And to add I’ve never ever bought an off the shelf asset that did not need some kind of editing to fit to finish the way I needed it to be. Is it for mobile or desktop? easy
Just to add to the list of things that MUST be I would want to know if it can do my windows, wash my dishes, and make me a sandwich. 
It’s one thing if the content is supposed to be used without PBR or if the author is just too lazy to port it properly and I have no problem believing that there are people who just want to get a quick buck. I do hope that most of the people porting their assets do it properly with the best intentions in mind, but hope has no value when buying assets.
Description isn’t obvious enough. There should be an extra panel with (technical) details about the pack, so it doesn’t suffocate in the rest of the description.
Someone already gave an example, and here is my attempt:
PBR: Yes/No
Texture Size: 1024x1024 (maybe list all used resolutions)
Collision: Yes (maybe with example)/No
Poly-Count (and LODs maybe): LOD0 100.000, (LOD1 50.000, LOD2 10.000)
Rigged: Yes/No; For characters maybe mention if it uses the Epic Rig or not (isn't that mandatory? Can't remember)
Animated: Yes/No
Compatibility (for things like weapons, items or something along these lines): Epic's Rig/None
Source provided: Yes/No (for example psd, fbx, obj, tga,...)
Currently I don’t think there is a way to get your money back after you purchased something, so despite the fact that we have ratings and comments in the web-version, it’s still partially hoping for the best and I don’t want to pay 50€ and then get disappointed, this isn’t Steam (Early Access) :p.
Maybe authors could create a little demo level of the asset in use and package it.
This way people could download it and see the asset “in action” but could not use it “for free”.
If its just a small level setup and really just showcasing the assets for sale, then it shouldnt be too big, for people interested, to download…
This way users could also see for themselves that the asset “actually works” …
Problem is, anybody can rip assets from an Unreal .Pak file - and a packaged version of the game would only show the compressed textures and assets that might not be full quality.
So, when you buy the assets and make a game and package it, how would that look different?
Its even better to see the textures the same way as the later player customer (of your gamemaker customer) will see them…
Hmmm… Then the versions for the free example “game” could feature an obnoxious watermark
All,
We actually do require that all asset packs have some level of PBR. There is a range of “how much” a pack is using PBR and not all packs will be 100% True PBR - but all packs should be set up to use PBR in some capacity. We’ll audit all the content and make sure we work with sellers to update anything non-PBR if it exists.
We reviewed records of the Semi-Arid Desert Environment pack and it turns out this one missed a few other quality checks as well as PBR readiness. We’ve taken this pack down temporarily and are working with the seller to ensure this gets resolved ASAP. I’ll reply to this thread if the resolution is going to take longer than a few days.
This obviously leads to the bigger problem of giving buyers as much information as possible about the contents of a pack. This is a big problem for us and one that we’re actively fixing. The core of this issue has been that more diligent details can slow down processing submissions - but that’s our problem to fix.
We love the idea of standardizing the content’s technical details and are raising the priority of getting this done. I’d love to have more feedback from the community on what you want to see there - as pointed out, each content type may have slightly different requirements, but all should be standardized in some easy to read and comprehend way. We’ll start a new thread about this topic as it would be important to have more feedback and settle on something that people want before we go back and update all packs.
We’re also discussing how we could provide a real asset viewer that would help users make decisions on quality before purchasing. We have a few more Marketplace features to resolve first, such as code plugin support, seller portal, and merging web and launcher marketplaces, but a real viewer is something on our near radar.
Thanks again for the continued support and feedback. We have a lot of big behind-the-scenes changes coming - and I will be working on making the roadmap more transparent soon.
OK since we are making suggestions.
I would strongly suggest that packages that share a common theme be broken down into smaller packages.
Example the Weapons:Assault Rifles just made it to the market place for $52.99 but of the five in the package, to hit the 5 asset requirement I suspect, there is only on that is unique as to the other 4 that I already have in inventory.
This is not a good situation for the seller or the buyer as over time as more weapon packages are made available the pricing becomes unstable as to every package contains a version of an M4, M16 and a AK47.
You have a decay return rate going on where first to market makes the big bucks and the last to market will sell less.
As far as technical details, it’s not that hard to fix. Require the following:
At the end of the description of the pack (which I presume the author creates), make it mandatory that they also list the details in a standardized format. As I’ve said before in other threads, w/o knowing how the DB is set up, I (we) can’t offer real suggestions. One thing I’m very good at is DB design and implementation, and I suspect I am not the only one, so it would be wise to ask for a second set of eyes on the problem, as I know from experience, sometimes we all get tunnel vision.
But there are dozens and hundreds of models, it’s kinda crazy to upload in 3+ med/high res. screenshots of each asset Oo
And if it’s not for every asset then there could be inconsistency between assets and you won’t know what is good and what is not.
Hey franktech, thanks for the comments - Can you point out other areas where quality has been a concern of yours? We’ve addressed and learned from the examples you provide here, but are always looking for ways to continually grow.
Also, we’ve never said we wouldn’t accept public help - in fact, we love the idea of community involvement in curation! It’s not quite as simple as flipping a switch and making it happen, but it’s something we’ve discussed internally and are actively working on.
Awesome to see a quick response. This was really bugging me too. As much as I hate to point fingers Manufactura K4 considers using the red channel as roughness as an easy fix for PBR in all their work. I understand the logic but it’s more of a cheat than actual PBR. While I’m calling people out please reconsider the “Landscape Material Pack” because it is awful in every single way. They basically took tiling textures and plugged them into starter content shader setups. The resolutions are absolutely bizarre: 2272x1704? 2240x1680? 604x483? 1000x1000? there doesn’t seem to be a single one that is even remotely standard. It’s entirely possible that there is some reasoning behind this but I highly doubt it. Ok, I’m done for now and thank you again for addressing this issue.
Hi guys! As Deke said, we’re taking this feedback to heart. The team and I have spent the day hammering down a more robust set of Technical Details that we’re going to begin strictly enforcing. Once we get a couple more eyes on that doc and get some internal feedback, I’ll paste it here for feedback. We’re also revisiting our internal QA checklist to find out how and why errors have made it past us so that we can correct it and improve the process, and we’re going to update the Submission Guidelines to be clearer about all of these things up front. We appreciate all of you taking the time to give us this feedback so we can keep working to improve the Marketplace.
Thanks, good to know you guys are looking at it
I just wanted to clear my head a bit too, a rather unique package I was looking forward to was recently rejected, but with what seems like very odd feedback. I hope I’m not responsible for loads of upcoming mass rejections :S
Just to clarify, the package that you are referring to was not rejected. The feedback provided was based on the content submitted to us separately from what is posted on this thread, which is where we saw a few things that we thought could use some improvements. We do intend on accepting his pack, but just want him to tweak a few things.
The marketplace is lacking user’s evaluations and comments about packages they baught.
Indeed we are! We’ve been quite busy on that this week. We have an updated list of technical specifications we’ll require from now on, and I’m going to be posting those this week (likely tomorrow) as a sticky for the community to comment on. It’s fairly comprehensive, and we’ve had a wide variety of people internally weigh in on it from a technical perspective. Also, right now the technical documentation team is putting together documentation we can hotlink off of that (or perhaps in a separate FAQ) to help explain terms that may be unclear.
We’re also updating our public submission guidelines soon to reflect this, and further refining our internal QA process with the intent of making that public and easy to understand. We’re targeting end of this week or early next for that.
Actually, we have all of that on the web version of the Marketplace here: Unreal Engine Marketplace | Store of UE Assets for Games and 3D Rendering - UE Marketplace
And we’re currently working on bringing that functionality to the launcher as well.
note: I’ve havent been participating in the Marketplace discussions, but I’ve been following it a bit.
I understand people expect a certain quality when they buy something on the Marketplace. Especially when it has been checked and approved by Epic! I was triggerd by your words “It’s fairly comprehensive” which worries me if creating content for the Marketplace is going to be a hard and long task, and perhaps after comments from the community in the end impossible?? Or that items on the Marketplace become very expensive because of all the work thats been put in.
Perhaps certain items dont need PBR materials, complete demo levels etc etc. Perhaps a pack with 5 materials which are not PBR is exactly what I need. And perhaps I dont need 200 doors, but I just want 1. I dont think the content on the Marketplace has to be the top and very best quality ever seen. I think I would buy more on the Marketplace if it has more simple or smaller packs. Now if I see a really cool texture I need to buy the full pack which costs me 173 EURO, and since I’m only interested in that one texture I’m not buying it which in my opinion is shame for the seller, for Epic and for me!
Perhaps the Marketplace could be split in 2 parts? One part with high quality content which has been checked and approved by Epic and one part with content which has only been checked if it isnt spam or other garbage. The seller has the choice to make a high quality pack which is worth every penny or to invest less time and will be able to sell for less.
Anyway, a lot has been said already about the Marketplace so I should stop adding more I think. One last thing though: I really appreciate what the Marketplace team (and Epic in general) is doing and I am enjoying UE4 every day. I think its really amazing what you guys/ladies are doing
I think this is a good idea.
One thing I am worried about is that we will probably never see low poly stuff in the marketplace, because Epic seems to reject every asset which does not have AAA quality. But for mobile games and for example RTS, we don’t need super AAA looking stuff. It also does not need to be PBR or whatever else. It just needs to be priced in a way that fits the quality. In my game (RTS for PC) I need characters which have between 500 and 3000 polys. I can’t find a single one on the UE4 marketplace. But the Unity marketplace is full with these, but some sellers there unfortunately don’t include the FBX files.
This pack is a good example: Wild Animal Pack - Wolf deer hare bear - Marketplace - Epic Developer Community Forums
It got rejected from Epic because it does not look AAA enough. But why do we need this? If you read the posts in the thread you see there are a lot of people who are absolutely happy with the quality, me included.
Just IMHO - there is difference between bad lowpoly content and good lowpoly.
This deer is good lowpoly
Also it’s funny how thread gone from “We need content with high quality” to “We need content with low quality”
My 2 cents: there are many internet stores with bad 3d models(Turbosquid, gumroad, gamedevmarket, cgtrader, unity store and so on), please, let’s have at least one marketplace where content is always good :eek:
The deer you have shown is a stylized low poly model - which I never could use in my game, because I need a realistic low poly style. This does not mean bad. Just low poly without being stylized.
