Sell Design Assets and Make Money

Do you have models, shapes, textures, backgrounds or other resources and design assets that designers might be interested in? Now you can make them available for sale on the Strata store and make money by earning 40% on sales of your designs. You may have design assets you’ve already created that you can turn into revenue – or you can create new design assets that other Strata professionals will be eager to buy and use.

Register to Sell on the Strata.com Store

To get setup to sell you must first register to become a design seller on Strata.com. First, go to the Registration Page. You’ll need to fill out a series of fields. Once you’ve done this and you’ve check the box stating that you’ve read and agree with the Publishing Agreement, your application to become a design seller on the asset store will be submitted. Strata staff will review your application. If there are any problems with the application you will be contacted, otherwise we’ll approve the application and you’ll be ready to submit designs for sale. You can find links to all of the agreements governing your relationship with the Strata store and Strata sites here.

Your Store Dashboard

Once you’ve been approved to sell on the Strata.com store you’re ready to submit your models, shapes, textures, backgrounds or other resources and design assets for sale. Start by first logging in to your account, then open the Dashboard page. From that page you can manage various aspects of your store, including your products, your profile, see your orders, and add new resources and assets to your store.

Submitting a Resource for Sale

To submit a new model, shape, texture, background or other resource/asset for sale click on the “Add Resource/Asset” tab from your Design Seller dashboard. You will see the full design asset submission form. The form is very long as it covers all of the possible design asset types that the store currently offers. You’ll want to fill out the top area that is generic for all asset types. From there you’ll want to find the area for the type of asset you’re selling and fill that out. Once that’d done, fill out the “Additional Information” section at the bottom and hit the “Submit” button. We’ll review your submission and approve it or let you know what needs to be changed.

We have made an attempt to provide explanations on each of the fields on that page. The following is meant as additional help and tips on how to prepare your design assets for sale.

How to Make Design Assets that Sell

We want to help you maximize your potential sales on our store. Here are some tips for you:

Make Great Product Images

You can upload up to 4 product images (one primary image that shows on the main store page and three more that will just show on your product’s page). Make sure you’re showing off your product the best way possible!

Make Your Product Available In As Many Formats As Possible

For 3D model files this will mean making sure native Design 3D files are available for users of older versions – back to version 7 where possible. If you need a copy of Design 3D CX 7 just let us know at storesupport@strata.com and we’ll get you set up (assuming you already have a newer copy of Design 3D). Also, think about exporting your files as Collada, OBJ and DXF formats to add to your product submission.

Consider Breaking Out Components As Separate Products

If you have a complex model that includes custom textures, backgrounds / lightdomes, scripts, etc. that you’ve created, and you think there might be interest in these assets separate from the model, consider saving those out and submitting them as their own product.

Make it easy to use

Is your 3D model scaled in real-world size? A door, for example, should be around 7 foot tall – not 7 inches tall. Textures should tile seamlessly. Backgrounds should be available in both Design 3D native .sbg as well as just the image (for image based backgrounds). You get the point. If it were you buying this asset, would it be easy for you to integrate into your project?

Design 3D files: Use Resources

For Design 3D users, the ideal format will be resources from the Resource palette. By saving resources you’ve already compartmentalized the asset so that it’s ready to use for your customer. To save a resource, first make sure it’s loaded into a project. If you have resources that you’ve previously created and have stored in your own libraries import the item into a new empty project. When the resource is loaded, select it from the top section of the Resource palette by clicking on it once. Next, go to the Plus Menu on the upper-right side of the palette and select  Save… from the menu.

You’ll be presented with a Save dialog. Name and save the resource to a location you can easily find later (probably not the default folder – which is where Design 3D wants to save your resources for your own library for use in Design 3D later – we’re saving this resource to upload for sale and will want to make additional changes to it). When you save the resource it will include the preview thumbnail that you see in the Resource palette. If you’d like to include a custom thumbnail to display the resource in the palette for the buyer, hold down the Option key when selecting the Save… command from the Plus menu. You’ll be presented with the Save dialog as usual, but once you’ve save the resource, you’ll get an Open dialog, allowing you to select an image to use for your new thumbnail. These custom thumbnails can be anything you like that you feel represents your resource properly.

Note: Keep in mind that these custom thumbnails don’t display in the Strata.com store and are not used to show to potential buyers. You can, if you like, use the same image for both your thumbnail and for your product image on the store. You’ll just need to select the same image when you’re uploading the resource to your store from your Dashboard page.

 Linked Files

Some resources may have linked images, Illustrator or pdf files. This can include textures, backgrounds and gels for example. Even a shape may have a texture applied that contains a linked file. You can either make sure the linked files are embedded or you can maintain the link and included the linked file with your resource. For information about embedding linked files see the Design 3D User Guide.

If you decide to include a linked file with your resource, make sure that you place the linked file in the same location as your saved resource prior to zipping the files.

Offering Non-Resource Based Assets

For some design assets you may want to offer them as full Design 3D models and/or as external file formats (such as Collada or OBJ). As with normal resources, you’ll want to make sure you include all of the necessary files (linked files for Design 3D format models, image textures for external formats) prior to zipping the files.

As stated above, adding more file formats means you’re opening your product up to more potential buyers.

Clean Up Your Files

Make sure that the files you want to sell are cleaned up. This means that they only contain the elements you want the customer to have – no extraneous model detail – such as objects, meshes, lights, etc. that aren’t used in the model, or extra maps that aren’t necessary for the texture, animation scripting that shouldn’t be included, etc. Check to make sure your objects are at the proper scale and location in the model. If your model contains excessive detail, too many polygons, too many objects, textures that are too large, etc. try to streamline it. You can learn more about model size reduction here. In short, clean up the asset so that any user will be able to readily use it immediately after purchase without having to make a bunch of changes.

Zip Up Each File Version

For each version of the asset you’ll want to zip up the file(s). As mentioned, for files that include external assets, such as linked files or texture maps – you’ll want to include them in the zipped file. Make sure that you make separate zipped files for each format. So, for example, if you wanted to offer a model as a Strata shape file you would zip that file (along with any linked file), then a separate zip file for a Strata model file, and a separate zip file for an exported Collada file, and so on.

On the Mac, to zip on or more files, select the files and then right click. In the context menu select “Compress Item(s)”. This will create a zip file with the name “Archive”. You can rename this file to an appropriate name for the resource – or you can first place the file(s) into a folder with a logical name. Now, when you select the folder and chose the Compress context menu command the zip file will take on the name of the folder.