him and clinton so high level stuff to talk about unreal

as a marketplace it did start in 2014 and it's been constantly evolving and it's got around 3000 plus sellers now and over 10 000 plus products so what we're going to kind of talk about high level is going

to be like why we should be creating assets and the types of content either environments props etc that you can kind of focus on so uh let's kind of like kick it off

by just clinton what well when exactly i guess like if we launched in 2014 when did you start doing assets for unreal uh it wasn't too far after

i think it was maybe 2015 i listed my first asset and that was an office scene i had done previously and that was just something to kind of just to test the waters just to see how it was uh i realized i think i was talking to a

friend and then we were talking about how like oftentimes as artists you know when we're creating content even just to get in the industry or like you know to uh i guess like get better at our skill set we often will like make a scene or like

make a few assets and you know it'll just sit on a hard drive somewhere and just like kind of decay into nothing and so uh when i saw the marketplace kind of come up i was like oh that's an interesting thing like that might be cool to like actually like

list a scene that i've worked on for some time uh there and that's that was kind of how i got started from that very cool and when would you say carl it was like the first time that you

actually started noticing um the marketplace and actually using the content from there for your stuff it was around the fall of 2016. that's a

very specific date i remember september 12th i remember i remember because there was a a long christmas break right and and i had that itch to build some things and

and you know when you have a two or three week gap you know if you're trying to create every asset you know for a scene you could get bogged down pretty quickly and and you would end your break or

you know your refresher with not much to show for it could be kind of demoralizing i remember friends that i had worked with had put a couple you know assets on the marketplace and i started kind of nosing around it and saying hey i think i could actually

make something with the stuff on here and at this point it was just for fun there's a break away from the you know day-to-day life so um yeah i remember that specifically because i remember having a long vacation i said hey i can i can pull

together some of these assets and put together a scene pretty quick and have something to show for for my for my time off very cool so i guess um after you did that first scene clinton

like what made you think that you should be creating these assets like it was like did you kind of see a response right away or are you like oh man

i i you was it like uh i guess what made you want to create the assets after that initial sure yeah so i would say like uh multiple things so like

uh i guess like first off was obviously like uh it it was a good amount of income that was coming in from it because the asset was selling quite well i think when the marketplace essentially took off

when it first started especially the visibility of pretty much anyone on there because it was a limited amount of people was much higher uh and so i think you know that's it's still a possibility to have that it's just a matter of like having really good

quality content at this point but when i first started it was only like a couple hundred folks that were listing on there so like uh that was really helpful to get uh views on that the actual scenes we were selling and then from there i think too it not

only helped with like just like sales in general but also like notoriety like i got like more freelance gigs from that because people would be like oh yeah i bought your scene on the marketplace like can i hire you directly to do this work um and i was like oh this is great

this is another outlet to kind of uh essentially like it's another like career outlet without having to actually do like the work to be like oh like it's almost like an art test without actually doing an art test for everyone that could be

potentially interested in you as an artist so people will be looking at that and be like oh i like how well your scene was put together can you like make another for us in this way and so that led to like quite a few freelance contracts after

that and so i think that's kind of it spurred me on to be like oh hey like you're talking to friends be like oh we can like sell your these scenes together and like continue to like you know decrease that revenue for all of us and like you know continue to increase that pool of

assets that we're building in that scene is that when is that more or less when decagon became like a like not just an idea but a reality definitely yeah so i was working at

uh microsoft at the time uh and i had a long conversation with a good friend kurt and we were talking about how like there's a lot of people that were applying to work at microsoft and other studios that i've worked at in the past that were international and

they were like oh it's really hard to get them a work visa and they're really hard to get them to travel overseas or it's really hard to get them their first job especially even if they're good artists just this just the the first hurdle to get in the industry is so tough for a lot of

artists even if they are really good and so the marketplace was kind of like a perfect starting point for a lot of those folks where it's like oh i'm a really great artist and i know how to do the you know the actual content i know how to produce content that's game ready

because i don't have like my first into the industry or i'm not like uh full time in a big studio yet and so this is a good way for them not only to kind of get their foot in the door to show the quality of their art and the content they're able to make

uh but it also just kind of like gave them revenue as well so i was like what if we like collectively started working on scenes together because then it's like i'm not spending like three or four months working on a scene i'm spending like one or two months working with a

bunch of friends and then making content together that's it that's an interesting point that you said that it's it's not even from the financial aspect it really didn't lead to more work because if they just saw the quality of not only what you made but how you put

together and i guess another question would be for carl would be you know upon seeing like some of these scenes that you would get on the unreal marketplace were you ever like just would you ever click on like a seller and be like this

is an amazing thing and then trying to see what else they made and then actually go down the red bull like where are you where do you work from oh maybe i have an open position you ever do that i've done that i mean with a pd at all and stuff but

i've been done with some of the stuff that i find that like is good content on the unreal marketplace like that's great stuff let's see what else this person has made yeah yeah we actually have done that and

some for selfish reasons getting familiar with uh with work and understanding with decagon the quality of their content obviously i knew i was safe in their hands purchasing um but you know that led to ultimately

working with clinton as well um using their content and scenes that i had built me knowing very well who he was and reaching out to me and and doing some work with them

uh but we have we have actually at gearbox there have been times where we found um someone with a specific set of skills and we said you know why don't we reach out to this guy we've you know been looking for a position for

someone to do exactly what this individual has done let's reach out and talk to them and you know sometimes you know um i think we actually may have an individual or two that we uh have in

studio that we've reached out to that way but um it's wonderful i mean it definitely creates a name for people it's interesting that you said that too yeah that wasn't something i was actually

expecting to talk about on this and um it's a nice little pivot because a lot of times i do get questions from students just through the rookies or through people i'm actually mentoring or just in general trying to apply

different studios i've worked at and they're like here's my work i don't have to get it noticed and my go-to thing is you know make sure you're researching the actual studio make sure

your work is up to par um make sure you're like you know obviously obviously like these days sometimes people can kind of leverage like 80 level or art station the rookies for their blogs but being able to actually submit content to

the marketplace have it approved and have people be able to download it and buy it look at it that's huge because it's like an art test that anyone can kind of grab and be like wow this person's work is amazing

kind of like what clinton did it just leads to more brand recognition and i guess one more question before i move on from this is that how you guys uh got to know each other just from his uh asset facts

yeah yeah so look at that and then friendships can be made yeah and you know i will say for people that that don't know you know a lot of times in the studio i know our level art team and our lighting team

and we tried to build a culture like i'm big on personal projects i like for people to you know when you're working at a studio a lot of times a project can be an extended amount of time it could be three years it could be five years it could be seven years and sometimes it's

a very specific theme style and and all of us have different tastes and passions right and so i've worked on borderlands for 12 years and i love it but like you know i want to do some nitty gritty dirty scary looking stuff

that doesn't really necessarily fit within that and i think that you know the industry justin you mentioned a bit earlier but the industry can pass you by sometimes you'll be on a project for

five years using that project's tech it's kind of like that planet um an interstellar where time is different yeah being on a personal project allows you to kind of keep up with the state of the art

but you know our teams within that a lot of us are doing personal projects for fun so whenever someone puts up a really stellar marketplace pack a lot of times the team will kind of share like hey dude look at this new new pack that just dropped this is great stuff

and so you know people in the industry who are doing these personal projects using unreal will notice because they whenever something stellar comes around a lot of times they'll pass it around the lighting artists specifically like ooh this would be a fun project to dig

in and relight and level artists are always trying to collect that backlog of like assets to build their library so that's a whole angle that people may not realize as well yeah i mean and that's how i mean you

got connected to clinton because just our share of like hey man we want to create something that we'd like inside um so i guess a good question to kind of pop in after that with that would be like the types of content that

you guys see as being relevant and you mentioned something about environments and being able to download them and pop them in to possibly light them or like what i mean it seems like the times i've gone through there obviously you can do so many things with the

marketplace in terms of like people can sell rigs visual effects scripts um but i feel like obviously a lot of the ones that we have here um in the highlight what you guys have is it i environments and props are

really kind of go to right yeah i would say those are probably i mean definitely like the high notes right because you want to think about like i mean like games have a sort of cycle to them as to like what people are interested in at the time right so it's

like you know for a while that's like every game was like post-apocalyptic in the snow and then now it's like you know like everything kind of goes in cycles so it's like you'll find that those games need a massive amount of content to make them and oftentimes a

lot of indie developers will pull from those marketplace assets nowadays too so having you know a wider selection of uh assets that are you're creating that have a more

open availability to what kind of game it could find itself in is definitely what you want to aim for comparatively like oh i made this very specific uh sci-fi sniper gun that is only usable in this way it's like

that's cool and it might be a great portfolio piece but you might have a bit more trouble like uh selling something down the marketplace just because it's so specific relative to like what other people might be looking for when they're looking at the marketplace for something for their particular title

or game so let's let's let's move the next slide and actually kind of talk about um we've already kind of started digging into this like how pros use the assets and what are they looking for what industries does the marketplace serve

and can to be changed or modified so um uh just from the flip side of clinton not what you're creating but like carl you mentioned

that you guys already use some of this content over at um gearbox so what do you like when specifically when you guys are at the stage of like what makes you say either

we hire someone to make this we hire an outsourced team to make this or we just go to the unreal marketplace like is there like an order like what's the go to for that uh it's contextual um you know a lot of

times when we're in prototyping phase right now it can also be super useful um not even just for final final use you know if we've had times where we're working on something where it's like man we've got

a group of guys that are working on i'm trying to trying to be very secretive here about this but if we have people that are working on a feature and we know it could take five to six months to get where we need to be

the marketplace can be useful to help engineers get a feel for what they're creating without waiting for that art pipeline to catch up that makes sense yeah because it's like they can be you know for those of you

who don't know like when you're working in early stages of game development there is kind of like these three tracks that usually pick up and it's like design messing with something programming a system is kind of working on the back line and then arts kind of

figure out over here trying to figure out the art style so there could be nice way to just have content that engineering and design has just to kind of like mess around stuff that loosely is of the same subject matter so that's really cool to

do um but plus i'd imagine that like it's more cost effective to grab some things off of the actual um marketplace than to

hire and deal with an outsource or even bring up a new person too not to say that both of them are viable options but maybe early on in development it's much easier just to be like all right cool i'm going to grab what i want

just to get this prototype idea out then we'll ramp up to these other stages that's exactly right i'm so smart just kidding um so i know so i know what we um

obviously we're all in the game industry but like you know i feel like all of us have actually kind of put our toe into some other industry other than games several times and clinton

you personally like has this led to more work outside of the game industry like have you ever like can you give us some examples definitely yeah so like uh we've gotten quite a few

really bizarre contracts and uh we found our work in a kind of a lot of weird spaces like we've seen our work in like anime films we've seen our work in like real like literal frill films

uh we've seen our work in like vr sims uh our work being in the marketplace has led us to contracts with like uh healthcare and like um all sorts of stuff with like medical professions where we made like a hospital pack and then

those people bought that pack and then they're like oh can we commission you to build a bunch of stuff for like our like uh we did a bunch of like uh ppe training sims for like the covet uh preparation stuff

which is really cool yeah yeah so it's really bizarre what we get like i think we've even done contracts with like say for instance like uh like fox sports and like fox news where we like made like the white house

for like the background of the inauguration that they had for like the actual like broadcast uh we have like made like race car tracks for like nascar it's pretty bizarre like really what you get into when you start to like like

kind of delve down that hole because it's like the more you realize like unreal as a tool uh has so many uses for the actual content you're producing uh you'll realize there's a lot more people actually pulling from that pool

than you kind of realized up front yeah especially since like you know where like i started working in games when it was like playstation one and now that we're in playstation 5 era it's like the

the line of um visual quality between any game content and actual like virtual production and stuff you see in animation it's like blurred which is why you see so many so many virtual production animation

uh visual effects studio is actually using unreal in their development pipeline um so i guess another question too would be

um when you create your content do you make it so it could be changed or modified and then carl like do you ever when you're working with content that you grab from it are you changing and

modifying and do you find it's like easy to kind of adapt from that are you just throwing it in there as it is uh modifying occasionally you know it depends on the assets material is more likely but

but in that case it's usually very very fine-tuned when you need hue shifts or value adjustments or things like that models for the most part in very rare cases maybe i've exported it into

substance and like ran a grime layer or something that i needed to do to weather it to fit it into the scene a little bit more for the most part though i try it i'm inspired more to create based on what i'm seeing come from the

marketplace which is really cool you know one of those like really nice packs will come along and i'll say hey i've had this idea because this exists now i have a i see a path now to create this because again this is all like spare

time it's like how do i do the most i can with the with the free time i have so a lot of times it's it's inspired by what exists in front of me so it doesn't require a whole lot of modification yeah and then clinton

are you you know since your initial content creation and like you know i feel like the last thing i remember you creating i think it was that exterior mansion scene

and before that actual gym and um we had a science room like did you um did you create things in mind that like with the most current ones that allow this kind of adaptability modification

yeah for sure so like i whenever we're making like i think when they initially kind of created stuff it was mostly uh it was mostly a kind of memory of like props that would mostly be found themselves in like common games

and then as we've kind of grown we've uh kind of pushed more into like full environments and those environments and most of the materials that we set up for those we make it so it's kind of like really flexible as to like tinting or having like layer mask

uh or like you know creating landscapes that could be easily editable and then yeah like with the mansion and the the basketball gym all those are like modular constructed so like say for instance if you're like i bought the mansion pack and you're like i want to make a completely

different mansion so we've made it so like basically it's really flexible to someone just kind of reach in there grab that and like make something completely different just based off the content we've pre-established very cool i love that um all right let's just go

to the next one um so i i kind of want to pull this up real quick um actually yeah so i already have it up so those of you uh just to get familiar this is this is unreal's marketplace um and if

you do go and you search decagon studios on there you'll see an option of like just just for the first part look at the quality actually it's just one person getting review but you know you're doing great

there's always that one person yeah there's like there's like you know the amount of content you have one of 20 and 187 results so if i'm reading

this right you've done 187 content packs yeah so we're almost we're almost to 200 almost there in five years does that matter yeah something like that um it's very cool to see this kind of stuff too like

um you know like i'm gonna click on one just to kind of look through it and you know the beautiful thing i like i do like and i kind of feel like i skate around like what carl does too late at night when i'm like trying to work on something i just

can literally click through and be like oh cool this is what someone's working on being able to present something right away with a nice beauty vendor and then showing off different site like assets um sorry views of it and then like um one thing i've been

always a fan of what you do with your presentation is you do this nice breakdown of the actual content and like you just mentioned with the mansion it is uh it's very much pieced content that you can kind of go back and someone

could literally take what you have created and recreate something in their own view which i think is great um you know you do a really good job of kind of breaking down description

details and like obviously like there's these other things that we kind of like have so um and i think we could probably dig into that a little bit more um in the in the next session just so there's this very very specifics because

i want to keep this high level but i just wanted to pop by and just show you guys just an example of uh deco content um so when we go back on this one here's

some more i'm just going to like kind of cycle through so clinton sm cycling's do this one we'll just look at uh we we have some three three examples of some content so the first one was the

retro 80s combo pack and you mentioned uh a good way to make unreal marketplace content is to kind of get like find that like kind of like good focus that does have a lot of usability

not something super hyper focused like a fancy gun but i feel like you guys have really hit that one sweet spot and making asset packs that people can actually use so what kind of research i guess goes into

that yeah so i mean i think it's it's two parts right like i mean i think it's good to observe the actual marketplace itself to be like oh where are the holes like where what assets are missing like what are people not making but you think

are a really useful thing for you know game development and the other thing is like you know what's in fashion what's in trend like what kind of games are people making like are people making survival horror games or maybe people making rts games or

people making like you know like military sims like what kind of games are the the games that you're seeing a lot come out on steam you know on uh you know different epic games platform like what kind of games are you seeing and that's going to give you an

idea as to what kind of content is going to just do well for you not only like financially but also just like give you good feedback give you good visibility and like you know promote your sales more overall but yeah i think in general like with

most of these sets too we kind of broke it down so it's digestible so like say like when you know kind of carl was talking like if he's looking through he doesn't want to have to buy like a 300 pack just to get like a trumpet like he's going to be like

that's a lot to pay for that trumpet so it's like we broke it down so it's a lot easier so it's like it's digestible chunks so it's like each set will have a theme and then each of those themes will have like maybe four to five sets in that kind of pack

you can be like oh i just want the chairs or like the tables kind of pack and i'll use that in my set or whatnot so it makes it a little bit easier for even just like an entry level person and i've known tons of people that have like bought our packs and then like like carl

was saying they're a lighter and they just want to like show off their lighting skills and they'll make a scene just from that and it cost them like 100 bucks to buy like four packs and it's like now they have a whole scene that they've made and it looks very professional as to how they present it for the portfolio

yeah and i guess that's a good point too i think a lot of times students often think that they have to make the whole like if you're someone who wants to be just a lighting artist like buy these assets go on unreal

marketplace and even grab the free maps that they have for the month or just constantly free and obviously credit them but just do lighting scenarios with that don't spend all your time doing something else that's going to keep you

from polishing and becoming better at that one skill um so i do have a question too i noticed um you kind of have like a is there like a set number of content that you do create when you do your asset packs is it like

hey we want to stick between 10 and 12 or yeah i would say like anywhere between i would say like 10 to 20 per pack we kind of arrange it and we kind of change it on complexity too right so like uh a lot there's a lot of different artists working on this so we

try to keep it fair so like how much work each artist is putting into the individual packs so we kind of keep the complexity per asset relatively close so that when we combine the packs you know like it makes sense it's like oh this is a cohesive pack

i'm paying this much for 20 chairs or if i'm paying this much for you know 10 really complex assets so it makes it as a fair trade-off for the buyer as well too

very cool um so next thing is um and i kind of wanted to like uh kind of focus back onto carl uh we want a couple things we want to talk about how the scenes are constructed how it impacts

the final user what to keep in mind when creating assets and imagining what someone else in the pipeline will actually want to pick up and use so uh first two let's really kind of um i'm gonna kind of like take it to carl and

carl actually if you want to stop sharing and you want to share your screen um carl actually has a couple of examples and this is why i want to have carl on the board as well because he he makes

these amazing scenes after working all day at gearbox and he's got a family i'm just like holy how do you do this um yeah so i don't know let's go pop up and

see what you got carl cool let me here we go you guys have it yep

cool let me uh let me play all right if you have any uh ask away uh justin yeah so um when you when you get this scene or something like this i guess when you when you go ahead

after like the work's all done and you're like all right i want to make something what would you say balance wise in this scene is your work and um like decagon work or like work that you've grabbed from the

marketplace yeah um so for this room was awesome i watched a movie called summer of 84 which was a good one cool really good movie good horror movie good suspense movie for anybody and growing

up in that era i was just like man i really want to i really want to build something based around this and and decagon had released like a couple of packs about 80s content that were phenomenal and there were a

couple other other folks some guys named the white noise team pixel cloud and alex phantom or some other folks so all of the props in the scene were those guys and

then the only thing i had to worry about was like window frames and architecture and things like that so the super bare bare bones simple things and then just grabbing some some 80s uh

posters and things like that and throwing it onto existing art and so from there it was just okay well i know i want to build a room i want to sell a simple aesthetic so just a couple simple sketches to

understand you know what the shape of the room would be and kind of the rough loose layout it was like the the worst kind of sketch i've ever made i would never show it to anyone but it was enough for me to start

you know putting the assets in the scene and getting an idea for uh where everything would go and the density of content yeah and i feel like um i feel like correct me from wrong when you're when

you're coming at it from the side of like hey i'm gonna create the structure and you have a lot of help from actual prop content it does give you a lot more creative freedom to literally focus on set dressing telling the story

and the lighting and all the like the little bells and whistles like these animations you have and like the animated flat like just sorry the fan and everything because the one thing i'm really drawn

to uh and we'll share links to clinton and carl's work as well um but the one thing i really want is just the amount of set dressing and how good it is

at telling a story i feel like that's something that you know even all students and all professionals it's like you need to be able to we're constantly talking about tell a story tell a story and

without telling a story and just looking at the scene i i know i can picture him i had the kind of person who's living in this room right now um and i feel like i mean

just i guess rephrase it does having all these assets not as something you have to worry about modeling give you that extra time to really experiment and play around with set dressing lighting and all other content

yeah yeah it absolutely does uh you know in a lot of cases some of the assets will inspire a story in your mind you know you can you can start to see like the walkman and you can start to think about you

know where this person was the last time they used it they came in after working out or running and they set it down on this table and they let it hang over the edge and maybe they knocked the phone over too and it's the whole place is just a mess so

sometimes the assets can inspire that as well you know you have the movie or film or whatever you're referencing but sometimes the availability of the content can allow you to tell a story too which is kind of cool if you're doing

level art you know it's different in the industry some studios you know environment artists build props and decorate levels at gearbox we have content artists who build props and level artists who then take those assets and decorate the

scenes so when you're building you know repetitious environments and you're utilizing the same assets you have to get creative and kind of let those assets determine the stories you want to

tell us sometimes very cool very cool um yeah that's very i love seeing this stuff it's yeah it's the little details um and clinton when you see someone reusing your content like this does it

give you ideas of like um possibly new scenes that you want to create for yourself because i know you actually talked about like beyond the um uh the off detective's office like you're

talking about want to do more environment type scenes too definitely whether carl rose's or not he has influenced me massively as to what what we should generate next because

every time i see how he uses our assets i think oh okay that's interesting so use it in this way how could we like generate more content as to like how he's approaching his like use of our particular uh work so it is

super useful to actually see that so that we better understand like the process it's like a it's like an insight for us as a provider uh to like carl as like the buyer to be like oh how is the buyer

using our content it's like i can directly see that and be like oh i now have a better insight as to like what kind of like content produce that we can produce that would best suit his needs um so yeah i would definitely say the buyers in general always influences and

also like honestly we get like tons of emails of people to email us be like hey i've looked in the unreal marketplace and i love you guys work but i can't find blah blah blah are you guys planning on making that and i'd be like we weren't

but maybe we will now so i'll start like researching a little bit into that and that definitely helps us too as well so like even just suggestions are just really useful very cool um yeah so i'm gonna uh i love hearing

that kind of stuff too and then um let's go back to this previous slide oops um and i think that's um what you're just kind of talking about here what to keep in mind when creating your assets so i i think a big thing what

you're kind of talking about clinton is um keeping tabs of i guess what people are actually making on these different communities like our station like the rookies like any of those

and seeing how people are actually using it because if you pay attention to what people are creating and you hit it right in the head when i was asking before like what determines what kind of packs you want to make just you have to

have your finger on the pulse as an artist and creative of what pop culture is like like obviously if like you're following that trend you kind of have to be right on that which means that you know you're going to be creating

content that someone who just got done binge watching like stranger things or mine hunter is going to be okay i want to create this scene and cool we got your you got your tools to help you um and then being able to look at what people

like carl are creating um because i think you know seeing what uh the reason why i love seeing what uh people like crawl create because i feel like it's

oftentimes uh and carl you hit it right too when you're in development it can be four or five or six or seven years of the same art style same content which could be great you you get to a studio you plug in

you know your role but oftentimes it's like you never know what you're gonna have this great idea just driven from like being able to have the time on the side to create it like you know look at

dead space was a great example of all these developers at ea who were just always working on these t for team games and that they always wanted to make a sci-fi horror game and then they actually made one but they had to carve

the timeout on their own to develop these amazing scenes but and it seems like what real marketplace does is it really speeds up the process of being able to create your ideas

um and showcase them you know what i yeah absolutely absolutely and it's it's useful no matter how long you were in the industry there may be a lot of people watching that are starting their journey now but i mean

um you know i've been doing this you know with modding and stuff for 20 years and so finding something that still gets me excited is super super valuable and it and finding that thread there's

always something just the way the way you feel now when you're learning never let that change let you know new nerdy technical features when you see like 427 features pop up and we're all digging through the change notes you know don't

don't ever forget that you know and so projects like this can be very freeing um and and rewarding when you get done you have something to show for your time so even if you've been in a isolation for five years working on a

next big game uh you still have stuff that represents you know what you're capable of doing that you can share with friends and family and other artists yeah and it's it's it's fun man even just working with you guys on the side

like i geek out and i'm like we just did it's awesome so uh let's talk about uh i can you kind of talk about creating content can bridge your work and experience um which is basically what you just said

carl it's like hey you know sometimes you're working on projects that you actually can't share and you're like but i'm actually doing things and it's like you want to be able to work on the outside of and you know maybe you're juggling like

a personal life or anything else you do have the ability to still create these ideas and have things helping you um and then uh being a regular artist versus sharing work on the marketplace and the usability of assets

so i guess that's a that's a good question um clinton you talked about this earlier about how actually creating the content for the unreal marketplace allowed you

to not only get new friends like carl uh and myself but but also it led to more opportunities with contract jobs and to the formation of pegagon studios

um so yeah i think that's a very like valid point because when you think about selling content we're like all right how can i do this how can i make a quick buck um what is the benefit to me and it seems like just by talking with

you guys today so far the benefits are not just the profit that you make from that asset selling it's all the doors that it opens up that you may not even be aware of networking

wise yeah yeah i think uh i think like there's there's there's something to it like carl said it's like sometimes you're doing something every like day to day and then you get

to a point where you're like i'd really like to do something completely different today and that's unrelated to this uh and i think like like for me like the mansion was that or like i worked on it for like a couple

years in the background just like you know whenever i wanted to do something different or like try some weird art technique that i'd been thinking about and that allowed me to like then after all those like years of culminating like a culmination of like

just random art techniques that i was trying to see what work and like like do different blend materials or whatever i was like oh cool now i'm going to list this and i'm going to make back money from all the time i also invested in this not only learning but

also like now i'm going to get a reward after this so it's really it's really kind of cool to have like both sides of the wind for sure yeah i mean i think i think that is a you know something i kind of talk about when i'm mentoring students too

i'm sure you do as well is um experimenting with ideas and just creating content and i feel like when you do get into a studio you you really don't have much time

depending on how long the studio's production is and where you are in the development cycle not much time to like practice and play with ideas sometimes you're just creating content so i think stuff like this does allow you the ability to kind of like try

different methods of development watch a couple of tutorials try to create something then i i don't you know i'm trying to recreate a scene based on like a game i like or a movie i like just something that

not only makes you feel proud but it's also to showcase like all right cool yeah you know i do feel validated in my job because sometimes when you're just not like especially me and carl i've talked many times like when you get up in production and you're

doing less production you're doing more meetings it's like oh man so we just want to be able to create these things not only to showcase ideas but to just make sure we

feel validated um but so here's a good question too so the the one on here that says being a regular artist versus sharing work in the marketplace needs to be the assets i think when we talk about being a regular artist people

probably talk about like you know you're i think there's a nice um kind of balance that can be struck where you're able to create content like you said clinton and you can do it for yourself or your

portfolio um i think your office is a great example but then you can take that exact same thing and you can make sure you can share it for the marketplace now this specific talk today is is high level and then the next talk we're going to get into the nitty gritty details of

like the technical and the financial aspects but obviously when you're creating content for yourself most times people are not creating content

um that is going to be thought of like hey who's going to use this like which studio is going to use this what time we're going to do is when people are creating content they are just kind of like blinders on

all right this will look good but when the minute that you have to make work that's actually used in the marketplace you have to make it so it's broken down so it's like optimized the right way so it can actually be functional

um and are you see do you think that there is a really strong benefit to being a regular artist that actually takes the work and preps and sells it because it sounds like it's it should be no contest it's like hey

if you're making this stuff just take two extra steps make sure it's all packaged correctly optimized and name it right and then just go sell it you know what i mean definitely yeah

like i mean i think it's like a huge a huge part of it which i think like when you're as an artist like your first focus obviously as you're trying to get into a job is like oh i want to be a good artist i just want to make good art like that's your main focus but then what you

quickly realize when you get in the industry is like accountability is the next most biggest important thing and a lot of artists don't have that going in and so making a scene like this makes you extremely accountable because if i

like make an asset and i put the pivot like way out in the middle of nowhere and carl goes to place that asset he's gonna be like i hate this creator because they made this terrible asset you know and so it's like it just makes you accountable for like oh did i create collisions

correctly did i create light maps properly did i make a material that actually is performant like or am i just like blowing through budget as to like you know performance like i'm actually being aware of those kind of things like how does this look from multiple angles if like a character were to

explore the space and so all those kind of things make you kind of quickly think like i'm making art but i'm also making art that's usable to not only like a developer but also like to the to the end goal which is like the product

that's going to be it's going to be shipped in so i think those kind of things work hand in hand to not make you just an artist but it makes you a commercial artist which makes you a more sellable commodity you know for your career moving forward as well too

yeah it's like what carl said too when you are actually using content if you're buying it and you're using it and you're seeing like it actually is like made correctly for you as a developer you're like man

this not only is this a really well like the art looks great it's actually functional um i can bring it in it's easy to use there was no bugs in it i would imagine as like being a

developer you're like there's an open position let's just hire this person because we've already tried to work out yeah yeah and one one thing i've seen a lot recently you know it's a lot of times people will make

kind of a portfolio piece you know and they'll they'll kind of double down they'll they'll release that as well but a lot of times it's very custom content you know not very modular and while the scene is beautiful

it's really neat for people to kind of get in there and take it apart and and look at it it doesn't consider all of those things that clinton was just talking about the usability of it it's kind of like yeah i built a scene here you go you can look at it that

would be cool if it were like 4.99 but a lot of times it's like this is 99.99 baby i spent a lot a lot of time on this scene and so i think sometimes when people creators are creating these packs it

also be considering that you know the more utility and thought is put into the end user the more valuable the content is whereas if you're making a scene that can recreate that scene not as much

right yeah um all right so i think we're at the point where you can just start shooting up some q a's uh so you already asked you already answered this how do you get inspiration

for asset package themes it's just basically by like it seems like doing your research on what is actually missing but also what is relevant like pop culture wise whether like hey you know life is strange is selling really well and strange a

stranger thing is doing well so let's make some 80s themed stuff or um so basically that seems like the question for that um what kind of assets i guess sell the

best for you clinton um is it is it prop packages or environments um i would say it's kind of a blend i think like uh for prop packages i would say like

obviously the the big highlights are like like our medieval pack uh military and hospital i think because that's like such a commonly used thing among like multiple games and trends

but i also think a lot of our environments sell extremely well because we have so many like talented people like carl and you know like other people we work that just like add a lot to the quality of the content that

somebody's like how are they able to reach that and make it still perform it so they want to download it by it see how like break it apart and understand like oh how is it lit like how are the materials made like how are the pieces constructed and so it it better

informs them to actually how to create a full scene and so i think that's why you're getting a lot we get a lot of like purchases not only from props themselves but also the full environments as well too um let's kind of run through because we

have a couple and the question answered one too but i am kind of curious about this one says how much time per week can i expect to put into running the marketplace business i guess even beyond that um

like i guess because that seems like a high level one um can we also talk about maybe how long do you spend on creating an actual asset package yeah i think it really just depends on like you know the complexity of the package itself like

that's the greatest thing about the marketplace is that there is no set like limit as to like how like large or small a packet can package can be like there is a minimum amount of

content that has to be in there so i think it's like maybe eight or ten props but i think in general like you can pretty much make it as as big or expansive or as small as you want and then you know sell it accordingly with you know

whatever price tag is related to that so it really just depends on like how much time you want to invest in it and so if you want to start out like i know a lot of people like like more marshall like he started out with like a few more marketplace packs that had just maybe

like 10 or 12 things in it but they were all super useful stuff and they were like very contained and he just released a bunch of these like mini packs and so that was really useful for him because he didn't have to spend like a massive amount of time on it and he could also

quickly be like okay i made this one i'm gonna ship it off i'm gonna work on something else freelance do something else for a while and i'll come back to it and i have free time again and so it's pretty easy once you've kind of like initially sent the pack out

because it kind of just like runs itself as to like you know just making sure that you're you're doing any kind of q a otherwise but like for the most part once it's launched it's pretty much just like as is on the marketplace do you uh and

then i'm gonna jump into the question answers over here do you uh do you still get sales from like the office that you first posted oh yeah we get sales from like i i don't i

i thought for a long time i was like oh i'll just start like slowly ramping things down that don't sell anymore but every time we check i'm like we're still getting sales from stuff that was like on there since day one so i think it just it's a matter of like

the content right like is the content good enough to hold up to now that if the answer is yes then like people will still buy it so if you make something that's like really kind of shoddy and it's gonna like date really fast then it's like obviously that's

gonna have much more fall off compared to something that you put a lot of effort and energy to to make sure it's gonna last as long as it can alright so let's look at some of these um questions the ideas start on paper mood board what is the process

beginning uh so sebastian's asking like how do you get your ideas i guess um when you're creating content um and paper mood board i guess so i'm assuming the process you have

when you guys are starting your ideas carl you kind of mentioned yours or you just had your like your initial sketch you're like hey i know what i want to make and then you go over to the marketplace and you kind of pick things out but i'm assuming the same thing goes for you

clinton it's kind of like you have your idea and you just list and kind of sketch out and just what do you do grab a bunch of photo reference or yeah a lot of photo reference so like a lot of like things most of our packs are based on real world scenarios so it's

like a lot of references from real world like objects uh like material types things like that and then like we use like pinterest and trello it's probably two of our major tools but yeah i love that stuff yeah bottom

line you just reference everyone um so now that when row five engine is available do you plan on releasing more content for that in upcoming months as well and how do you determine what engine

inversions are the best assets you will sell for um so i guess you're saying you know unreal five's out next year right we got the beta thing so how are you going to

scale that content yeah so i think uh i think almost all of our packs especially the more popular ones are definitely going to move forward to unreal uh we've already done like some tests to like see how well it transfers over and so

far no issue at all on our end uh and then we'll definitely be developing more stuff as we kind of go towards like you know some of the special features like nanite and stuff like that to kind of have packs that are more specific to those uh kind of like new things in unreal

five um all right so when you're making assets do you also make textures in substance designer and painter or you just hand paint them and paint or do you sell material packs too

so let's let's put this one down um all right what are you using the texture and do you sell the materials as well by themselves sure so we we have done uh like i said like most of decagon is formed of like

different artists combed of skills working on different packs so we have done a few special edition packs where we've done like work with designer artists that we really wanted to work with uh we've also done packs where uh you know we've had people do specific kind

of like uh texture based stuff but for the most part most of our packs are done you know at the artist discretion so whether they're using painter designer or whatever other means uh it's typically like you know whatever the artist

prefers as long as it stays within consistency as to the rest of the pack as to like the art quality and that's something like we as decagon like basically make sure that you know everything coming together in the end has a consistency between it so you know when

it ships out it doesn't feel like this thing was made by someone completely different than that but i think honestly that is the kind of thing that's nice about like using substance painter and designer or even like anything that quicksilver's doing is

that it has that kind of like baseline and especially when you guys are doing anything for a unreal marketplace for example it still gets pushed out to like an fbx and a target pack so it's like

same so you could technically use blender to make something and someone else definitely maya um very cool so we answered that one uh what do i do to get more visibility in marketplace i already sell there but i

get more attention while my product becomes so case than other um so like i guess the question is like how do you get like like what would you say is a good tip to get your work more not just in the

marketplace definitely yeah so i i would say some big suggestions would be post on a lot of discord groups like if you're like on a lot of like 3d discord groups that's a really one uh a lot of like i know a lot of people post on like a lot of facebook groups that are like you know like

thousand hours or hundred thousand hours or whatever and like they'll post on there and a bunch of other places that they're part of uh i would say like anywhere you can basically share your content whether it be like instagram or like uh any kind of other platform

like that linkedin showing like hey here's my content that i've created and share it not only is like a content pack but also like his art that you've made so it's like it's showcasing like art and often times like i'll even do this myself where i'm

like scrolling through art station and i'll be like oh someone made this really cool like thing and i'll be like oh actually there's a link for it in the description as to like the marketplace back and i'll click on that and then i'll like just buy it i'll be like i just want to check this out see what it looks like so

it's like that's an easy way to get like people like me that just want to see cool art and be like i just want to see how they went about doing this and it's like a quick sell plus i feel like you know if i'm speaking from my standpoint i don't know

carl's too you know once i see brand recognition which is decagon and you have that simple website attached to it i feel like there's this sense of comfort for me like brand recognition is like all right i know it's going to be

good i know that there's an actual website i can go to i know there's a contact form i can do if i'm having issues like i know that that's there so that might be another way to kind of get your stuff more visible marketplaces just to create content but

also have that brand recognition definitely and take it very seriously you know make sure that you are a lot of people there there are a couple creators that they they put together incredible media packs but then

but then when you actually get the content it's not quite you know what it looked like so try to be as honest and earnest as you can about the shots you're taking and the content that you're providing people you never want someone to get

that buyer's remorse on the marketplace because that will that can damage your your brand big time for the long haul by putting something there that isn't you know art station is a great place

for really fantastical screenshots and we can kind of fake and dodge and and make things look a little better a bit for the marketplace you definitely want to make sure that what what i'm buying is is what you're you know

is what you're selling um so we'll answer one more and then we're going to hand it back over to zoe so the last one uh glenn asks is do you do your does your asset go through a vetting process before it is put on the marketplace it's

a good question yeah definitely so there's a uh there's a whole uh breakdown on uh the epic games website as to like oh here's all the rules for marketplace naming conventions general like guidelines to follow about

like collision light maps all that kind of stuff and then also when you submit your assets you actually submit it through like a verification process so like somebody at epic will take a look at the pack make sure it follows all those rules and

then approve it or they'll send it back with like oh here's 12 things that we found on your pack that need to be fixed before we can kind of move forward on that and so uh i've it's every interaction i've ever had through that experience has been really good like they always

are very thorough they uh they're really quick to give feedback and so like it's been a really good process going back and forth with them for sure very cool um yeah so uh

those of you to get your questions answered um like well we're going to kind of pop back in and do some more just still a lot of there which is good um we're going to have another qa session

next time as well um but i wanted to kind of hand this back over to zoe as we finish it up um so uh i'm gonna i'll click the slides

so thanks so much you guys that was so informative and such great questions in the q a um like justin said we'll be back next week and um we'll try to answer a few uh of the

extra questions that we haven't had time to get to but thanks so much everyone for for asking such great questions um so uh i want to tell you a little bit about our 3d modeling courses at cg spectrum

so if you're feeling inspired at all by all of these incredible scenes that we've been looking at and these assets you can study 3d modeling with us and you can even learn 3d modeling with clinton as your mentor which is amazing

the courses we offer in 3d modeling range from 3d basics to advanced sculpting and the course includes all the software licenses you'll need so in this case that would be zbrush maya houdini and substance

painter you get a live q a with your mentor every week which is amazing so picture this but just a lot smaller scale just with clinton for example um and plus we

have a dedicated career development manager maxine who will give you additional support to get you in front of employers which is an incredible resource that we offer as well to all of our students um the advanced 3d modeling diploma is

nine months uh clinton has limited spots but if you apply by june 25th you can start already in july um

and next week i will send a um i'll send in the chat here i'm sending a link to our 3d modeling courses as well as um an expression of interest

page for our upcoming real-time virtual production course which will be starting this fall so click there and put your email in and we will be sending you more information about that when we

are going live with it and um next week don't forget to join us for part two of this webinar series so we'll be back here same place same time next friday at 6 00 pm eastern time

we're going to be going over some of the more useful practical tips about selling on marketplace like how to package price and license your assets like a pro proper formatting for the marketplace how to value yourself as an artist and

build a rapport with your audience which touched on a little bit today um technical requirements for submitting plus a lot more and the registration link is in the chat right now so just click there

scroll on down to register for part two and we have we hope you've enjoyed this session today if your question wasn't answered today we'll try to get to it next week

um and if you have any other questions or comments or if you'd like to know more about our courses or just drop us a line um please visit us at

cgspectrum.com or email us at hello cgspectrum.com and i recommend that you guys check out our website we have a ton of really great free resources available and while you're there you can take a peek at our modeling courses if you want

more info about them there so thanks so much to everyone who tuned in today we'll be emailing a recording of the session to the email address that you registered with

in about 24 hours and it will also be available on our resources page on our website thanks so much to justin clinton and carl for sharing all this incredible

great useful information and good luck to everybody who's going to start out um selling your assets on the unreal marketplace and we will see you here

uh next week for part two thanks guys bye everyone take care everyone see you next week

[Music] bye