I was looking at some of the community developed games (ships with cannons, mythruna, etc.) and being amazed, not only at the awesomeness of the games but also at the awesomeness of the assets that are used models, textures,etc. My question is what is the best way to get assets for your game?
I am no artist and when I first launched blender I nearly fell off my chair at the sheer complexity of the software. Now don’t get me wrong, I would love to learn but I’m on a budget and can’t afford 3-5 textbooks on all the ins and outs of blender. Ideally I’d like to find some tutorials online, so naturally I went looking on youtube but the tutorials that I found there are extremely hard to follow. I also looked into software like MakeHuman which is great but as we all know human characters are not everything we need in a game (In some cases human characters are not used at all).
Finally, I am wondering if buying models is a good idea. What do you guys think?
To sum everything up:
Is buying models a good idea?
Do you know of any good online tutorials for blender?
Do you know of any site that offers free models/textures?
What is the best way of acquiring textures?
Thanks in advance! 
- I get a lot of my textures from cgtextures, and then modify them to meet my needs.
- I learn’t a lot of my blender knowledge following, this 10 hour tutorial series, on making a dragon.
http://cgcookie.com/blender/2010/06/17/series-stylized-dragon-part-1/. Teaches you pretty much everything, modelling, bit on texturing (not too much), animation.
- Never bought a model so can’t comment.
As with anything you find make sure to read the license.
- Textures best to take ready, as wezrule said.
- blender is easy, just 1-2 months of learning(skeleton, animations, modeling, texturing)
- i creating models myself(first looking ugly but in some time it look better and better)
but the best way is to have each person to do each thing
- one from textures and images
- second from models
- next scripting
its best way to do projects fast Making models its no so hard, belive me. i know one 16 years old child making awesome 3d models
btw: i red somewhere, someone from developer team done list of free to use licence objects
Yeah, I made most of my textures from scratch in Photoshop or so heavily modified 20 year old textures that they barely resemble their originals… and still people think I downloaded them as-is from a web site. So you might as well save yourself some time especially if you don’t already have the skills to make textures.
I’m in the “learning blender” boat, as well. I don’t have any real models yet since all of my meshes are generated in game. But when I get to creatures and characters, I will need lots of quality time with blender and some tutorials. There are tons of those online, though. I come from a 3D Studio Max background and I think that probably helps me as much as hurts me in this case.
- just first of all learn modeling. Shorts like extending faces/etc.
- learn materials/etc
- then learn texturing(vertex paint + texturing using UV warps)
- at the end learn to use skeleton, skeleton is needed to do animation of objects. u just set verticles to each bone
- and learn creating animations
- and learn exporting properly to jmonkey ;p
Unfortunately my stuff doesn’t look too good. The reason is simple, I do them myself. 
There are tons of great tutorials whether for Photoshop, The GIMP or Paint.Net, all great programs. Same for Blender. Anyone with a tiny bit of talent, unlike me, given some time and practice, can come up with some spiffy results.
There’s also many many people willing and able to invest their time and their own assets to indie developers for credits only. I’ve been told Reddit had an area where you can ask other people for their contributions to your project although I’ll admit I haven’t looked into it.
You can find people willing to help, or that have donated their work to the community for free provided you credit them and their work. Something that is entirely understandable and not inconvenient at all. Recognition is everything. For us and for them.
Also, a lot of times, the stuff you find on the net are free. Tutorials, textures, models. If you find something interesting, contact the author and most of them are real nice people and are willing to let other people use their work. Just don’t “steal” anyone’s stuff. By that I mean even if it says you can, you’re better off to email the person and ask nicely. It very well might create some word of mouth and, besides, you have nothing to lose.
Thanks for all the replies guys, I’ll look into that tutorial werulez.
@madjack
I completely agree with what your saying, and I do not want to steal anyone’s work or idea. I’ve already contacted some tutorial authors to make sure its ok with them
Also, they opportunity to use the talent of others and in exchange put them in the credits sounds great.
Once again thanks!
If anyone has anything to add please go ahead.
Honestly I think it’s overkill to ask tutorial authors for their authorization. It would be like asking the permission to a teacher to use what you learned from him to do your job.
Except if you plan on using assets they’ve made as part of their tutorial into your game, then I wouldn’t bother in that case.
Pro tip when collaborating with pro-bono artists: Get their art fully working in your game the moment they hand it over to you. In other words, make sure you have a solid art pipeline before asking for art contributions.