[Free Marketplace Assets] A Patreon page funded approach :D

http://patreon.binarysword.com/img/ue4postbanner.jpg

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To get a better idea of how this came about, please take a look at the following forum thread: We need Fps Characters! - Marketplace - Epic Developer Community Forums

Below is the summary of what is currently being considered:

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Source: We need Fps Characters! - Marketplace - Epic Developer Community Forums

Would you guys be interested in doing a high quality base character (no clothes) pack via this Patreon, where you set up morphs for character customization sliders?

It would be awesome to be able to generate a variety of high quality (like really nice sculpts and materials pretty please) base characters. I’d be willing to put in a couple hundred bucks to the Patreon for something like this, as I think everyone here needs high quality characters and as others expressed there is not a huge amount of incentive to put those on the Marketplace - but a nice base character with customization morphs (and hopefully face morphs) would be useful to pretty much everyone.

(Heck you could even make clothes/accessories packs for it yourselves as well, and the more people that use it the wider customer base.)

An old colleague of mine named Richard G Marcoux III or as his more well known alias of 1Richmar](https://www.youtube.com/user/1Richmar/videos) and Richmar1](http://www.cryengine.com/community/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=216507)on the old Crydev.net forums actually created just that :slight_smile:

We still stay in touch and work together here and there. So perhaps he might be interested in coming aboard and working with our character artists to port over his code from CRYENGINE to UE4 :smiley:

Here are some examples of old prototypes he made in the field you’re after in order of most polished to earliest prototype:

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Let me know if this interests you and I’ll make contact with Richard next week (he doesn’t work weekends, as he likes to dedicate that time to his partner & kids)

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EDIT: I would just like to add that we have been looking to create a multi-layer modular system similar to that of Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s system they presented in the following Dev Diary:

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Video Update #2: Character Customization [YouTube Video] - Had to hyperlink due to 4 embedded video limit per-message on these forums…

But such a feature has been buried in our backlog for some time :frowning:

Our main focus at the moment is on a plugin we have in development codenamed ODIN & our internal game IP which is yet to be announced (not really focusing much on characters at the moment)

In the meantime,
I would suggest checking out ClayBender’s Modular Clothing Pack + Fabric Material [SUBMITTED] forum thread which should somewhat furfil your needs :smiley:

Kingdom Come is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind in terms of the clothing/accessories customization aspect, actually.

When I posted above I was honestly just thinking you’d want to provide the art with appropriate morphs, but an actual slider system would be better. :smiley:

Mixamo fuse already does this - granted, the results are fairly average, but the customization is brilliant.

Well, for me the quality isn’t there, for one… the characters look like potato. They just don’t come out looking like high end character meshes. Secondly the materials seem to be not so great. The last thing is that you don’t get any facility for making them in engine, which is a big benefit (e.g., for a customization system that works in game).

For spitting out a really basic prototyping character, sure. But we’re kind of talking about having a character creator mesh/system in UE4 itself, which would allow for both higher quality of the mesh/materials, as well as using the customization system in a game directly.

Kind of apples to oranges to my mind. Sure Fuse and Makehuman are options, but the quality isn’t really there out of the box and there’s no facility for using those customization tools in engine/at runtime.

- QUICK UPDATE -

Hey guys,
We have created a Patreon page draft/template which we will release to the community once it’s a bit more polished before we even consider officially launching it whenever that may be :slight_smile:

I would also like to state that we are currently having discussions internally regarding what assets we might release first for FREE before we even start an ongoing Patreon campaign as a way to showcase our ability and quality of work to the UE4 Community.

Currently we’re thinking of releasing a weapons pack, since who can go wrong with a weapons pack :wink: and better yet a Russian themed one at that :smiley:

So this is not set in stone but we are discussing releasing something along the lines of:

  • Kalashnikov AK-47
  • SVD (Dragunov)
  • PPSh-41

And who knows,
We might even throw in a KGB era Makarov Pistol :wink:

These weapons would be either partially or fully animated.

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The current goals we have in mind on our WIP Patreon page template in order from lowest to highest are:

  1. Material Pack
  2. Prop Pack
  3. Environment Pack
  4. Weapon Pack
  5. Animation Pack
  6. Asset + Animation Pack
  7. Character Pack
  8. UE4 Game Sample and/or Template

These are of course subject to change but should give you all an idea of where we are heading with this :smiley:

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For those who haven’t followed the reference forum links above (I don’t blame you), here are a couple of pieces from some of my colleagues to give you a general idea of the level of quality we strive to produce week in week out:

**Leo Li aka ImBrokeRU
**

Enrico Santi aka RubixLight

https://cdn.artstation.rocks/p/assets/images/images/000/116/073/large/enrico-santi-p90-1.jpg?1403878586

https://cdn.artstation.rocks/p/assets/images/images/000/116/074/large/enrico-santi-p90-2.jpg?1403878592

https://cdn.artstation.rocks/p/assets/images/images/000/116/078/large/enrico-santi-sig550-1.jpg?1403878893

https://cdn.artstation.rocks/p/assets/images/images/000/116/081/large/enrico-santi-sig550-4.jpg?1403878911

https://cdn.artstation.rocks/p/assets/images/images/000/429/117/large/enrico-santi-keyshot-tavor-x95-2.jpg?1422061468

https://cdn.artstation.rocks/p/assets/images/images/000/429/116/large/enrico-santi-keyshot-tavor-x95-1.jpg?1422061466

Benjamin Mikhaiel aka BigFish

http://benjaminmikhaiel.com/images/Cobra3.jpg

http://benjaminmikhaiel.com/images/CobraTitle.jpg

John Yau
http://www.johnyaudesign.com/ (I’m going to stop posting images now)

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P.S. I am aware that the 1st post on this thread is pretty shoddy and it should be updated come early next week if not sooner.

I would love to see some WW2 stuff :slight_smile:

weapons, vehicles, tanks/planes/ships, bunkers, historic locations and/or other?

I would love to see maybe some weapons and/or environment props such as destroyed vehicles, sandbags, rubble, military tent and stuff like that

Hi alanconrad,
I have been talking to an old colleague of mine who has worked on multiple games in the WWII time period including such titles as Traction Wars, who is interested in participating on the team/division I am building inside my company to support this community effort, as it is better to be over prepared over that of being caught off guard if this thing blows up in popularity :wink:

One of the many assets he has which is set to a WWII theme is a fully animated working spitfire plane, all animated for CRYENGINE and flyable.

Which includes:

  • Cockpit
  • Propeller
  • Arions
  • Rudders
  • Machine guns

All working and machine guns are all setup too :smiley:

He is still considering whether or not to provide the above listed assets to this community project and we would obviously need to port it all over to UE4 if the assets are provided but that shouldn’t be too much of a hassle if so.

He has also mentioned some WWII themed searchlights and generators assets which might be of interest to the public as well?

NOTE: We could also take a look at making an entire WWII themed modular bunker asset pack if there is enough interest.

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UPDATE:

Expect to see this forum thread drastically updated in the coming days :slight_smile:

This would have come sooner but I was occupied with the news that my younger brother is having another kid & I was helping him + his partner out when I could throughout the week.

Sounds awesome! Thank you :slight_smile:

I will support this.

Weapon models looks amazing. Hopefully you’ll be able to release all the these modern weapon models in the pictures + more.

- QUICK UPDATE -

Hi all,
Just a quick update that we will be announcing early next week :smiley:

We figured that announcing around the week of April Fools was probably not the best idea & this gives us a bit more time to polish things off + we can also theme part of our announcement towards the Easter holiday season :slight_smile:

We are also going the whole nine yards when it comes to material, a dedicated website & hopefully a short video if we can complete it in time.

Not to mention that we are working on an ‘Asset Crate’ which we will be releasing for FREE! to show our commitment to this community focused initiative we are working towards & to give you an idea of what kind of quality bar you should expect to see from us moving forward with future ‘Asset Crates’ as we’ve decided to call them.

Disclaimer - the ‘Asset Crate’ which we will be releasing for FREE! will most likely come sometime after our announcement & will most likely not be apart of the announcement itself. This is due to not wanting to lower the quality standards of the asset(s) to meet the announcement deadline.

Count me among the interested.

  • QUICK UPDATE -

We are currently in private discussions with Epic Games, Inc. regarding this community focused initiative I have proposed & there may be some delays with our full announcement due to some aspects of what we wish to do being in the grey area of Epic Games Marketplace policies regarding FREE content on the UE4 Marketplace + EUA royalty agreements.

This might require us to change our launch & release strategy somewhat to either charge for our content on the UE4 Marketplace but cheaply i.e. $1 to $5 OR operate the Marketplace completely through our own sub-domain website we are currently working on and which can be found here: http://patreon.binarysword.com/

NOTE: Our website currently in development was intended more as a place to provide information via an overview + FAQ, Blog & gallery/catalogue of all our Asset ‘Crates’ that have been released (hyperlinked to the UE4 Marketplace).

I would also like to state that this forum thread will most likely find a new home in the “Community Content, Tools and Tutorials” sub-forum due to that reason stated above.

Furthermore,
We might still release some of the banners & media for this community focused initiative we are proposing strictly for feedback (we don’t want to generate too much hype for now) but we will not be launching our https://www.patreon.com/BinarySword & http://patreon.binarysword.com pages until at least the 15th of April or later and only if we can come to a resolve with not only Epic Games & my colleagues on these possible changes but also from you guys weather you believe such an initiative would be a good thing or a bad thing overall for the benefit of the UE4 Community as a whole (both buyers & sellers on the UE4 Marketplace)

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I’m glad you’re interested :smiley: be sure to subscribe to this forum thread & feel free to sign-up for our newsletter on our WIP website here: http://patreon.binarysword.com to stay in the loop on future developments of this community focused initiative.

NOTE TO SELF: Come up with a better, more catchy name for this project :wink:

That is insane if they wont let you publish it for free here. worst case, release it as a torrent to save bandwidth. i can at the vary least supply some bandwidth on a long term basis to keep it alive even if that makes it slow to get(assuming the torrent ever dies).

As it stands there is allot of content i could use but i cannot afford to spend the money needed to get it all at the moment. this leaves me in a place of developing my game on my own with what free content i can get as placeholders or making some on my own until i get enough of a project done where i can show it off as a concept to try to get money to buy or have the content id need.

This puts Epic in a place where they have to choose between getting games made by allowing free high quality content and eventually making some money from the commission on the game or selling stuff that people like me simply cant buy, delaying my project where it may simply never see the light of day resulting in them making no money period.

It seems to me Epic is having a hard time letting go, they ought to save themselves some trouble and just allow it, and while they are at it, they should make a character creation system since most games need a humanoid character and it would be yet another wonderful reason for people to make a game with unreal engine.

To be honest I’d say just charge the $5.

  • Epic has to pay for bandwidth as well.
  • $5 = free.
  • Even if it’s just ~$3 to you, it’s more money that can go towards developing good content and not starving while doing it.

Personally I’m not in a position where I can go donating cash towards cool things, but I really don’t want to get them for free either and I’m probably not the only one.
Perhaps on your website you could offer them for free, and they could be $5 (or more) on the marketplace. This would help to cover your bandwidth/expenses as well.

Or people who donated get the content free, while those of us who did not may also have to pay on your site/the marketplace.

@Jener I wouldn’t jump the gun regarding Epic Games marketplace policies and all of this is pretty new ground for them so things are always evolving :wink:

With that being said,
Bandwidth & servers aren’t really a problem for us however by being able to distribute our content directly through the Epic Games Launcher we would reach a much larger audience of developers who might otherwise not know about our FREE! Asset Crates if we were to just distribute them solely through our own website and/or servers + torrents/other.

Moreover,
Even with that aside we’ll still need to make sure that we abide by the UE4 Marketplace EULA as any potential revenue we might receive through Patreon.com might very well be a significant conflict of interests due advertising it as FREE! on the UE4 Marketplace but profiting from each release elsewhere.

I assume this is due to the revenue spilt agreement for the UE4 Marketplace being different to the general 5% revenue cut if you were to say release a game or similar product.

Source: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/marketplace-business-terms-faq

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Anyway I will leave it at that until I have further information and/or one of Epic Games staff e.g. Johns or Chance Ivey can shed some light on the potential conflicts between the UE4 Marketplace EULA and this proposed community focused initiative powered by Patreon.com