What about "jmonkey asset central" ready to use free and paid assets?

Troubleshooting import-assets
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@teique said: I have this simple plan that I would like to accomplish:

  • To create a project with completely free assets that allow me to modify any aspects of it, and even be allowed to continue using them, and my modified versions (that will be made free also), if the project becomes commercial.

  • Later on if I manage to raise enough money, I will be willing to buy a fully blown commercial version of the assets to update the project, even if asset by asset.

The already available jme “online assets” conform to this?

@foxhavendesigns
Well, I think the assets should be classified clearly, so we know that we can only use on free projects, or how we are allowed to use in commercial ones, without too much confuse definitions if possible.

They do indeed!

When you start paying for the fully blown commercial versions, I have been authorized to ensure that the money is properly invested back in to the JME project (this is code for my bank account). Just let me know when you are ready to start spending, and I’ll send you my address so you have a place to send the money.

All assets are free, like the engine…

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@t0neg0d said: They do indeed!

When you start paying for the fully blown commercial versions, I have been authorized to ensure that the money is properly invested back in to the JME project (this is code for my bank account). Just let me know when you are ready to start spending, and I’ll send you my address so you have a place to send the money.

All assets are free, like the engine…

By fully blown, I mean all the shaders, hi-poly, destructible objects, accurate mass calculations, accurate dimensions, accurate collisions; not that the free assets have it not, I believe they do have many of these aspects already, and I got impressed with many animations there like the horse :). But they are clearly different (I havent seem them all tho) of what we can find on games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim.

I particularly would like to see the current free assets be improved to become what we can see at Skyrim, and I would be willing to buy them indeed as long I can make enough money to do that as explained before, unless someone could do them freely like we see at the nexus forum mods (I wonder if all those assets could be imported/adapted to be used on jme!? may be we could start asking them to allow? considering all that mod work is already free… ). It would be like plug and use, an asset replacement that fits perfectly where the free asset was before.

As long I can, I would invest on that and on JME of course; I couldnt stick to other SDKs or GDKs because only here we have the best of Java+3D, and most importantly it is open source free; because of that I keep coming back :slight_smile:

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I am all for free assets, but if there is going to be an Asset Store Website, why not also give people the freedom to charge money for their assets as well? It is a simple freedom, and it encourages better asset creation. If JME3 developers really expect to make money by charging players money to buy their game, they are hypocritical to refuse to spend money on assets to build the game. I love open source, but sometimes I want to live the good life too, you know? I am very jealous of the Unity Store and it makes me kinda regret not developing on that piece-of-junk engine.

I volunteer to help build an asset store website. If anyone else wants to help facilitate this with me let me know. I am not a Rails veteran per-se, but I know my way around the framework and have built a few database-backed web apps. Let’s set up a DO droplet and make it happen.

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@admazzola said: I am all for free assets, but if there is going to be an Asset Store Website, why not also give people the freedom to charge money for their assets as well? It is a simple freedom, and it encourages better asset creation. If JME3 developers really expect to make money by charging players money to buy their game, they are hypocritical to refuse to spend money on assets to build the game. I love open source, but sometimes I want to live the good life too, you know? I am very jealous of the Unity Store and it makes me kinda regret not developing on that piece-of-junk engine.

I volunteer to help build an asset store website. If anyone else wants to help facilitate this with me let me know. I am not a Rails veteran per-se, but I know my way around the framework and have built a few database-backed web apps. Let’s set up a DO droplet and make it happen.

The only issue I have with the idea is plugins will take the same route… and then we have a Java version of Unity…

I’m not saying I am apposed to it, I just couldn’t bring myself to participate past the free portion. I wouldn’t feel right charging people for something I wrote to enhance a free engine.

Assets are a bit different, yeah… but I’m pretty sure you’ll start seeing the same happen with plugins if this gets underway.

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@t0neg0d said: The only issue I have with the idea is plugins will take the same route... and then we have a Java version of Unity...

I’m not saying I am apposed to it, I just couldn’t bring myself to participate past the free portion. I wouldn’t feel right charging people for something I wrote to enhance a free engine.

Assets are a bit different, yeah… but I’m pretty sure you’ll start seeing the same happen with plugins if this gets underway.

On the other hand, for plugins to be worth someone paying for then they’d have to be good enough that people wanted to pay for them. I still think most plugins will remain free.

The issue with assets is that I think the effort to output ratio is a bit different and quality is more subtle. The other thing is that many folks (myself included) might rather pay something for an asset and know it’s not in “every single game out there”. A little more exclusivity.

…but I would gladly pay for assets that are known to be JME ready. Heck, I’ve paid for assets that aren’t JME ready and then struggle to get them that way.

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Anyone know where I can find a good set of plants for an asset pack?

I can’t seem to find any trees or shrubs… Only mushrooms

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I’m agree with @admazzola , If this will affects also the plung-ins why not ? it will bring even more developers in jme-communty . Even if a java version of Unity is quite bad , jme has his strengths points and I think that jme could differentiate from Unity quite well . I don’t play so much with Unity but I didn’t like it at first :smiley: and I would develop with it only for the asset store and multiplatform feature . So in the end I think that if we’ll a have a nice amount of assets a web Assets store would make user experience only better! .

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Yeah I will always encourage people to develop assets for free and I LOVE that JME3 is totally open source. However, I have a birthday coming up and I would ask for some assets for my game but there is no platform to provide that service. Quality assets take a decent amount of time/money to make and it could help facilitate more quality games to grow out of JME3. It is really hard to develop without the tools/plugins that unity devs can use. Im more jealous every day but I won’t switch because I love the freedom I get from this engine and I love Java+Eclipse too much.

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@admazzola said: I am all for free assets, but if there is going to be an Asset Store Website, why not also give people the freedom to charge money for their assets as well? It is a simple freedom, and it encourages better asset creation. If JME3 developers really expect to make money by charging players money to buy their game, they are hypocritical to refuse to spend money on assets to build the game. I love open source, but sometimes I want to live the good life too, you know? I am very jealous of the Unity Store and it makes me kinda regret not developing on that piece-of-junk engine.

I volunteer to help build an asset store website. If anyone else wants to help facilitate this with me let me know. I am not a Rails veteran per-se, but I know my way around the framework and have built a few database-backed web apps. Let’s set up a DO droplet and make it happen.

“I am very jealous of the Unity Store and it makes me kinda regret not developing on that piece-of-junk engine.”
I think on that many times too… I love java and the JME engine, I do NOT want to be forced to code in another language, I want go with Groovy too! but I am no artist, I cant make music, sfx, graphics, 3d models, textures without a humongous effort, and at the end I still think the stuff looks and sound almost like crap…

A huge ammount of ppl all around the world pay not big money for good looking stuff, good music… the point is it is a huge load of ppl.

See the game “The Forest” (http://survivetheforest.com/) they have a very cool concept with freedom coded, but it also looks amazing! it will sell “a lot” because it looks amazing;

in the other hand, see minecraft, it doesnt look amazing, but it is a concept breaking game; if my project do not be a concept breaking I am doomed… Check rimworld also, it is a… lets say… concept mixing game (long “forgotten” dungeon keeper back to life and many other things…).

I am indie dev… I can probably make a few strong efforts, thru my life, to come with something that allow me to live without a boss (as most of them are nothing more than exploiters)…

My project must cause a very good impact and be remembered for that from the beggining, further projects will be funded by this one;
If I do not foresee that, it will happen what happened to Neocron; is a very cool MMO+FPS mix, with cyber elements and smart concepts; but lacks the updated graphics and sounds/music, so got almost abbandoned…

Now, see Fallout New Vegas, and Skyrim, how old they are and how alive they are, the nexus mods, so many contributors even by improving graphics, they make their own music, 3d animated meshes, textures, just to improve something that already have a very good looking environment, very pleasant environment, and they make all that for free! they work for free! on something that is closed source and may never have a new engine improvement again, ever…

In the other hand, an indie dev may never abbandon his project…

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@admazzola how’s your PHP? @jayfella is just about finished with the first take on our plugins front-end, which should tie into our assetpacks. If you wanna help out, that’d be the best place to start.

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I have worked in PHP and I did see that. It looks like it hasn’t been touched in a month? I think that plugins front-end is a great place to start and would essentially function as a free-asset repo. When I get some free time I will pull it down and check it out. I’m working on my own JME3 game still and on another site. I’m surprised there’s only one contributor so far :open_mouth:

Thanks,

Andy

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Hugely interested, with the caveat that most of the assets I’m bringing to the table are under a fair use/not for commercial license.

I’m fair with php, a little better than with Java at the moment. I’ll be watching this closely hoping I can see a way to contribute…

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:facepalm:

but why PHP, just because we have a PHP server instead of Java?? There are a lot of good Java web framework for use to create reponsive, multi user - crud web application like Tha Asset Central we need. as my professional career in web building i’m totally against PHP for a lot of reason: Performance, security and dev time…

IF we just need a frontend for plugins and assets (as Wordpress plugin, and an extension for this HUB), I think we can take advantages from existed opensource WP … The points for this are the same with above: sercurity (if paid assets available), dev time, and last but not least, the intergration with the current HUB?

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@atomix said: :facepalm:

but why PHP, just because we have a PHP server instead of Java?? There are a lot of good Java web framework for use to create reponsive, multi user - crud web application like Tha Asset Central we need. as my professional career in web building i’m totally against PHP for a lot of reason: Performance, security and dev time…

I will not let this become a technology stack argument. It’s being done in PHP because @jayfella, the guy who offered up his free time to do the work would be able to work most effectively in PHP, and he definitely got the work done (it’s in a working state already, just missing the final touch).

Integration is a non-issue. We will exclusively use GitHub for logins into this thing, since that’s what we rely on for free repository hosting anyways. Integrating those logins with any other part of our site will be easy.

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Some more thoughts about assets.

AssetPacks aren’t suitable for singular models imo. An assetpack should be exactly what it says it is: A package of assets. I.e. a ready-made scene to get developers quickly up and running with a RPG-friendly level or an FPS-friendly level and so forth.

As far as single-asset directories go, Blendswap is already doing an excellent job in this department - check out their real-time and low-poly categories. There’s no point in trying to replicate what they’re doing exceedingly well already. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that every CC assetpack in our repo ought to be “cross-posted” to Blendswap as ready made scenes for other gamedevs to take advantage of as well, which would also reflect well back on us.

As for getting these assets made, that’s mostly up to you guys. The best way to get an artist to work with you is to prove that you can make and finish games. Artists have the same intrinsic motivation as developers: They wanna see their stuff used. Even if just by a few people, it’s much cooler to get to feature your work in something small and playable as opposed to something grand but unfinished.

If you play it smart you design games that can excel with a minimal amount of custom-made art assets.

One last thing. There are literally thousands of cool looking games out there that stopped turning a profit years ago. I bet if we asked all 2000 of them, at least one of them would agree to give away their assets for free - maybe without textures for instance so that nothing will ever look quite like their game, but they still share the bulk of the artwork.

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@erlend_sh said: Some more thoughts about assets.

AssetPacks aren’t suitable for singular models imo. An assetpack should be exactly what it says it is: A package of assets. I.e. a ready-made scene to get developers quickly up and running with a RPG-friendly level or an FPS-friendly level and so forth.

Well, if people only have one model that they want to share or managed to make it work in jME then that shouldn’t stop them from posting it. I think single models would be okay. They go into one storage with one search anyway.

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Btw, if someone got FBX import working, then we could use the majority of all Unity assets, and I’m sure we could convince a few people to make jME assetpacks of their free models. It would be free advertising for their premium content.

Our best bet for FBX import is probably the LibGDX FBX converter. Just need to add a j3o writer.

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@erlend_sh said: As far as single-asset directories go, Blendswap is already doing an excellent job in this department - check out their real-time and low-poly categories. There's no point in trying to replicate what they're doing exceedingly well already. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that every CC assetpack in our repo ought to be "cross-posted" to Blendswap as ready made scenes for other gamedevs to take advantage of as well, which would also reflect well back on us.

I am impressed… every model name I typed I found more than one result with great quality, thx for that! Cant wait to try and make them work on JME… Tho my guess is that, as you restricted to “real-time” and “low-poly”, not everything I found I will be able to actually use without asking someone to do a low-poly version of it (or try myself); anyway it seems a great start!

Also, do you believe, somewhere at JME site, there could have a page listing sites (also suggested by users) that have 3D assets?
That page could be special for user votes, so each site could have several kinds of score like:

  • models quality about mesh, texture, shaders and being lightweight to the engine
  • JME integration easiness
  • license restrictiveness
    In fact, these are asset attributes, but the user can give an overall evaluation of satisfaction about what can be mostly expected from the site.
    This page could even promote interest on these site users (or even owners) on providing/incentivating JME ready 3D assets (hope!).
@erlend_sh One last thing. There are literally thousands of cool looking games out there that stopped turning a profit years ago. I bet if we asked all 2000 of them, at least one of them would agree to give away their assets for free - maybe without textures for instance so that nothing will ever look quite like their game, but they still share the bulk of the artwork.

I believe on this too.

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@teique said: I am impressed.. every model name I typed I found more than one result with great quality, thx for that! Cant wait to try and make them work on JME... Tho my guess is that, as you restricted to "real-time" and "low-poly", not everything I found I will be able to actually use without asking someone to do a low-poly version of it (or try myself); anyway it seems a great start!

Also, do you believe, somewhere at JME site, there could have a page listing sites (also suggested by users) that have 3D assets?
That page could be special for user votes, so each site could have several kinds of score like:

  • models quality about mesh, texture, shaders and being lightweight to the engine
  • JME integration easiness
  • license restrictiveness
    In fact, these are asset attributes, but the user can give an overall evaluation of satisfaction about what can be mostly expected from the site.
    This page could even promote interest on these site users (or even owners) on providing/incentivating JME ready 3D assets (hope!).

Yep , since you are not the only one who didn’t know about Blendswap :smiley: . At least a list in assets pack wiki page would be a start! :slight_smile: there is also sketchfab .

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Wow I didn’t know about blendswap either! I agree that we should better educate each other on available other resources and not bother trying to reinvent the wheel. However, there are not other good resources for JME3 code and plugins. That is why our plugin system needs a bit of improvement.