Downloads Area

[Josh]

I was able to upload an item to the Downloads area through an automated script, so it looks like all the pieces are in place to populate it with good content. This can be integrated into the editor, and will replace the current AmbientCG browser. It will include PBR materials and 3D models from other free sites, as well as tools and user-created assets made just for Ultra.

If there are high-quality assets uploaded by hand by people here, I will feature those so they have more visibility and don't get drowned out.

Storage is pretty cheap, but the data transfer costs could add up quickly, especially with big 4K materials. If the system is used heavily, I will need to charge heavy users something like $9.99 for 100 GB downloads per month, with a free limit of maybe 10 GB monthly. Of course most of this stuff you can manually download elsewhere, but the system I want to put in place will make it extremely easy to quickly try out a lot of assets. I think our version of the packages will also be 1/3 the size of the original zipped PNG files, due to DDS compression and channel packing.

The system also supports paid files, although it is not currently enabled, so if you want to sell your content that may be an option in the future. I think DLCs will offer the best sales, but maybe sales through this system will do well if people are already accustomed to using it.

[Josh]

I found that AmbientCG.com does not have any displacement scale information available for their materials, which is a problem. They scale the values across a 16-bit unsigned integer, but there is no consistency there.