https://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/702876

I am selling a pack of textures designed for texturing outdoor ground environments.

Each texture is 1024x1024 in size.

Every texture also comes with a normal map.

I have had this texture pack available on TurboSquid for a while now, but with no buyers. If you're interested in these types of textures, but you're not interested in the pack, I would be interested in knowing why, to improve them.

--TownEater

Thanks, I'll look over those. Also, do you think the marketplace here might be a better place to try to sell this?

No reason why you can't sell on both. Those look very nice.

(My programmer's perspective:) I notice there are alot of people on the internet selling textures and alot of free resource sites that offer them. Seems like a crowded market.

Are you trying to make a living making textures? The majority of texture creation is just taking photographs and weeding out the bad ones - so there's a low entry into the market.

The process of making the photographs into seamlessly tiling (and not noticeably repeating) textures isn't particularly difficult, but takes a little bit of time (an hour or so for me, but I've only done it a few times). Most of it could even being automated with some custom tools, and batched - taking several thousand photos, and batching them automatically into tileable textures while you make a cup of tea, then coming back and discarding the poor ones and touching up the good ones. Some people even procedurally generate tileable textures.

So if you're trying to create a living doing this, you'll have to really come up with something that everyone else isn't offering.

Ask yourself honestly: How hard was it for you to create these?

The easier it is, the more people will be doing it, the lower the prices AND the lower visibility even if you have a low price.

Unlike 3D models, music, or 2D sprites, textures seem increasingly headed to a less artistic and more mass-producing future (in my opinion) - and when it comes to mass producing, someone else will always be able to mass-produce it just slightly better quality, and just slightly cheaper, and push the others out of the market.

Your 100 textures for $10 is below the average price (and even below the amount of value your own time is worth), but even so, without visibility leading people to you, it doesn't equal sales on its own.

(also see this discussion, which might interest you)

Yeah, I understand that... I'm a programmer myself, I've been doing it for many years now, since I was 12. I've been making games since then, so I've learned how to do at least a little bit of every job: 3D modeling, Texturing, Coding, Sound, ect.

And I agree, it's all going towards mass production. I'm very into procedural generation, it's one of my favorite things to do. I've been thinking about making a program that makes them tileable for me, like you were saying. Then I could sell thousands of textures for a low price.

But as you said, that wont bring me customers on its own. Which is why I'm trying to go to people who would be of my customer base, and get feedback. I'm not trying to make a living, just some spare money. If textures isn't what will sell, then what do you think will sell?

Things that can't be mass produced as easily: Music, sound effects, 3D models, 2D art, etc...

But of the four things just mentioned, 3D models and 2D art must heavily fit the visual style of the game. Visual studios that don't match are more noticeable than audio styles that don't match, in my opinion (though both are noticeable if extremely clashing).

Further, 2D sprite art, 3D models, and music is very noticeable if multiple games are using "each other's" resources - especially different developers using the same resources. I think it's a bit of a distraction to the immersion of the game get that, "Wait a moment, I've heard this song before... what other game have I heard it in?" feeling. Same with many types of art.

While there is room for some stock 2D art, 3D models, and music to pad out a game, I feel like games must have enough original material that the market won't shift to a stock-art only approach... but with textures I feel like the market will become stock-art only. For things like 3D models and music, I think the market will become more contractor-oriented. People who can understand a project and deliver customized material for it.

3D models *could* become stock art, if certain things happened. If models and the equipment/clothing they wear get separated out, with standardized formats, with standardized skin texture maps, and standardized rigging, so people just have several human models of different builds (short guy, fat guy, tall female, tall male, etc... all already rigged), and then buy hair, hats, skin textures, weapons, etc... for an assortment of different people using the same formats all already ready to snap into place with the ID'd bones of the model skeletons, and buy stock animations fitting their theme that "just works" with those 3D model skeletons, I think alot of 3D modelling could potentially become mass-produced for humanoid figures and stock furniture, vehicles, animals, weapons, rocks, and other objects. But there will still be some need for customized contractor work for things like aliens (aliens in one game are uniquely different in shape, texture, and animation then aliens in another game) and other things.

With this kind of art-related market, I feel like for each type of resource-art (as opposed to art that are finished products like games, movies, music albums, etc...), the market will inevitably be split into mass-production 90% dominated by two or three companies (the automobile industry or food industry today or steel production in the 1900s) or will be split into tens of thousands of contractors for hire creating customized work (plumbers, car mechanics, appliance repairmen, etc...). If someone is going to try to make a living in one of these markets, choose a market that requires custom work and thus is harder to mass-produce for. These are the ones that will most likely become contractor-oriented markets, and contractors usually make good money and work decent hours.

Cabinets are mass produced - one model of cabinet is the same in ten thousand peoples' houses. Kitchens are not (usually) mass produced, kitchens vary too widely in shape, so the people installing the mass-produced cabinets are independent contractors.

The key to becoming a good and successful contractor depends on: How easy you are to work with, how good a job you do, how quick a job you do, whether you actually show up in time, and how capable you are to find solutions to customers' individual and unique needs.

(Again, this is my own perspective - not a professional's analysis of the video game market)

As for making quick easy cash on the side, if it's really quick and easy, others will find it quickly, and then it'll become quick, easy, and crowded (like textures), and it'll become more of a marketing game (Who can get noticed the most?), and the difficulty will increase, and the prices will decrease. Quick and easy money doesn't stay quick or easy for very long, unless you are one of the first to find it.

All of that makes a lot of sense, and it's something I've had in mind while making, and looking for, stock game assets. This isn't my main field of interest, however. That still lies in the development of games themselves, coding and whatnot. Mainly, I like to make assets to try to sell because I can put together a product relatively easily and sell that, but as you said, if it's easy for me, it's easy for everyone.

Hopefully I'll be able to make a little money selling game assets, but my primary goal right now is to build my portfolio of finished games and working code. With my interest in procedural generation, perhaps I'll even make some mass-production code for art assets. Although, if you know of any programs that automatically make pictures into tileable textures already, those might also be of interest to me. It takes 10-30 minutes to make one tileable for me as it is.