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Would you use a market place on Muvizu.com?

Yes, to buy content: 6
Yes, to sell content: 2
Yes, to buy and sell content: 19
No: 3
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19/11/2015 18:13:40

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		Hi everybody.. Pat Marr from USA here...

I love the idea of an assets marketplace, both as seller and as buyer. I also like the idea of rules that would standardize such things as quality, the price of an asset pack, the definition of an asset pack (theme, # of assets, type of assets etc) and maybe a standardized purchasing medium, such as PayPal.

If you had to choose only one, PayPal has become the defacto currency for online transactions. But they do take a pretty big chunk of the transaction, plus a minimum charge of about $0.60 USD which basically means that the entire proceeds from the sale of a $0.60 item would go to PayPal, not to the seller. Costs like this are usually "per transaction" which is why it's better to bundle a bunch of assets into a collection (asset pack) to sell as one transaction. If the store continues to offer free content, it should probably be presented as individual items that wouldn't be priced high enough to justify the transaction fee.

Having said all that, I'll regurgitate my standard warning about free content. This position is arguable... but many people feel that by making music available for free, Napster totally undermined the perceived value of music. Whether we like it or not, there is a demonstrated correlation between price and perceived value. Giving stuff away can come back to bite you.

SUMMARY:
I think that asset packs priced in the range of $10 USD that contain a theme, skins for several characters, plus theme based props, vehicles, scenery (and maybe even some audio files for background music) would be useful enough (yet inexpensive enough) to keep the money flowing.... I also think that by focusing on full packs, marginally competent modellers would be less likely to submit, while the really good modellers would have a way to be rewarded for their diligence and talent.
edited by PatMarrNC on 19/11/2015
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19/11/2015 18:27:10

artpenMuvizu mogulExperimental user
artpen
Posts: 362 		PCollimonster wrote:
Hi All

What would you expect a single object to be priced at?


All depends on quality, detail or polygon count, and obviously how popular it is.

I'd say 1 pound - Basic model no textures.

2 pound - medium quality, simple paint textures.

2.99 - Max price for top quality, high poly, good textures.
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19/11/2015 18:37:59

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		artpen wrote:
PCollimonster wrote:
Hi All

What would you expect a single object to be priced at?


All depends on quality, detail or polygon count, and obviously how popular it is.

I'd say 1 pound - Basic model no textures.

2 pound - medium quality, simple paint textures.

2.99 - Max price for top quality, high poly, good textures.


Why do you feel a hi-polygon model is better quality then a low poly model? I dont understand this LOL.

Hi poly models are usualy base sculpts not meant for use. Places like daz sell them but the end user has to decimate them down because they are not suitable for use in real time engines. For instance their characters are not even suited for use in cpu based renders without heavy modification. They create them that way for morphing reasons, but at the end of the day its the low poly model that is the better model.

They certainly are not suitable for use inside muvizu and you would be hurting yourself by purchasing them.
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19/11/2015 18:38:10

Farscaper
Farscaper
Posts: 35 		I guess it also boils down to how large the market is. Judging by the number of forum posters and downloads of even the greatest free assets, I have to wonder if the finer details matter just yet.

By this stage of the game Muvizu should rely more on the "Moguls" as a screening panel for anyone wanting to sell content. They could determine quality and do a poll on a suggested price after getting access to the assets on an honour basis. (Won't ever use unless they buy it.) Or it could be something presented in a film for everyone in the forum to vote on. (Needing a set number of thumbs up.)

The current system of seeing just a few comments on the product page really don't encourage me to buy. The approval stamp of at least five out of ten experts here would.
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19/11/2015 18:38:51

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		a note to content creators:

It is a generally accepted truth that the people who sold picks and shovels to gold prospectors made more money than most of the prospectors.

Today the people who sell accessories to the arts usually make more money than the artists. The reason is that people who sell accessories are selling tools to actualize a dream of success, whereas the artist is just selling an end product. It is easier to sell dreams than products.

Content creators should put this thought in the back of their minds and fully understand what they are making available. You make it once but sell it many times... so as long as MUVIZU is an active product, every asset pack you create can potentially be a source of recurring income.

Every new MUVIZU customer is also a potential new asset pack customer. I'm not sure how many worldwide customers MUVIZU has now, but I'd bet it's a very large number.... and growing!

A Pack priced at $10 USD would yield about $9 USD after transaction fees. You could potentially sell the same pack thousands of times. With multiple asset packs in the store, you could do quite well. And the flow of cash would never really end, because there will always be new customers who need new content.

But be cautious about infringing on well-known themes like super heroes, Star Wars, TV shows etc... make your content "in the style of" but avoid specific identifiers like logos, trademarks etc or you could be setting yourself up for legal action.
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19/11/2015 18:55:41

artpenMuvizu mogulExperimental user
artpen
Posts: 362 		urbanlamb wrote:
artpen wrote:
PCollimonster wrote:
Hi All

What would you expect a single object to be priced at?


All depends on quality, detail or polygon count, and obviously how popular it is.

I'd say 1 pound - Basic model no textures.

2 pound - medium quality, simple paint textures.

2.99 - Max price for top quality, high poly, good textures.


Why do you feel a hi-polygon model is better quality then a low poly model? I dont understand this LOL.

Hi poly models are usualy base sculpts not meant for use. Places like daz sell them but the end user has to decimate them down because they are not suitable for use in real time engines. For instance their characters are not even suited for use in cpu based renders without heavy modification. They create them that way for morphing reasons, but at the end of the day its the low poly model that is the better model.

They certainly are not suitable for use inside muvizu and you would be hurting yourself by purchasing them.


Mmm, fair point, what I mean is top quality, the amount of time that person has spent on the model, most of the time they are high poly, so yes, they will need to be Poly slashed for Muvizu.
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19/11/2015 19:02:49

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		Farscaper wrote:
I guess it also boils down to how large the market is. Judging by the number of forum posters and downloads of even the greatest free assets, I have to wonder if the finer details matter just yet.

By this stage of the game Muvizu should rely more on the "Moguls" as a screening panel for anyone wanting to sell content. They could determine quality and do a poll on a suggested price after getting access to the assets on an honour basis. (Won't ever use unless they buy it.) Or it could be something presented in a film for everyone in the forum to vote on. (Needing a set number of thumbs up.)

The current system of seeing just a few comments on the product page really don't encourage me to buy. The approval stamp of at least five out of ten experts here would.



Okay gonna say something about this as well. Not all moguls are good at all things. So in the end I think it should be digimania that screens content for their store. I can also say that likely there are content providers out there who would refuse to take part in a store with peer control.


At the moment I appear to be picking things apart, but I want to ensure that if people are spending money they get their money's worth and what they purchase is appropriate for use in a real time engine and more specifically muvizu's engine.


For price I honestly think this should be up to the seller in part keeping in mind that there is likely a minimum price that would make sense due to the various costs involved with moving money around.
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19/11/2015 19:11:23

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		artpen wrote:


Mmm, fair point, what I mean is top quality, the amount of time that person has spent on the model, most of the time they are high poly, so yes, they will need to be Poly slashed for Muvizu.


Yeah I have not found these two things to be congruous in fact I think you will find that if you really looked into it .. its the opposite. Its actually more difficult to create good looking low poly game engine ready stuff then it is to create high poly stuff, but I think your thinking about "resolution" which is different.

In this case I think that muvizu can handle to a point what are called "mid rez" stuff that is low poly or possibly medium poly objects with medium resolution textures and normal maps. This is defined as 2048x2048 texture and normal map. However I can say that we are limited by polygons a great deal in muvizu due to the engines age and the polygon count actually falls into the low poly range.

I dont think a mid poly character would even work that well in muvizu and by that I mean 55k polygons is too much

However objects should all be below 1k polygons unless its something very larger .. a full house maybe and even then I would be looking at less then 5k polygons.

Most objects we make should probably fall around the 500 polygon range. Maybe a car 2k poly .. maybe I might push it to 5k and if i want to be wasteful 10k but that would be me being lazy that day LOL. I would also probably give it away for free because its polygon heavy which is "bad form" in a game engine so anyhow. I will shut up about polygons the subject makes me cranky Big Grin

(i am very opinionated today it seems sorry ^^)
edited by urbanlamb on 19/11/2015
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19/11/2015 19:19:08

Farscaper
Farscaper
Posts: 35 		urbanlamb wrote:

Okay gonna say something about this as well. Not all moguls are good at all things. So in the end I think it should be digimania that screens content for their store. I can also say that likely there are content providers out there who would refuse to take part in a store with peer control.

At the moment I appear to be picking things apart, but I want to ensure that if people are spending money they get their money's worth and what they purchase is appropriate for use in a real time engine and more specifically muvizu's engine.

For price I honestly think this should be up to the seller in part keeping in mind that there is likely a minimum price that would make sense due to the various costs involved with moving money around.


I agree with you about Moguls (why I said 5 out of 10). Ha.

You are likely right about avoiding peer review since I doubt you'd ever manage to agree or find time to deal with the imagined deluge of content. Or it would go to someone's head and we'd have to make a Megalomania Muvizu movie.

I'd still like a better rating system that shows how many people gave stars to a product. Maybe it will build out from the sparse base of review info that exists so far. I'm thinking of Amazon and how I buy stuff from there.

A lot of the content systems, like Reallusion, use points that reduce the number of micro transactions of cash. You buy points once and spend them in dribs and drabs without processing fees. I've never looked into the mechanics of it but now I see why they use it.
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19/11/2015 19:44:39

toonaramaMuvizu mogulExperimental user
toonarama
Posts: 661 		I agree that it would be good to have an internal currency where you could buy say £10 pounds of points
Then use them when you saw something you wanted.
Very hard to see how you can put a standard price on anything, natural laws of demand should see to that, you would just need some method of reducing the price if something wasn't selling.
I would recommend taking a look at the Reallusion market place for an idea of pricing. 100 points = 1 dollar.
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19/11/2015 19:58:07

WabbyMuvizu mogulExperimental user
Wabby
Posts: 98 		I'm not very good business, but I do not understand why we should absolutely fix prices.

The quality of a model is not necessarily linked to the number of polygons or size of textures (especially for a real time engine like Muvizu)...
edited by Wabby on 19/11/2015
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19/11/2015 20:05:47

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		regarding pricing:

I seem to recall from my college economics class that you have to experiment to find the "sweet spot"

Price an item too high, and even people who want it won't buy it.
Price it too low, and people think it's poor quality and pass over it.
Reduce the price slightly and some people will buy it, while others won't.

A time honoured marketing trick is to price high, then have periodic sales. The high price sends a message that this is good stuff that you can only afford in your dreams. Then, when it suddenly becomes affordable on sale, nearly everybody who ever wanted it will buy it.

My own threshold is $99 USD... most of the software I've ever bought has been priced at $200 USD or more, but reduced briefly to $99. At that ratio between list price and sale price, I generally feel like I've gotten a valuable item for a desirable price, and I JUMP at the opportunity!

For smaller purchases, $10 USD is a no brainer for me (if I want it). If I don't need it, no price will make me buy... not even free. The trick there is making accessories that a lot of people will want .

The sale approach is less workable if you offer the sale price every day. That just sends the same message as a store with a perpetual "going out of business" sign in the window. It makes people think you are a loser who is going out of business because of poor quality items you can't get rid of at any price.

Ideally, offering the 50% off price once or twice per year at most, works best.... with smaller reductions of 10% or 20% throughout the year (but not perpetually)


Another approach for this site (due to the "per transaction" fee) might be to offer discounts when somebody buys multiple asset packs in one transaction. This rewards the buyer for spending more. And anybody who has ever bought a car knows that once you accept the idea of laying down a large chunk of cash... it is very easy to justify spending more than you originally intended.
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19/11/2015 20:11:37

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		Farscaper wrote:

A lot of the content systems, like Reallusion, use points that reduce the number of micro transactions of cash. You buy points once and spend them in dribs and drabs without processing fees. I've never looked into the mechanics of it but now I see why they use it.


this is an EXCELLENT idea! But it would depend on MUVIZU's website developer to come up with a way of dispensing products without invoking PayPal or some other point of purchase entity.

It would necessitate having two different sales engines: one that goes the conventional route, and one that gets redirected to a custom routine that deducts points from someone's tally, then allows downloading

Another advantage of this approach is that once you know purchases are pre-paid, it is easier to spend because you don't have to overcome the normal process of justifying the purchase. It become pure impulse buying... which tends to be kind of addicting.

Stated differently: It's far easier to deposit money once, then spend it in 50 installments than it is to make 50 separate purchases.

===========================================

It might be an interesting experiment to offer the option of buying MUVIZU at a higher price which includes a certain amount of credit toward the purchase of add-ons in the store. This would accomplish a couple of things:

1) it would raise the perceived price/value of MUVIZU
2) it would get new users accustomed to buying from the store
3) it would keep money flowing for everybody

===========================================
edited by PatMarrNC on 19/11/2015
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19/11/2015 20:23:26

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		I like the idea of a virtual currency and had mentioned it before, but it does rely on muvizu looking into an entirely new system on top of transactions which it will have to deal with anyhow because people would need to cash out if they are earning and not buying etc.

As for pricing I will leave that to others because I tend to feel that there will be different tiers of quality and not all widgets will be of equal value.
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19/11/2015 20:24:59

ziggy72Muvizu mogulExperimental user
ziggy72
Posts: 1988 		urbanlamb wrote:
artpen wrote:


Mmm, fair point, what I mean is top quality, the amount of time that person has spent on the model, most of the time they are high poly, so yes, they will need to be Poly slashed for Muvizu.


Yeah I have not found these two things to be congruous in fact I think you will find that if you really looked into it .. its the opposite. Its actually more difficult to create good looking low poly game engine ready stuff then it is to create high poly stuff, but I think your thinking about "resolution" which is different.

In this case I think that muvizu can handle to a point what are called "mid rez" stuff that is low poly or possibly medium poly objects with medium resolution textures and normal maps. This is defined as 2048x2048 texture and normal map. However I can say that we are limited by polygons a great deal in muvizu due to the engines age and the polygon count actually falls into the low poly range.

I dont think a mid poly character would even work that well in muvizu and by that I mean 55k polygons is too much

However objects should all be below 1k polygons unless its something very larger .. a full house maybe and even then I would be looking at less then 5k polygons.

Most objects we make should probably fall around the 500 polygon range. Maybe a car 2k poly .. maybe I might push it to 5k and if i want to be wasteful 10k but that would be me being lazy that day LOL. I would also probably give it away for free because its polygon heavy which is "bad form" in a game engine so anyhow. I will shut up about polygons the subject makes me cranky Big Grin

(i am very opinionated today it seems sorry ^^)
edited by urbanlamb on 19/11/2015

...however, in my experience, I'd rather take the hit for a high poly model because it looks good on screen (or at least better than the low poly option). It's down to the buyer to decide whether they want to blow their poly budget on just a couple of items, isn't it? As much as I'd like to have a car that only uses less than 1k and doesn't look like crap on screen, I've yet to find one.

So, what I'm saying is that you need to make the seller give this kind of detailed info because some of us are more poly conscious than others The limit for Muvizu is actually 20k in one object, so the ceiling is already fixed, it's just up to the (well informed) buyer if they want to have 10k HD doughnuts or not. Some really interesting points coming out of this thread...
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19/11/2015 20:33:51

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		regarding "what adds value that I'm willing to pay for"

I would pay more in order to receive the OBJ file so I could adapt purchased models to my needs. Having the OBJ file would make the number of polygons a moot point, because that's just one of many attributes that can be changed if you have an editable file.

There are very few modelling programs (in my price range) that allow opening and editing of the formats used in MUVIZU
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19/11/2015 20:38:48

Farscaper
Farscaper
Posts: 35 		Reallusion uses this payment system to sell credits as yet another item but I suspect that many of them will be able to handle points as just another currency option. The trick is keeping track of who owns how much of the virtual cash.

https://www.ablecommerce.com/OverView-W133.aspx
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19/11/2015 20:42:11

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		ziggy72 wrote:

...however, in my experience, I'd rather take the hit for a high poly model because it looks good on screen (or at least better than the low poly option). It's down to the buyer to decide whether they want to blow their poly budget on just a couple of items, isn't it? As much as I'd like to have a car that only uses less than 1k and doesn't look like crap on screen, I've yet to find one.

So, what I'm saying is that you need to make the seller give this kind of detailed info because some of us are more poly conscious than others The limit for Muvizu is actually 20k in one object, so the ceiling is already fixed, it's just up to the (well informed) buyer if they want to have 10k HD doughnuts or not. Some really interesting points coming out of this thread...



I dont mind selling my 10k poly doughnuts, but I also know my 10k polygon doughnuts are easy to make and no harder to make then a 100 polygon doughnut. If you want to buy it, but value wise there probably wont be much price difference lol. So more does not necessarily mean better and in actual fact the guy who made the 100 polygon doughnut probably started making it with the 10k poly doughnut and then baked the info off so in theory it was less work to create the 10k poly doughnut so in a way it should be cheaper.

However if your scene can only handle a 10k poly doughnut and a chair and table and then its starting to grind to a halt then perhaps it would be better to shop around and get a 100 poly doughnut instead and if you will buy my 10k poly doughnut for more money then fine with me its just not very logical lol .. because it was easier to make it LOL

If we speak of the evil reallussion marketplace there are likely several 10k doughnuts out there on it, but they are often free or very cheap because most people want 100 poly doughnuts So there is a wide variety of doughnuts for sale at various prices.
edited by urbanlamb on 19/11/2015
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19/11/2015 22:16:35

fazz68
fazz68
(Account inactive)
Posts: 763 		MMmmmm doughnuts.... nice
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19/11/2015 22:26:54

drewiMuvizu mogulExperimental user
drewi
Posts: 302 		If the store is up before christmas we could all buy each other gifts.
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