I am a more or less hobbiest developer, with no real talent for the art side of games. I’d like to create a prototype for a game to then pitch it to the public to find ppl to work together with for art creation. Since I dont have any funds, I wonder how other ppl handle the asset issues that come up when you have limited money to spend. I know there are some free sites, but often they dont have the assets you need or they lack animations you need etc. I have seen some nice tools like speedtree and mixamo, that might you help get started. However, I cant afford most of these tools. It’s a real pitty, since I feel like a good asset base could really help to catch peoples attention for your project. How do you guys handle these kinds of issues?
I normally block out a level and break it up into static meshes in Maya. Same goes for animations - I have a reusable rig that I use for quick tests and such.
Taking some time to learn a 3D package would definitely improve your prototyping experience. Even if its just to build static meshes for layout purposes.
If you’re a programmer, you can use very simple meshes and use them to show your gameplay, it’s a good way to demonstrate systems you create and artists would definitely be interested in working with you if you’ve got stuff like that created and simply need final content.
Else I think you can use the content posted on the marketplace but epic. Thing like Elemental Demo, Cave, etc… This make for nice starting assets.
But if you want to just show gameplay, cube and capsule are perfectly fine. People will understand that what you are showing is a prototype and not meant to be pretty (I guess)