What makes Cg-trader better than Turbosquid?

Turbosquid royalties are less than 50%, let this sink in.

I don't think you can still say the same now that hyperwallet is so fucked up. Earnings not getting deposited and very hard to setup.

I left the diamond level turbosquid. CGtrader closer to me in spirit.
Lithuanians! you are best!

What makes turbosquid better? Sales only. Except that support staff communication its horrible at turbosquid, they change publishing rules all the time so you end up with multiple suspended models that you need to spend time to fix to fit into the new rules instead of managing that time to create new 3d models that would increase their profit also...so counterintuitive. Sometimes i get annoyed and i want to switch to cgtrader and i search for characters and i see on first page low quality products between 20-50$ promoted (quality models get lost among the high quantity of low quality models), many i recognize from character builder and daz models so copyright issue. I think quality products at proper prices should be promoted first. Nobody will give a character he truly worked for weeks at 20$. Cg trader has potential and if it will improve in the future i will move my portfolio here and more artists from turbosquid will too.

CGTrader is often favored for Product Animation due to its extensive selection of high-quality models and flexible pricing options, including royalty-free licenses. Its active community and excellent customer support also contribute to its appeal. While TurboSquid offers a variety of models, CGTrader's emphasis on customization and rigging services further enhances its suitability for product animation projects.

What about Sketchfab ?

Hey there,
Same for me, here. Because of its design and trade/royalty system, CGTrader seems better and more advantageous, but at the end of the day, I get much more income from Turbosquid and The3Dstudio. I'm even considering seriously closing my store here. Check my store https://apkvisa.com/dungeon-quest-mod-apk/

Dude, I have from 500$ a month at SGtride and i don't feed fat Turbosquid bastards.
I left the turbosquid from Diamond level .
Your account is not in CGtrader and I can't see your models, and judging by the link in your comment you are just a spammer.

Hey,
Better for who? Considering it as a seller, CGtrader is NOT better because I have almost no sales at all while I have about 10 sales every month on TS. So even if TS takes 60%, I still make better profit there because here I get 94% of nothing. CGtrader might have better conditions, rules and everything but it's useless if it doesn't attract more buyers. https://garagedoorrepairchesapeake.com/garage-door-replacement/

If anything buyers should get lots of points for buying. That is the most important reason for them to be on CGtrader and it is essential to reward them for helping artist and the site earn money. https://garagedoorrepairnewportnews.com/garage-door-spring-repair/

CGtrader has already surpassed Turbosquid in every Rank, and it has +1 million visits too:

https://www.similarweb.com/website/cgtrader.com/?competitors=turbosquid.com

https://i.imgur.com/knp0rUW.png

My personal experience, having had a short stint as a 3d print seller on Turbosquid, is that they paint with way too broad a brush when it comes to potential IP infringement. I sell fantasy-themed miniature models, and uploaded most of my then-current catalogue (consisting entirely of my original work) to Turbosquid only to have over half of it taken down a week later. The claim Turbosquid made was that it infringed on Games Workshop IPs. Personally, I felt I in no way infringed on said IP. In fact, I had taken deliberate steps to ensure that I included no content in my designs that could even be construed as overlap. No overt similarites in armor designs, guns, vehicles, naming- nothing. When pressed, Turbosquid could give no clearer specification than "it is too similar". I ended up terminating my account, seeing as I couldn't operate the store under such conditions - not only did I risk having the work I'd put in uploading items undone at any moment, I also had no idea what pitfalls I had to avoid to not have items taken down.

My current store on CGTrader includes numerous items that were deemed to be infringing upon GW IP (link below).

https://www.cgtrader.com/profile/models

I think it is more comfortable to use. And it offers a more strategic dimension

i dont like turbosquid i prefer CGtrader absolutely

Turbosquid is a very shit comparing to CGTrader

cgtrader is far better than turbosquid in my opinion coz cgtrader offer 80% royalti payment and turbo only give you 40% royalti payment which is sad. and cgtrader is easy to navigate and great UI

I like this site more, because, firstly, it has a much more pleasant and understandable interface, gives a higher percentage of the sale (on a TS, it looks more like a tip if you are not a member of their club), and generally it works more stable. Yes, sometimes your points are not displayed for a day or two, but there were problems with the rating of models. BUT this is still not as infuriating as a personal account falling once a month with all the statistics! And at the same time, if they periodically do something here, try to add something new, then the TS, as long as I remember it, does not particularly try to become convenient (But at the same time it takes most of the profit !!!).

I didn't checked it for a while (around a year) but comparatively Cgtrader has a much more streamlined upload system compared to Turbosquid's. You can upload a 20 mb large model here with 3 formats, 20 photos, 100 wording text, 20 tags in around 20 minutes. Doing the same at Turbosquid feels as dreadful as applying for a driver's license.

with the recent requirements to upload a 3D product on TS, CGT became my number one no doubt, i'm not gonna wast half my life rendering turntables that wouldn't make much of a difference when every seller is doing the same thing.

TS management is by far the worst in history, they are great at Hostile take overs, yet bad at dealing with the realities of industry, i stopped all my affiliate links with TS and right now i'm sharing only the links for my products on CGT and Art station.

@skifx, @made21, my royalty rate is 80% and i earn from each sale from 72% to 77% depending on the model's price - the pricier the model is, the lesser payment processing fee gets. Payout fees are just fractions of percent, not worth to consider.

And to be fair, you will never get exact 40% from squid either, because they have payout fees too and also they withold certain amount from US purchases.

thanks for the information, still 60 to 40 is a big difference

i just sell a model on cgTrader and another model on Turbosquid, cgtrader gives me 71% and i feel ok , turbosquid gives me 40% and i feel like i get raped, besides its tedious way of uploading methods im done with those guys, i will stick with CGtrader

That's just an easy question to answer...

1. Turbosquid has terrible royalty rates
2. Turbosquid has a horrendous up-loader
3. Turbosquid has too many models
4. Everything about it is ugly

CGTrader is full of BUGS

@skifx, apparently your feeding hand is just too small.

https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/cathedral-paris-notre-dame-3d-obj/933856?referral=pit_zavra
https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/exterior/landmark/notre-dame-de-paris-cathedral-61d97afb1b1a62861673c23f15b75c12

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others

I'm a first time seller (+-2 Months). I started uploading on a few sites and TS was one of them and I can tell you now that that place is a mess. Not artist friendly at all, from uploading to statistics (Model views, downloads, and so on)

Turbosquid bites the hands that feed them:

Brittney Briere, Sep 18, 09:53 SST:
Hello,

We previously sent you final warnings about your non-compliance with our Best Prices policy. We are writing to inform you that we are taking your content offline for 60 days as you have continued to change your prices to be higher on TurboSquid. After 60 days, we will put your content back online. However, if you are found to be out of compliance again, your collection will be taken offline for a more extended period of time.

Regards,
Brittney
TurboSquid Member Services

Cgtrader user interface is much more user friendly. Uploading new product is so much more intuitive and easier than TS.

Thanks for sharing Your experience and thoughts. In fact my sells on TS are actually going down while they go up on CGt. In the long run I'm going to quit selling on TS also.

I was a seller on Ts for very long time but never liked it, felt the 60% cut was unjust, the aggressive tactics towards competitors was bad, the self centeredness to keep artist away from own clients was wrong, and there are many more reasons why it never felt home to me.

Needed something better and found it at CGt. However, fear of losing sales kept me both on Ts and CGt for long time (not liked it). My initial idea was that Ts had some clients that do not know anything outside of Ts. At the time my CGt account was not performing so well and it enforced that belief (it was probably due to longer presence and better position on Ts and new on CGt).

My price at the time was same both on Ts as on CGt but after some time position on CGt got better and sales was picking up.

I wanted to test if clients compare sites (eventually wanted to avoid clients would use the expensive Ts platform to get my items). So what I did was simply adding the 60% cut to the product on Ts. What I saw after that was a 50 to 50 ration decrease on Ts and increase on my CGt account. To me this was a sign that people know about CGt and that users have at least two accounts. To my amazement something ells also happened, there where still a few people buying my more expensive models on Ts. My initial stance on this was, ok fine then my Ts account can stay up for those few that seemingly do not know anything ells outside of Ts.

However, the behavior of these clients kept me thinking and I had some dilemmas about what was actually going on here. At one hand I could think this was indeed evidence that Ts had some clients that do not know about CGt. On other hand I could also think its just some clients that do not care about the price difference, they just prefer using the Ts account. Maybe they think Ts provides almost same model but its just better, etc. I could go on and on, it kept me puzzled.

Then came price guarantee on Ts and now I had a problem, the part I was now successfully serving on CGt I would not want to risk losing back to Ts, nor would I want to lose those few that kept buying my higher priced models there.

Ts went head on and contacted me (I was probably among list of targeted folks at that time, Ts previously also contacted me to make some shady deals which I rejected), now they requested me to lower my prices according to new price grantee model. My response was, not going to do that, its my work I decide the price. The response back was, if they are not adjusted end of the week then we will adjust them.

After that response I selected all my models and took them offline.

A few months went by with my models offline and during that time my GCt sales gradually went up at a level consistent with the few sales I had left behind on Ts so I just deleted all my models at Ts.

It still remains a puzzle to me, we’re those few now actually using their CGt account because there was no other way or did I just lose those and just gained some new clients from somewhere ells? I can think up multiple scenarios to try get a grip on it but I don't actually care anymore.

I’m convinced now that when I would reactivate my Ts account I will just have a bit less sales here and get some sales over there, could be wrong but I don't care, 60% cut is ridicules and on top of that price guarantee is just total madness. 60% cut could be ok if that cost could be added to the product but price guarantee makes that impossible.

This is why:
"TurboSquid Support, Jun 20, 08:14 SST:
Hello,
Offering customers best prices on TurboSquid is mandatory for all artists publishing on TurboSquid. However, we have detected that you have set your prices back numerous times after we have made appropriate changes. Since you haven’t contacted us about any of these changes being incorrect, we are resetting prices on these models one final time (see the attached CSV file listing these models). If you continue to price your models higher on TurboSquid, you will will not be able to publish your content on TurboSquid, and we will temporarily take your current models offline.

These changes are part of the new TurboSquid Best Price Guarantee (https://resources.squid.io/?p=14893) in which we are assuring TurboSquid customers that they can always find the lowest prices on our site.

Thanks,
The TurboSquid Team"

User experience and User interface is much better to manage your store, and higher royalty.

In CGtrader you can accumulate many until you set up payment agreement.

cgtrader is faster to navigate than turbo, Take better care of their artists than Turbosquid does & smoother payment and sales experience.....
I hope it goes well for cgtrader i really like this page :-)

A: TurboS*swearword-here* will start to DOWNTICK PRICES to match them to "other selling sites" on customer complaint, so I will remove every model they demand for down-adjustment, and I'm sure I won't be alone in this.
So good luck "shopping elsewhere" dear customer, this is turning into a monopoly slaughterhouse and a 3D warzone.

B: CGTrader needs to do SOMETHING about all the damn undercutters. Full collections of objects for 12 bucks is NOT okay. In fact, any properly textured model over 5000 polys for less than 15 bucks is NOT okay, and does NOT look professional at all. I still get more sales on TS, despite having adjusted all prices to compensate their extortions.
Being between a rock (TS) and a hard place (CT) is a damn round the clock aggravation.

That's why I won't model one single model for online sale until this heinous situation is rectified.
IT'S A WASTE OF TIME.

Turbosquid is butt ugly and greedy, I hope when CG gets bigger than TS, they don't end up the same way. Old thread but still relevant, do yourself a favour and cut back on the seafood, delete TS bookmarks and make progress here. It's the artist that need to make a stand and simply take the short term loss from less traffic and exposure and join the marketplace that respects the artists. 60% is an insult.

A battle is going on right now, and some top sellers are going full #SquidClan with a custom deal from the Wisdoms: a 5-6 digit $ amount in instant cash now as an advance of a 2 year exclusivity deal, plus a boost of their royalties at the expense of all the other "non-top" sellers at Turbosquid that won't be getting any offer from Matt Wisdom. This is a totally separate "operation" that is going on under the acquisitions of CGstudio and T3DFM, which serve also as noisy cover to "wag the dog".

A shitstorm war is going on between the "Wisdom" brothers & their Top $ Corporate Investors against Marius' CGtrader, who is leading the inclusive people that don't dance to the song of dangling shiny coins in front of their eyes just for the time being and the now.

Look for the big picture and think medium/long term. Build your own Brand with your own criteria and goals. Think about your future:
No matter what the Wisdoms offer you now, they will make you pay x10 later once they are done with their competitors (again).
Think about the kind of treatment you can expect from these soulless corporate hacks once they can play their monopoly game again.

As long as CGtrader and Marius keep leading the inclusive marketplaces with respect for the Artists and their own branding, we at NoneCG will continue to support CGtrader and Marius indefinitely, no extra shiny coins needed for us.

If any of you think this is a show of strength from Matt Wisdom and his Corporate brother Andy, think twice. What this shows is their weakness.
CGtrader has been growing steadily faster than Turbosquid for several years, that's why they are making this desperate "first blood" move asking their Investors for an extra cash to buy Sellers out against Marius and his people, with the promise that they will fuck you to death later once the war is won for the #SquidClan.

Remember The3DStudio? just 2 years ago still existed.

Maybe you think my words are disproportionate or naive... but mark them now.
These people quote Sun Tzu when you talk to them, so guess their future plans for you.

Maybe I live in an unrealistic parallel reality, where at least some people still have some dignity and know how and when to differentiate good vs evil and take a public stand with actions instead of just words.

Your move...

Cgtrader really goes above and beyond with the customer service side of things. If there is a problem they will fix it for you.

i think they both have there place . I do feel cg trader gives the artists a better price and the share is fair . I like how there is no join up fee

What news from the fort? :)

94% royalty rate...

I removed all products from TS.
They do not deserve that I fed them 60%
This is my principle decision .

They lie about your rights on Turbosquid. They say you can price things anyway you want but then they take down your models if they do not agree with how you price them. If you are doing really bad with sales they let you do whatever you want but if you are doing well they step in and make things difficult. Turbosquid is basically a pyramid scheme for the most part unless you are established and have been in the top rank for many years.

I was 2 times victim of credit card fraud on Ts, never happened on CGt so far.

They just took multiple of my most expensive items and run for it.
Ts just took royalty's from other items I've sold to get the money back.

I was stunned to get informed there was no fraud protection (yes people, you pay 60% cut and get no fraud protection). They said fraud protection is only reserved for exclusive sellers.

(so you basically pay for a fraud protection system for people hoe sell themselves out exclusively)

Yeah nasty stuff, but hey, I better shut up because I'm one of the hypocrites that keeps supporting that place by having my work on it.

AFAIK buyers right to be refunded is protected by law. On the other hand, reason for refund should be solid. Luckily, non of my sells on TS were refunded so far and i had 3 refunds on CGT, 2 of them was caused by technical reasons from CGT side.

Yes you are right Zet! I remember that too!

Don't know if it's already mentioned in this thread, but in TS you have a refund system, when customer buyed your product has ability to bring back his money and it'll subracted from your earnings, if he doesn't like a model for some reason. And reasons can be any. In other words as an artist in TS you are not so well protected, as it's here at CGT.
Just my fifty cents.

The fact that you can upload models immediately rather than waiting 3 months for them to get reviewed by some random people that won't have the time + the website design and the community inside CGTrader.

Another thing that makes CGT better than TS is the friendships that one is able to make within the artist community. I have met a bunch of really good artists here that I have had the pleasure of working with.

I really enjoy the chance to get to know other people's opinions and experiences regarding how they sell, network and do business and that is something I have only been able to do here on CGT.

I think the CGT does an amazing job of bringing people together!

I did not know about that. If that is the case then better not to become exclusive! We want to improve the site not make it worse :)

Exclusivity to any marketplace has been proved a revenue loss. Every vendor who is exclusive is losing money and customers.

I think CGT should begin doing the same and promoting people for being exclusive to CGT after all that will help buyer confidence when they realize how many of their best artists are switching sides!

Saied this couple of times in the past, leverage the difference in royalty to provide a slightly better offer over here, otherwise customers hoe have a Ts account will see no need to make one here to buy same model for same price.

I think arguments of differences in search are irrelevant when someone is looking for the same model to compare prices between the two biggest players.

Most of the Ts artists also moved their work over here and almost everyone knows that, just not the ones hoe are exclusive, it's not going to take too long now before they systematically start breaking the exclusive contract when they see sales going down every month and things going up over here.

I think this game can only be won by the best community building force and that is CGt.

I am huge fan of the CGT team because they really try hard to make us happy. Over the years they have shown me that they really care about we think about the way things should be run and they have been adapting the website based on our combined ideas.

Thanks CGT team!

Hmm, i went to your profile and i see no negative feedback. So it was sorted in your favor afterall?

@Supercigale, this is worrying to read, i think such things shouldn't happen. Yes, buyers has free will to express their opinion about model, but in case of negative feedback such opinion should be reasonable and motivated. Besides how about your right to fair trade? I can't imagine that competing sellers would go for such things as you described, but who knows, there are plenty nuts all around :]

To be honest, it's hard to me to believe that such respectable people like Mantas and Eduardas would refuse to remove negative feedback if it was given without firm reason. Maybe there is something behind the scenes what you can't know or can't tell? And good thing that you decided to tell about - such things should go public and be discussed. Hopefully we can find a way that would plrase all sides.

Well, after a long search, I found a negative point from CGTrader compared to TS.
I mean the good/bad rating left by buyers.

When a buyer leaves a bad rating for a lame reason , TS investigate and contact the buyer and if he doesn't give a serious explanation,
TS removes this rating.

when the same type of issue occurs on CGTrader, the Staff policy is to do nothing.
I was victim of that there a few months ago, I had a bad rating when the model have never had a problem during many years.
I tried to contact the buyer several times with no response. Then I contacted Eduardas and Mantas who refused to remove the rating,
in the name of freedom expression of the buyer (???)

this issue frequently occurs when a seller wants to break a competitor.
He bought a cheap product (with a fake account) and post a bad rating.

Both are still growing, but it seems CGtrader is growing much more. Rank improvement compared to previous 3 months:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/cgtrader.com +5,816

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/turbosquid.com +1,026

I wish someday Turbosquid disappear or bankrupt.

"...This is new era, time of old fashioned corporatism is going to be over.
Every freelancer is corporation of it's own. Everything is more and more coming down to individual levels of very friendly and much more human communication."

Yes, @tomislavveg you said is true.

Exactly, no one knows the model better than the one who made this model.
Especially if the buyer asks to change something in the configuration of models or to clarify details. And also I would like to get the original texture...
In this case the fastest support can not help

Yes, @limonadinis, I agree with you.
Determining the optimal cost of the models is an important and difficult moment.
In one case, the model is promising, commercial, and then set a high price.
In another case, although the model is qualitative, but the price is lower - the non comercial ...
The only thing I want to add, it's about corporate or major customers...
This is from my own personal experience. Typically, large corporate buyers, they find a way to contact me even and on TS and make an offer on a specific project. Often offer to buy the models in 10...20 times more expensive than the price at which the model was exhibited for sale. But at the same time they require all rights to the model, and the model is removed from sale at all sites.

And between CGTrader and TurbuSquid, I think, let everything will be decided in a reasonable competition.
Since the positive and negative points there are in the CGTrader and in the TurboSquid...

for all
Best Regards,

"don't you think that corporate client would rather choose to get support from team of profesionals that are available 24/7, than from unknown person, who might respond with big delay or not respon at all?"

No, i dont think staff can know better then artist about his own 3D model... Regarding response time, i respond to my buyers within 10 minutes unless im in bed and someone from other part of the world is trying to reach me. This is new era, time of old fashioned corporatism is going to be over. Every freelancer is corporation of it's own. Everything is more and more coming down to individual levels of very friendly and much more human communication.

We all agree that CGT is the better site and needs to win the fight but we all need to reach out to the really influential people and make sure they start promoting the site or we won't win.

CGT needs to get on Amazon a.s.a.p or partner with all the top leading commercial comps in order to make 3D more interesting to more buyers. Fact is and I have been saying it for years is that there is a super limited amount of people who care about 3D.

Of those limited people just a hand full would actually buy models or put money towards models so if TS already has won those people we need to find our own nitch or we go out of business.

Bottom line is if people are used to buying from TS they won't buy here because they need to use a different system so let's create our own client base.

@Urecky, while i'm agree with you in general, let me argue on some specific points.

[quote]1. Royalty rate of CGTrader allows the seller to make a model cheaper than on TurboSquid. And if the buyer sees one and the same model on CGT and on TS, then the price will choose on CGTrader... [/quote]
For small buyers this is likely the case, but serious corporate buyers may have other priorities atop of lowest price. Like time spent on searching models or ability to get profesional support 24/7. I can easily imagine that serious clients who value their time very high, might choose TS over CGT without second thought.

[quote]2. Buyer can contact seller directly, which can save him/her lot's of time and frustrations. Sometimes you have to support the buyer. And it is convenient for the buyer and profitable for the seller. [/quote]
That is very strong argument in favor of CGT, but then again, don't you think that corporate client would rather choose to get support from team of profesionals that are available 24/7, than from unknown person, who might respond with big delay or not respon at all? While i've heard that TS support isn't that great in practice and they always tend to exploit sellers, but impression that they're making on buyers must be really good.

In my personal opinion TS is working very hard towards buyers and exploits sellers as much as they can, well except few chosen ones, while CGT is taking great care about sellers, but leaving buyers somewhat aside. While this tactic worked very well at first and allowed to draw that many sellers in relatively short period of time, now it's time to think about buyers, as without them sellers will start to starve. But i think CGT nows that pretty well, that's why they decided to bring changes in royalty policy and hopefully they will steer additional cash flow towards making this stock market more attractive to the buyers. But they must realise that attracting more buyers only through more aggresive marketing is not enough. Site itself must have significant changes to make it more attractive and more convenient to buyers, especially big buyers. And IMHO search is an area where CGT shoul focus first.

Please don't get impression that i'm trying to bash CGT, i don't i favor CGT over TS any day, but i want that they up their game in this concurent buisness. And saying only nice words won't help them much.

If CGT would manage to draw more buyers from TS then even more sellers would migrate here. Hopefully that would make squids to react. Maybe they would understand that sellers can't be treated as slaves. A man can dream on :]

Here only I have doubts it would be fair to do do is a difference of 20..25% in the price of its models, which are intended for sale in the CGT and TS?
It is currently selling on the of TS is much higher than on CGT. So the staff there tries to work...
Is it fair if I do?
What would be your opinion?

The sellers for which, CGtrader liked can help for this resource.
- contribute to promotion of the website in your daily activities;
- pursue best pricing
and so on...

In something limonadinis says is true, but I agree with tomislavveg.
Yes, at this point the level of sales of the TS is higher than the CGTrader and TS has a more flexible search system. So it is, but it's a matter of time and CGTrader will be able to master these positions.
But there are questions that are not achievable for TS, and they will not go to such steps, and it is this:

1. Royalty rate of CGTrader allows the seller to make a model cheaper than on TurboSquid. And if the buyer sees one and the same model on CGT and on TS, then the price will choose on CGTrader...
2. Buyer can contact seller directly, which can save him/her lot's of time and frustrations. Sometimes you have to support the buyer. And it is convenient for the buyer and profitable for the seller.
3. An important factor for many buyers is the possibility of cash transactions in the system WebMoney. TurboSquid has stopped working in WM and lost some buyers in the middle East countries and Asia.

On TurboSguid very "bloated" staff, and many actions are aimed at something that would feed own website, own resurs... While sellers will be disadvantaged in many interests

It seems to me that over time a CGTrader will be able to overtake TurboSquid in many positions, if TS does not change its policy.
The main thing that would eventually CGTrader non has become such voracious and greedy as TS...

This is my opinion.

I agree

@tomislavveg, that is very true, but as marvimation already mentioned, CGT first have to draw those buyers to its web, otherwise there's not much use from all those benefits if there's no buyers who could reap them :]

I have to agree with Limonadinis on this without a good search engine function we loose many clients to Turbosquid.

@tomislavveg, on the one hand i agree with you about that, but on the other hand if i would be looking for models i would almost certainly choose TS as my first choice and most likely as a last one before buying. All because of search. Search is arguably most important feature of stocks and search in TS is head and shoulders (and then some more) above search in CGT. I'm planing to start new discussion on this topic in near future, so i won't go into details here, i'll just ask did anybody tried to enter same keywords in TS and CGT search field? Difference in quality of search results is shockingly vast in favor of TS. IMHO that is main area where CGT must up their game significantly.

From buyer perspective, i think CGTrader also have lots of advantages. Buyer can contact seller directly, which can save him/her lot's of time and frustrations. Sometimes 3D model can have some errors, or it was not 100% what buyer had imagined it will be. In that case on CGTrader buyer can contact seller directly and ask him/her to fix the issue. On TS buyer cant do such thing, he needs to contact support on TS. They then review the model and contact seller to fix it. That takes longer time. Sometime buyer in frustration just leave bad review on the model for issues that can be solved easily, but since he cant contact seller he thinks he cant do anything about it and he wasted his money. I'm really happy to see CGTrader growing

i like the points system on cg trader . Its great way to compete and fair . There are lots of fun ways can gain points on cg trader .

Beautifully put IterateCGI, let's hope it is signal for more than just Tubro's downfall, but hopefully the downfall of treating 3D creators like shit.

Cgtrader have more favorable royalty rates, compared to TurboSquid.
But if you are on Turbosquid as an exclusive sale (models will be sold only on the website TurboSquid), Cgtrader can lose and this position, in favor of TS...
Another point in favor cgtrader is that the royalties and buy a model possible in the payment system WebMoney.

CGtrader better is : Design,User friendly,royalties etc all better .

@interate CGI .... TS going down. (I forgot to put TS up). :)

@interate CGI .... TS going down. (I forgot to put TS up). :)

You are right Interate CGI goes down.

There are tons of things better here on CGtrader, most notably we get served very well for extremely low cost. On Ts we get served for extreme large cost and rather badly frankly said.

Even when Ts would sell more models it does not mean they serve you well, because it is not.

Regarding sales, for me personally CGtrader is in lead with a small margin for almost 5 months in row now, I'm confident the difference will get even bigger (so let's be realistic Ts sales is dropping dramatically).

I would even make the prediction that most of what will be left of Ts (following months) are the exclusive sellers, they will probably get very frustrated and come over here no matter what deals they made with Ts.

So, Ts will probably have a few thousand lawsuits to issue in following months if they like.

I'm afraid the end of Ts is near and nothing can stop it, maybe the best they can do is raise royalty's to 80% for all sellers, but then again if they don't change the censorship policy's they are applying right now then it will probably not be enough to stop the downfall in the long run.

This market is changing rapidly and Ts is not adapting to the evolution of connectedness within the global CG community.

CGtrader is more in line with modern economics and following the model of open participation businesses, all these things make it have the hallmarks of successfully serving a growing team with highly ambitious members and top talented achievers (and also stronger support of the CG community itself).

I imagine a totally different mentality is going on in the Ts room, where top talents probably just like to leave the building because a few individuals like to keep things in check (you know like in the old top down pyramidal structured way).

the only thing that has cgtrader extra is the freelance job posting area. still turbosquid has the most paying clients. i guess both have different orientation...one is cg and one is 3d printing oriented.

Yes indeed! Unlike Turbosquid which has remained practically the same since it was created and that actually has become dodgier over time as they have been adding more and more hoops for artists to jump through just to upload a basic model CGT has been great about constantly listening to it's artists needs and made great improvements!
CGT is the only website that really understand both the artists and customer needs!

Well, it was more than one year ago that I last intervened on this thread. My opinions have evoluted over the months.
Since then, I think the design has gotten much better, especially the separation between regular CG and 3D print, and the search algorithm seems also to be much more efficient.
My sales are not still on par with TS, but I haven't published new models for quite some time, because I only have time to create models to enter challenges from time to time. So my own experience on sales is of little value.
The very best thing I find on CGT is the disponibility of the team. They bring answers to your problems or requests quite fast and in a very convivial way. Plus, if you express constructive ideas on the forums, you know you'll get listened to. They may not end up following your ideas, but they will certainly take them into account. I experienced this on other topics like the challenges, where CGT team took some ideas into consideration and applied some of them.
For this, it is certainly the most pleasant place to sell models I know right now.

With only a few days on CG trader, i can already see it is miles ahead of turbosquid. Just uploading on turbosquid is a pain in the butt. It takes way too long to put up any files. The entire way of setting up your model seems backwards and chaotic. Here it is quite seamless and elegant. Plus, as I saw in another post, turbosquid does not let you post any links. I think posting links to showcase your model in an animation or to show how a rig works is extremely advantageous. Turbosquid immediately shuts any links down. It also seems to me like CG trader is looking out a lot more for the artists. Which is good, since we are the ones who will bring in the profits. Turbosquid just has it backwards.

The biggest problem with TS is that it is a pyramid scheme... if you have a diamond account you have a good chance of selling models but at the low levels you have no chance. When you just start out you have to price your models at 1 dollar or give them away for free but the second you start selling well they take your models offline and force you to raise your prices... Once you raise your prices nobody buys and you are back to square 1. A real pointless task. The people at the top of the pyramid scheme bully all the new modelers who show any sales success because they barely scrape by as it is so it is really bad work environment to work for... Turbosquid is not worth your time.

Checkmate is the only good thing Turbosquid has left to offer. Without checkmate Turbosquid would have gone out of business. The last handful of successful high end 3D studios still buy those models because they know that the scenes have to be clean, geometry has no odd manifold or abnormal issues and the modelers have to jump through all kinds of hoops to ensure the quality of the model including providing high quality 360 renders. Having said that... creating models of that high end quality is quite the burden on 3D modelers who just do it as a hobby or work 3D part time so a lot of artists are moving away from TS because they can't sell their regular models on there anymore.

@ Supercigale...ha, ha, a good point about ,,the famous CheckMate,, :) TS . ,,Checkmate,, from TS was actually invented by Jonathan Lloyd, the person who ruined Pixel SQUID :). Of course Matt Wisdom was disoriented and he was associated with Pixel SQUID bankruptcy.

I also think, as iterateCGI, the market control based on exclusivity will soon disappear.
What I read on different forums seems obvious, exclusivity no longer pays.

the success of CGTrader (and other sites as well) contributed to that.
Sales site defending exclusivity trying to find ways to seduce (like the famous CheckMate) but this has no return.

According to me ,in the future, more a 3DMarketplace will be open more it will take to success.
And in terms of openness and freedom CGTrader is the first

Yes, CG Trader is the best now ...some bugs should be solved.
I like, CG Trader is ascent.

Money in short term does not always pay of in long run. It is also wise to invest in good ideas that are future proof.

CGtrader is founded upon the best ideas and the people hoe believe in it and keep supporting it no matter what and hard work and determination always win.

The classic idea of exclusivity, division and concealment as a strategy to get to a monopolistic position is bad for the industry and everyone is coming to the realization how bad it rely is.

I'm glad CGtrader and its community of supporters is able to make this situation come to an end.
We finally have some real genuine completion for the best sales platform.

I dare to bed that those hoe left CGtrader a year ago to sign some exclusive contract to get the money a little bit faster will regret that decision rely badly next year.

Fact is, the best is where is can make the most sales. As modeller and as salesman i am interested in earn money only. Doesnt matter the kind of kinky-dinky stuff the platform provides me. Money rules!

And i cannot take care for piracy or stolen models because the 3d stuff will go in piracy anyways, doensnt matter the platform it comes from. Each sold model you can find anyone time in a download center. See this GFXHub where you needed to pay a fee before you could download 3d models of Humster3d, Turbosquid and many other.

So i need to try to make money with my models as long as possible, means as long it is not uploaded to anywhere else.
And therefore it doesnt matter where it is. Important only is that there buy many people

For me CGTrader is the best and CGTrader has the best structure of a 3d site !!!
..........
About TS:
TurboSquid goes down, It becomes miserable the users are ,,working from behind,, ! !
I was ,,Diamond ,, since 2008, they stole items and they never gave me the money .... etc
When I asked why they don' want pay for that they have suspended my products ( 428) products... they did not say anything after. TurboSquid be avoided guys!
Also the management is awkward on TS.
.............
So, CGT is the best guys !

I agree with the last post, searching for models should not be a pain.
But for the rest i do like the way cgtrader functions, more royalty rate, easy uploading and a community forum and job board. At the moment i think its more a community of sellers and not so much of buyers.
But i think its not only the responsability of cgtrader to turn this around. I think we as sellers can do a lot to make cgtrader more interesting for buyers. First of all make great and spectacular models for it and promote it on forums, facebook, linkedin groups and forums. This way we let buyers know that cgtrader got some interesting stuff. And even if you sell the same models on other side you can advertise them as being the cheapest here.
I think we just need so some massive killer models of epic proportions that the 3D modeling community can´t ignore.

well that is my theory though :)

Yes CGtrader is great! It is also my favorite 3D site but some things need to be fixed before they can overtake some of the other sites.

Their only flaws are the lack of publicity and their search engine. I have been studying their website from a buyers perspective thoroughly and I have noticed that;

1. When you search for specific models... car, bike etc... you usually end up finding a bunch of irrelevant models in there that don't even belong in that category and that is largely due to the fact that, they allow users to setup their own tags...
People may think that having that option makes it more likely for sellers to see their work by placing their models in the incorrect category but actually that just irritates buyers who may just go elsewhere to buy.

If you are a buyer you don't have a lot of time to find what you want especially if you are buying on behalf of your company. You need to find what you want based on category and budget and purchase it quickly so you can use the product or send it to who will.

Think about the best online stores today... when people search for lamps on Amazon they will only find lamps in their search and that is why they keep buying on Amazon because it is a highly efficient and professional site where the buyers don't get lost or frustrated looking for what they want and can spend their time searching for the best quality product based on their budget.

2. Buyers tend to look for things based on the category and budget and like to be able to put two products side by side to compare them and get a better understanding of why one is better than the other or which product is more suitable for them as an individual.

Products should be grouped not only by name and category but also by poly count. Imagine how much easier it would be for a games company to do a search by typing in (sword, 15 dollars and then 500 polygons. Then they would only find the relevant models and get to purchasing them right away.

The advance search option should obviously only be available for paid models so to avoid people only free loading and just finding all the free models.
This would be a really good way of encouraging buyers to come spend their money on CGtrader where they can find what they want faster than on other sites.

If they want free models then they can go elsewhere!!!

If they can sell on craigslist, amazon, ebay, walmart, target, toysrus etc...

Of course they would only sell the 3D printable toys there, either to be printed or already printed then yes all of a sudden 3D printing would be come more relavant and profitable.

If anyone has been to New York they will have noticed that Fao Swartz a toy store in the center of Manhattan is creating 3D printable action figures. They customize those figures anyway you want. You could have a superman body with an iron man head and spiderman gloves. It is pretty awesome!!!

So many more buyers would actually have a look at what they have because sometimes you want to buy a special toy
for someone that is a little more unique. Something that isn't so mass produced as one of the Hot wheels or Hasbro etc...

So then people can actually customize and make cool toys and sell them on there.
3D is great for creating things that can restore old products. Like when something breaks that is no longer in production like your favorite mug or something.

Imagine if CGtrader provided a service where they could get photos of the broken mug, then have some artists create a 3D version from the broken pieces and then have it printed for the client and sent to their house or if the client wants they can use their 3D printing company of preference to do it.

That is where the true value of 3D is today but unless someone can show the masses that this kind of thing can be done at a reasonable price ,(based on market value), then 3D will continue to be a half dead market... until it will die completely because robotics have reached an advanced stage where they will soon be able to replace artists.

Machines have already replaced people making their jobs irrelevant in many fields already... more and more customer service jobs have become automated, many store sales positions now are not needed because so much is being done online, the tolls on the highways now only use fast track or you get a letter in the mail telling you to pay it because there is no one in the booth anymore so you can't pay it on the road. Very soon there will be robots that can scan objects faster than any modeler can model them and then reproduce a print almost instantly... in 10 to 30 years 3D jobs will be irrelevant but until then someone needs to really bring CGtrader to the big markets.

Yes. Cgtrader cannot compare to certain 3d markets. It sells almost nothing, except, perhaps, with very low prices. They should make more effort to advertise.

CG traders designer rank... rep points. royalty scale you work up on is all very cool... the fact you can print here sell files here and stream files all on one listing... CG TRADER FOR THE WIN!!! just needs more publicity.. us designers need to market the site with our products... at the rate one of my designs is going ill have more facebook likes/shares than the website itself has on one design...
but outside of the fact cgtrader is 95% designers and 5% customers its way better and easier to use more professional looking and feeling

I think CGTrader just has to advertise itself more..... everything else will fall into place.....

Hi from Will and Mr Data :) :]
I have to be honest about my view else who am i.
Some points for and against.
CGTrader has the better platform from my point of view, better rates if i remember correct.
TS has terrible support, i had stupid responses from them during my interaction with them.
They have more traffic so i'm told.

Downside at CGTrader is as i've just been informed from Support is NO you can't sell the licence here and transfer it into another users name. That is a big killer for licencing anything here that you intend to sell the licence for, leaving me with having to licence at Thingiverse first then using CGTrader as advertising or selling copies of the files only.
Thingiverse has allowed licenses to be transferred into another users name, which is very important option if you want to invent something and sell the ownership, else your stuck with it forever.
I don't know if Turbo Squid allows licence ownership to be transferred as i never got that far with them.
I had hoped that CGTrader would want to be the kings but i have to be honest if you licence a thing only here you have to own it forever, as you cannot sell that licence.
Thingiverse remains the king for licensing, as you can transfer the licence within the site.
"that is where the big money can be", being able to part with an invention has value.
CGTrader has a good plateform for selling already licensed things files but not selling the licence,your trapped into owning the licence.
Thank you.
bye for now and be well Will and Mr Data :) :]

TS has more sales because :
TS has bather page rank, when someone searches the net it will come on top, simple because it is an older website. CGtrader website is much bather coded and it just need some time to get on top. We can help here by simple putting the links to our work on our social media.
Many do not search the net, they go directly to TS and search there for models.

CGTrader is bather as a platform and like I wrote above if we help in couple of months will overcome TS on search engines, which will also increase our sales. On TS depends on the country you come for, you get around 30% of your earnings (this is how much you get on your account, I know it is stated 60% but they take additional 30% for US tax), here I am not shore how much you get as I just joined and did not made any sales.

TS beside ripping off taxes have a terrible support, I just was told in the civilized manner to F OFF, as I complained on an admin who kept my 3D model suspended for over 4 days.

Another thing that drove me crazy about Turbosquid was how you couldn't promote any of your social media and it made it very difficult to get your clients from let's say Facebook and Twitter to notice your artwork.

I remember fighting them at length to try to put my brand name withing the model description or my website link and eventually lost the battle.

Here at CGtrader you can do all of that and much much more which is awesome!!

You are right IterateCGI it would be terrible for the photo realistic 3D models however if you think about it not that many 3D artists create things in that style and in some cases are capable of doing that... especially some of the newbies.

Also don't forget that people sell their photos and posters too. Lots of people buy posters to print and put on their walls especially students. Others download beautiful jpeg or tiff files to set as their desktop wallpapers at the office.

So if you think about that when we try selling just 3D models we are actually loosing a great deal of the market. We need to broaden our spectrum and clientele if we want to make more money.

One of the biggest problems in this country is that the games and film studios are becoming a bit of a joke and not getting the funding they used to have. In other countries like China film production is far better funded so perhaps CGTrader could try opening it's doors to Hong Kong film studios etc... Japan is also far better funded and in fact Turbosquid is also selling models on the Japanese market.

I have noticed that a lot of artists are moving to Asia to find jobs where they are far better respected and paid what they are worth.

Ebay and Amazon would be great for the cartoony non realistic stuff as well as 3D prints so long as people make sure to document the files appropriately and let people know it is 3D and not real.

They already sell 3D printers on amazon so it isn't a far stretch to just add the models in the suggested items that go with 3D printers.

Also you need to think about the advantage of not having to worry about shipping costs etc... with digital art. If you manage to get lots of buyers on there you could make a real fortune.

That definitely wasn't me hoe said that turbo.

Selling 3D models on Ebay or Amazon would probably generate problems? Some people mistaken de renders for real items already, can imagine how that would be on Ebay or amazon.

I think this computer graphics industry just needs a well known and established hub specific to our profession, and one that is being run with good core principals like we see it here on CGt.

I am hoping that never happens... Exnihilum! In fact I hope that once buyers begin to see the difference in quality on this site they will jump ship but the thing that still trips up CGTrader is the consumer confidence.

Recently I've been trying to contact my old clients and buyers and although they still have an interest in my models they don't quite trust CGT with their money.

They often would ask me to just send them a model through email and pay me through paypal like in the old days. That is a serious problem because it means a whole lot more work for sellers and I wish they would just get with the program.

The next thing CGT needs to do is get in with Ebay, Amazon, walmart etc... places where everyone buys not just 3D enthusiasts and that regular people trust with their money.

Once that happens it is goodbye Turbosquid and hello big bucks for all of us at CGtrader.
I read here on the forum... can't remember if it was Iterate CGI or someone else said that CGTrader will soon sell on Amazon and I can't wait for it to happen!!

It's all fine and CGT rocks the socks off the competition.

I'm just dreading that sober moment when TS offers to buy CGT to kill off the competition.
I doubt the owner will say no to a hefty clump sum, no questions asked, in exchange for site keys and source.
Then we're all back at Square one again.

You are absolutely right iterateCGI!

In response to your comments kanga, I would like to add this to the conversation.

Marius Kalytis (founder of this place) was a 3D artist himself and took notice of the questionable policy's the established market had adopted (leaving room to do it differently).

In response he founded this place on the core principal that the artist would come first. Being an artist himself makes a huge difference in this regard.

Ts indeed was able to maneuver into a very dominant position regarding the Autodesk partnership, allot of us are very familiar with that place because of it.
However, probably allot of us silently disagree on how we are treated as artist on places like Ts.

This place is indeed different and allot closer to what we actually need, I can't imagine the core principal on witch this place is founded would change as it will prove to be the one and only way to be future proof in this supper connected world.

Everything we do is going on between people, we are all in this together, none of us is separate now matter how hard we would like to think so. Marius knows this very well as he (whenever he can) communicates whit us. To me it feels like he is amongst us and we are performing a team effort. He earns trust in this way and we know everything stands or falls with the coming and going of trust.

If I compare him with the founder of Ts, then it becomes clear to me we have a completely different relationship.

Dear Kanga you are absolutely right and on top of that you won't have to worry about their super buggy uploading system either.

I used to hate how it would crash constantly or find that half way through the process even after saving a draft,suddenly the poly count numbers or other text, numbers etc... suddenly got erased.

It is a wonder how people still haven't fixed bugs like that after so many years and it made the whole uploading process a total hassle.

On top of that they have so many odd restrictions and hoops you need to keep jumping through just to make your model visible and people end up having to buy diamond accounts because they know they won't sell a single model unless they do.

I posted my first model today and have to say it was a very pleasant experience. I wont be using TurboSquid due to their royalty system and the fact that I would have to hunt down non-existing forms to prove I am not an American resident and thus avoid paying 30% govt. tax on top of a high 60% that TS keeps.

I think the TS percentage is pretty much an outrage considering the low price of the products being sold. I would expect those kinds of charges from a real art gallery with real world space that could sell my work for 10,000 a pop, not some virtual space that sells my work for 50 bucks. I wouldn't ever use their site just on principle.

You have to realize that TS is recognized by autodesk and even had a direct tab link to their site in max itself. I don't know if that is still the case ( and I have no desire to check ) but that is advertising that is hard to beat. For myself, long live CGTrader and may they keep their principles as they grow. Looks to me like they are providing a very content creator friendly environment.

Cheers

Most small or midsized companies I worked with, did their best to cap their scene polygons at no more 500,000 all models included. The same goes for student projects.

Of course if you are buying models for the next Transformers movie the poly count won't matter that much because those models may be 500,000 each and you have almost unlimited resources to run those.

Any more than 500,000 polygons in one scene and that will make opening and closing it a really long process not to mention that if you trying to animate something in the scene you may have to keep hiding things in various layers or create the animation in a separate one.

A good ref point is that your average laptop with Dual Pentium 2 gigahertz processor 8 GB of ram will start having issues when running over 200,000 polygons. Of course if you have a PC with quad processors over 16 GB of ram things will be different but be warned students and low end users.

Dear adentonclark,

you should check out all the posts about 3D models quality. They will be very enlightening and useful to you especially if you have never built 3D models and don't know what to expect.

In my experience often times a client will ask for certain models but then one must take into consideration what computer specs they have because you don't want your client to get frustrated with the models you buy.

Some may look great for close ups but in a large environment scene or house setting when you have a lot of models to let's say show off the interior design of a model home you need to be very careful on poly count.

Having too many high poly models in 1 scene can considerably slow down rendering times, work flow and even crash your computer making the entire scene unusable.

adentonclark is 100 percent correct in this regard!

If anything buyers should get lots of points for buying. That is the most important reason for them to be on CGTrader and it is essential to reward them for helping artist and the site earn money!

iterateCGI is 100 percent correct!

If anything buyers should get lots of points for buying. That is the most important reason for them to be on CGTrader and it is essential to reward them for helping artist and the site earn money!

Free models are posted for lots of different reasons, not just only to serve as an example to show of artist modeling skills/quality of work (sample data).

Some may post their old stuff they just don't want to ask money for, consequentially it is also not representative of the work they currently do. And some may post a part of a set, and ad a link to the complete set, others may just do it to spread their work and name, etc.

I like the deposit proposal of flat_3d, but jet again it probably best be part of a repertoire of marketing tools the designer could choose from, not a global policy. I'm always in favor for more options and less restrictions.

In previous post the buyer mentioned he don't get reputation points for buying models? So part of the problem would probably be solved if a buyer would indeed get reputation points for buying models and gain more access in the process.

Ps. found jet another working example that makes CGt stand out.
Some while ago someone (if he is real, can't even verify that) bought my snakebot model on Ts and he posted a nice comment. Comment goo's like this, quote "Awesome model, converted this guy over into maya and he looks great" end quote.

Now if this individual was for real I would have loved to contact him and ask If he would like to give me that converted file in exchange for every dollar he paid for the model. So here on CGt I could have just asked the buyer if he would be interested in that sort of deal. Speaking of it, noting even stops me here from adding in the description of the model something like this,"If you are a maya exeprt and can successful convert this project, then I will completely refund you in exchange for that converted maya file".

(I prefer not to learn/spent time to handle all the different 3D applications and conversions) Send of two customers so far (here on CGt), hoe asked for a maya version of this model. Don't know how many even bother to ask, and on Ts no one can ask anything.

So the wonderful conversion work/time spend of this individual could have helped him to get a complete refund, and the two others, (hoe I have send off here) would also have been helped whit a nice maya file, and I would have sold at least two more models (Everyone would benefit). It's an example of waste of human recourses and time, because how many more are performing this same conversion work without telling? We can't even communicate on Ts, and that in an age of supper connectivity, it's just the world on his head.

Very smart idea!

They could put down an amount between 1 to 5 bucks as a deposit and after sampling the model as you suggested they could deduct that amount from the final sale. After all everyone can afford to put down 1 dollar so it is reasonable.

As someone suggested most serious buyers will end up buying 100 bucks worth of models so putting down 1 Dollar isn't going to cause any trouble.

Brilliant Flat_3d!

A possible solution for potential buyers looking to sample the work of sellers, would be for sellers to have their free sample models at a low minimal price instead of free. This would allow genuine potential buyers to check the quality of models. If the buyer decided to buy after inspecting a sample, the seller would deduct the sample price from another 3d model.
I don't know whether it would be possible to implement, but it would stop those who just wanted to download as many free models as possible.

The other issue is that Turbosquid has been out there for longer. It is all about customer reputation and perception. People are followers they have always been and always will be. Part of it is because they don't want to get scammed.

So that is why sites like Amazon are making a fortune. They provide clients with pretty much everything they could possibly want at reasonable prices and have a 100 percent guarantee return policy on all their items. They also have multiple sellers selling the same products so that it is easier for people to avoid people paying for shipping in their country.

Basically just like Turbosquid has done they have become the one stop shop for everything.
If you look around on the net on all the various forums everyone always mentions Turbosquid be it positively or negatively. What that means is that customers have the illusion of it being the best site out there even if the quality of the products is way below CGTrader.

CGTrader just doesn't have the exposure it needs yet to top Turbosquid but I am confident it will surpass it in time because of the quality of it's products but word of mouth is key in this business and people need to be talking more about them.

That is why I like to use Apple as the example of preference. They had shoddy products but they created the illusion of having something amazing and that was better than a PC. They did so by making products that looked so much cooler than PCs and people were fooled and then eventually they made so much money that then they kept putting back into the product and eventually came out with the Ipad which even all Apple haters love.

That's how they won... and that is how you succeed in business. You must create a huge hype and create things that are unique and that connect with people.

I have always been amazed at how TS can pull off their selling stunt, I've got better stuff AND cheaper on here than on TS but the sales over there totally dominate. No, I don't think it's just about SEO. A client would normally ALWAYS choose a cheaper price, that's a law of nature. The items from CG and TS do not appear very far from each other in Google.

Maybe they have a much deeper interaction with the clients? They can present the model screenshots straight from their helpdesk and ensure the client is not being screwed?
The rumour that they can "borrow" models for check-out before buy to particularly trustworthy clients could also be true. Not that I like it or want to have my objects "borrowed".

Dear adentonclark,

what you say doesn't make any sense because CGTrader has a 100 percent guarantee return policy on all models as far as I know. You can just buy and return it if it is not to your satisfaction. I do agree with you regarding the search engine.

It is pretty difficult to find what you want but if you are only looking for free models then CGTrader's search engine is far better than Turbosquid. They recently changed their search engine over there and when you search for Free models it comes up with a few free ones and many more paid ones so from that perspective Turbosquid makes your life even harder lol.

You are clearly one of the professional buyers who doesn't take advantage of the system but there are so many out there who do that and 3D sites are beginning to try to safe guard their artist's work by not making it so easy to just get everything you want for free.

If you think life is hard as a buyer you should try modeling for a living... Making any money is a truly miserable experience. There are very few modelers out there who can actually support themselves financially doing this and whenever one of us sells anything it is a little like winning the lottery.

I have to agree. I'm just an end-user, one of the people you guys sell to, and the site is a large part of the issue, in multiple ways.

I'm not a modeler, I come here to buy models and this site is surprisingly obtuse when it comes to layout. Search is terrible, and lost if you have to go backwards a page. Then there is the stupid "reputation" point issue. I don't know how reputation points work for sellers, they may work fine if you're an actual modeler, but for end-users it's just a dead-end.

Let me explain - I like the look of the models here, but the site is even designed so end users, like me, can't even download more that 10 "free" items unless they've uploaded models of their own, written tutorials, posted topics to the forum (which is difficult if you're not an actual modeler) and/or jumped through about 1,500 other ridiculous hoops to get enough "reputation" points.

I've often (not just at this site) downloaded "free" items to verify their quality before purchasing models from a vendor...I had problems with 3-4 of the "free" items I looked at first here (having no idea there was a limit), and now I can download no more.

For example, I ran into this this morning. There is a lamp that looks pretty cool (Gervasoni Bolla Floor light), and is supposedly free. I think I like the another item the modeler has created (Modern Villa), but that item is $40. I can't download that lamp and see it's quality myself - so why would I purchase anything from the creator when I don't know if I'll be satisfied? You don't even seem to get reputation points for purchasing items, assuming I've read the page correctly, and if that is the case it's just dumb. That basically says paying customers aren't allowed access to supposedly "free" items.

To be honest, when I first found this site a few days ago I was really excited. I don't get paid until the 3rd, but I thought I'd download some things, look at their quality, fill up a cart and get prepared to purchase when the money comes around. Well, unless I can verify the quality of the model I'm not going to pay for most things.

I'm about to bail on this site now - unless I can find any other topics that I might be qualified to post to...apparently if I'm friendly enough I can earn some points, but it's seriously unlikely that I'll find any topics to which I can actually contribute. Also, trying to find an item that I already saw through the search is near impossible. I'm probably leaving this site for good, but it won't be because of you guys - it's because of the site itself.

Honestly I feel that it would be better to sell n bit slower that to have your models stolen. We had the experience of a 3d modeling agents (UKW) stealing our models before and stopped selling with them, from there on we put a small signature on each model. We will rather stick with cgtrader and know our models are safe, although the issue with finding CG models on the site is a little problem, but as long as they stay honest we’ll be supporting them rather than supporting a bunch of thief’s and if we need to up our prices then so be it.

CGTrader is extremely accessible, perhaps too much so for its own good in some lights. I do not know if community-policing has helped other sites keep their products better organized. I do not know if micro-managing brand or front-page appeal helps drive sales more effectively on other sites than on CGTrader. If it is true that other sites are taking a higher margin and a larger slice of profit share, they have some kind of capital to work magic with, both with artists who are accepting less and buyers who are paying more. It might be a good idea to see what the customer experience is with various market places by making an experimental purchase at each and seeing who has the most effective methods of enticing return visits and encouraging word-of-mouth bumps.

Every market needs time, every business needs it. Let's give some time to time.

I would opt for a system that integrates different stores each with its own label/trademark placed under one common trademark (for sake of organization and readability)

CGtraders main trademark would then function as a placeholder/main hub for many different sub stores. (e.g. stores with its own labels for 3D printing, 3D stock, crowdfunding, game models maybe even concept designs, sound files, storytellers, code for making apps, 3D scripts, etc) Each of this stores would then again have subcategories (e.g. 3D stock would have main subs like architectural, medical, automotive, etc)

This concept is not new and it seems to work well over here (http://market.envato.com/)
To bad this place is ridiculously expensive, you only get 33% of your sales.

My thoughts exactly..... 3d Printing could be very profitable (for CG Trader, and the modelers)
I think CG Trader should remain working with printing, however, it's main concern should be CG :D

I agree that these two parts - CG and 3D printing should be split at least externally/ visually. It needs to be obvious where to go if you want one or the other. Maybe the home page should be a very simple page with only two huge buttons [CG models] and [3D Printing].

The "crap models", "under-priced models" issue is a very sensitive topic that should be discussed. I have been very active on a forum of a different 3D model store, but the guys running it seemed to be ignorant about the issue. At least some aspects of it. The staff on CG Trader seem to be very active and listen to ideas from the community, so I will try to find time and post some ideas on how the problem could be solved. Hopefully this will start another interesting discussion . ;)

Heh.. that's another topic but my top selling model is nude. Personally I don' t see anything offending on human body, everyone has one but I respect that it could be offending to someone (especially kids) so it should be censured. But it should be also possible to turn this filter off.
For me is more offending that kids are able to sell models here. In my country you have to be adult to do bussines and legal stuff.

And yes .. "CG Trader has made their world about 3d printing". That's what I'm saying all the time and what I didn't like because I was not selling models for 3d printing and reason why I left.

I don't think it's possible to have WORKING site with both 3d printing and classic models.
It's like if shapeways.com will start selling classic "cg" models. It would be mess.

@IndieArt Right on there..... CG Trader has made their world about 3d printing..... even most of their contests... And they're quickly turning away new buyers.... Also, I think the nudes on this site, should be taken off.... Honestly, who wants to buy nudes anyway? To someone looking to promote his business with 3d art, it may be quite offending... I know I personally would be...

Just my opinion, but look at homepage. You know what is cgtrader but as firstcomer you must have strong impression that this is 3d printing site where you can buy new 3d printed iphone case which will be shipped to you.

From point of buyer who wants to buy a classic 3D model (cg) there is no way I will start searching on cgtrader. This site is bloated with 3D print ready models, crap models and "adult content / i cant see it".
I will search on TS and when found right model I will maybe look at cgtrader if there is that same model for cheaper. But I will look there only because I know what is cgtrader and how it works.

@dafunk @S/C. @IndieArt : So you definitively think that CGtrader's "change of focus" to 3D print sunk your sales?

I assume your stats will easily and unarguably confirm that to CGtrader's management staff...

Anybody else suffered the same blows to their sales in the same months as the web updates?

Although I agree the presentation of CGtraders home page is heavily focused at 3D printing, NoneCG did not suffer ANY drop in sales.

On the contrary, comparing 2013 to 2014 for the exact same period (January to August) our sales INCREASED in a 45%. (These stats can be confirmed as true by CGtrader staff, we have no problem with that).

I would like to see similar stats from other sellers, but CGtrader has been the 3D marketplace with the higher increase in sales for us without a doubt.

Yep..
When I started on cgtrader I had more sales than on TS.
Then someone from cgtrader decided that he likes 3dprinting sooo much.
Sales dropped to almost nothing.
I deleted my products here and joined sguild again, no reason for staying here.
I hope someone someday will take the concept behind old cgtrader
and resurrect it without that 3dprinting nonsense.

when cgtrader change his frontpage i stop selling products... bad :(

Is the same for me as everyone else. Turbosquid has the traffic and so you get the sails. It is a shame that cg trader has so few people using it but turbosquid has been going for some time now and is very well established. I started uploading some of my items to cg trader to see if it generated any income but as I have 70+ items and 0 sales I have decided to stop. I will leave the items here to see if cg trader does manage to change things around over the next 12 months and if not will simply sell them on turbosquid. Best of luck to cg trader, they have a great business model and site, it is just going to be incredibly difficult to take any of the market share from such a well established company.

Despite offering models much cheaper (obviously) here than at TSquid, the clients prefer to buy on TSquid. The conclusion seems, that clients are either more familiar with Tsquid, or that TSquid offers something else that is so valuable that even a much lower price doesn't matter.

What's lacking? Advertising? Doesn't seem so. Searching for specific terms applying to a specific model, the results on Google are nearly on first page.

So what's needed? Reputation for promptly fixing problems? In place already.

Is it the return guarantee if not satisfied? But they can still contact the artist for fixing issues directly here on CGTrader. See the reputation, see the response rate, realise the problem will be fixed.

No frankly, it's a bloody mystery. The clients like to waste money for a more expensive model at TSquid, perhaps knowing that the artist will get shafted with a measly 40% return, and that's that.

Talk about bad business decisions.

This conversation has me glued to my monitor, all very well spoken and nailed down to the core.

A serious problem indeed about Turbosquid is its policy of setting up barriers to avoid having a direct link to customers (this includes banning of al communication technologies). It makes you blind and clueless to how a customer is actually using your product and how well it integrates in his business and future activities. This is critical information (to me at least) in regard to evolution and overall development of the products and services you want to deliver. Having a direct link/communication is also critical in detecting possible needs and potential new business.

In regards to product awareness and marketing it is also nice to have some special user cases to show off, there is no room to collect user case data in the Ts model.

What I eventually hope to have is a healthy fair open market place, where collaboration , communication, people empowerment and evolution prevails over control systems, central power structures, monopolistic thinking, and maintaining of a status qou.

A good platform should integrate all next gen communication technologies in order to support curent evolution and technological progress. (e.g. video services, 3D viewers, social media , crowd funding platforms, etc.) CGtrader delivers the best basic structure to bring fort this new and healthy next gen market place. There are indeed some snags in data management and the sorting out system. This is inherently due to the fact that computers are still very bad when it comes to optimization processes, human brains are far more superior in sorting out things. This is why I would opt for a system which includes human sorting out capabilities.

I'm suggesting a collective of store owners.
The basic approach would be that every user start with a selection of a store template (including own label option and menu creation capability's) and starts filling his store with own products and products found in the large collective database. (this would be the core of the human sorting out system). Next we would have the sales/customers feedback factor coming in to sort out the stores ranking. The rewords for selling objects from others could for example be 1 CGcredit for tier 1, 2 for tier2, 3 for tier3, 4 for tier4 and so on. A customer coming in from outside can view stores, search inside a store or still search the global data base.

In short I propose an integration of global search ore collections made by designers.

I think John Hoagland already pointed out very well the most direct benefits of doing business with Cgtrader over Turbosquid.

In my opinion, the worst Turbosquid is doing is minimizing the role and presence of the real content creators, being just a middleman reseller but trying to control all aspects of the product in a way that in the end the customer perceives it more like a "Turbosquid product" than a "Content-creator-X product". They don't allow you to communicate with the customer, with Turbosquid support acting as a "human firewall" (and a bad one) that is constantly supervising every interaction to ensure that Turbosquid always gets the best outcome (and neither the seller nor the customer).

On the other side, CGtrader empowers the real content creators, giving them all kind of freedom regarding their products and image, and encouraging communication between customers and content creators. Plus giving much higher royalties, instantly paid, much better support, publishing system, etc.

You just have to check the Sellers forum at Turbosquid to see plenty of complaints about all sorts of abusive policies.

Most people don't care a bit about all this. There is plenty of "undercutters" everywhere and some short-sighted content developers that seem to only care about quick cash-grabs and most of the time doesn't even have enough data to state a valid opinion based on the contrast of facts over medium-long periods of time.

We've been doing business with Turbosquid for more than 10 years until our very public issues last year:

http://www.nonecg.com/turbosquid/turbosquid_nonecg.htm

and we lived the evolution of Turbosquid from being a pioneer of the 3D assets market working alongside the real content developers to become a typical corporation with financial backing from angel investors that only cares about financial results and is trying to strive the 3D market towards a monopoly where they can control both the producers and the customers, where acting as just a middleman gets Turbosquid the most profit from both.

Most people say you get more sales at Turbosquid than any other 3D marketplace, so even if you get a much lower royalty % in the end you get more money, and while this is true up to a point (NOT x80 sales in any case), what most people don't realize is what happens IF your products are NOT in Turbosquid but you continue to sell in other marketplaces and have a bit of patience.

We've been there, even being "Squid Guild exclusive" for some time to test the experience ourselves for real, and after more than 10 years with all our experiences and stats in hand we can state without a doubt that the business model offered by Turbosquid doesn't pay off in the mid-long term.
For some people with experience that did the math taking all factors in count (not talking about just NoneCG, of course) it was crystal clear since many years ago. Hell, I even remember writing years ago to Matt Wisdom (TS Founder & CEO), Beau Perschall (VP of Business Dev) and other people at the management staff about the "no-brainer" choice for sellers regarding going exclusive into the "Squid Guild" or not, because after a group of sellers collected our stats and compared our earnings (for similar periods of time being exclusive and not) all of us ended with the clear conclusion that we were losing revenue being exclusive to TS instead of selling in all markets... no single answer was received from any TS management staff member. ;)

A little more than a year passed since our public disagreement with Turbosquid policies and behavior that ended our relationship as content creator and reseller. Although in the beginning that meant the loss of a big part of income (being Turbosquid the biggest 3D content reseller), after just a few adjustment months from that specific point our sales in ALL the other marketplaces started to grow up to a point where we don't miss any income from the missing Turbosquid sales anymore, while 90% of "customer problems" suddenly disappeared. All that time that we didn't have to spent dealing with Turbosquid bad support went to more time for artistic work.

It always depends on how you look at this industry from your point of view:

- Are you into this market trying to make a living out of it?

- Are you interested in just some quick cash grabs and extras here and there while you can, or would you like to be able to contribute to a fair market where you can make a living out of your passion?

- Do you prefer to do business with companies that takes the most profit from your products in exchange for a short-term higher revenue? or do you prefer to do business with companies you trust and feel comfortable working with while knowing you are supporting a #FairBusiness model that in the future will revert in your own direct benefit?

- Do you think that a company like Turbosquid, managed by/for corporate funding with clear monopolistic intentions is more likely to improve your situation as a content creator in the future?

I think these are questions that every 3D content creators must honestly answer for themselves.

I agree with Captainmarlowe than one of the most important ideas to develop is more "education" for Sellers about all aspects involved in this business, and some kind of system that favors good and fair business practices and penalizes bad ones.

During all these years we always felt Turbosquid favored a sort of chaos and unfair competition between sellers because they were profiting a lot from that lack of understanding and cooperation between content creators. We at NoneCg think that both CGtrader and Sellers will benefit from the exact opposite policy.

Hi John, you made very valid points.
I think that, besides the almost schizophrenic duality of the 3D-printing vs CG models offer, we all agree on the fact that CGTrader is very well designed, very neat and modern, with seducing next-gen ideas or concepts (direct trading between seller and buyer, sellers dashboard very clear and efficient, easy uploading, ability to embed sketchfab views of the models which I'm very fond of...)
As I wrote before, I do think that a huge part of the problem comes from the designers, with flooding of the forums with pointless threads to take advantage of the reputation system artificially, with very low quality objects, with free objects flooding the site...
So just to be constructive (and this will be my last post here, because I don't want to hijack the thread anymore, here are some ideas :
I really think that a "designer good practices charter" or something like that could help.
- Fixing some guidelines to upload quality models (at least assuring that obj models, for instance, if textured, should have a proper .mtl file, limiting the models to quads/tris, imposing materials and textures to have understandable names, etc. This is a bit OT, but although I obviously ain't a squidguild member, I always try to design objects that are "checkmate" compliant to be sure that my models are OK, and I also beta test the .OBJ version in a lot of other applications that LW to be sure that they upload without hassle)
- Limiting free objects to, let's say licensed objects like Stars Wars or Lego or whatever in an unlimited number, but to a few when it comes to "showcase" objects, let's say, 4 to 5 per designer, to help potential buyer judge the overall quality of the seller objects
- Forcing people to choose a proper tagging to their objects so that we don't get scanned high poly print-ready objects in the way when we tick the "low-poly" filter,
- Limiting, perhaps, the number of objects that can be uploaded in a row, to avoid having the front page confiscated by a single seller when ticking the "newest" filter.

The site owners could also act on other various levels :
- Moderating some pointless threads opened by people using CGtrader as an advertising platform for their own website without even selling a single object here
- Explaining on a personal basis to certain designers, even under banning threat, that creating very basic objects afters tutorials and selling them for 10$ with comments like : "my best model ever" will only hamper CGTrader credibility ; also that taking a poser or DAZ model, posing it (or even rigging it) in another software and adding a few details to it is still an obvious copyright infringements, if not a simple steal
- Once in a while, alert all designers that a cleaning operation will be made, and wipe out objects that are of a too bad quality or copyright infringements.

In my understanding, for CG models, there are three main trends : large public with various expectations and low budget (roughly, poser people) ; professionals needing a good quality model quick and ready to pay for that (roughly, TS buyers), programmers wanting to create video games in search of game ready assets.
Right now, low quality models flooding this site are attracting the low budget people - that's certainly why high quality objects with pricings in accordance don't sell that much. A buyer once requested a bargain of 50% on an object which is already 25% cheaper here than on TS on the ground he was a beginner...
If CGT wants to play big and attract high quality traffic and designers/buyers, it has to invite the sellers to opt for a more mature approach in my humble opinion.

Why is CGTrader better?
- It's much easier to upload products here than at TS.
- CGTrader pays a LOT more than TS; TS *keeps* 60% unless you sell exclusively on their site and join their "Squid Guild".
- CGTrader pays immediately; TS waits until the end of the month.

However, I will agree that sales here aren't as good as TS.

I agree to what captainmarlowe is telling.

The duality of 3D printing/CGmodels is a very complex marriage.
Maybe it is unnecessary complex?

I'm a bit afraid there's always going to be issues that leaves this community divided, leaving CGpeople with a platform not able to live up to its full potential and leaving 3D print people with a platform not living up to its full potential either.

I understand CGtrader's management don't want to bet on one horse but it probable lives the two horses crippled in this case. I like the concept of CGtrader very much, hope to see the duality issues resolved.

the only advantages in cgtrader are the big rates for clients. disavantages: low budget clients willing to get low quality models for 5$. there is low quality traffic on cgtrader and also became too much focused on 3d printing models so gets affordable if u have many low quality printable models of cheap prices. my main income its still TS. i think cgtrader can grow stronger with higher quality traffic. clients will come where is a big diversificated data base of quality models (not only printable models) and artists will come where paying clients are. its hard to run such a business so i hope cgtrader will survive in the future.

Thanks Dalia!!!!

Hi guys, thanks so much for your very valuable comments, they are much appreciated and we are very happy to work with you in order to make CGTrader the best place for 3D designers!

We are currently working to redesign the homepage to show off both CG and 3D print ready models. We initially did the 3D printing focused homepage after noticing that CG customers skip the homepage and come directly to product page, mostly knowing exactly what they need for their projects, while 3D printing customers need more direction and inspiration, so that even non-professionals can discover this new industry. But based on the results, we see that it makes sense to show off the CG part on the homepage as well.

@captainmarlowe Thanks a lot for a lot of valid points regarding search and categorization! The product team is reviewing your comments and this is something we will definitely work on. Regarding the support case, perhaps you could share the exact details on the case by a message or email to me (dalia@cgtrader.com) - we would like to look more into it and ensure that no cases like that are unsolved.

@IterateCGI These are great ideas and in fact we are currently working on one campaign that will involve the community to help market CGTrader better. We'll let you know about that soon - all CGT sellers will receive via email, so stay tuned!

Thanks again guys, and let us know if you have any further comments or questions.

@A3D

It doesn't matter if the printing industry is growing fast. I have no problem with a site offering an option for seller/buyer to find quality print-ready products.
The problem is that the site is not able to get a clear separation between CG and 3D printing. Also, the problem comes from the sellers, not the site designers, for a large part. When someone uploads a scanned model for 3D printing and tags it as "low poly", the model will appear even where it shouldn't. Thus by searching to widen its audience, the buyer only decrease the site credibility.
Same with copyright infringements, same with low quality models (a friend of mine bought recently a model here, which was supposed to be .OBJ compatible : but the seller had just exported the obj from its original program, without even editing the mtl file to have the textures loaded automatically ! My friend didn't get any support. I tried to edit the obj for him and renounced because of the bad quality, especially, UVs and material names that were impossible to edit, such as mat000_0571 and other flaws ; he also bought a model of a bad quality from TS but was offered a refund immediately even on a sunday ; he posted his experience on our forum ; needless to say that others members of this community won't consider, now, CGTrader as a top quality website), same with people starting everyday a new irrelevant thread on the forums just to take advantage of the reputation system, which was a good idea, but which was hijacked by some unscrupulous sellers.
I guess it is because of the youth of the site, which has not yet reached its maturity. At some point in the past both Turbosquid and The3DStudio had to get through a huge cleansing of their site and removed thousands of objects that were hampering their credibility. CGTrader will have to do so at some point, or people in search of quality models will simply avoid it.
So let's hope that at some point, the designers of the site will establish some filters to guarantee a minimal quality and, why not, a "good practice charter" for the sellers, or that they will explain some sellers that their attitude is not good in the long term for the site credibility.