Comments on: June Sales Stats Prove It Pays to Be a CheckMate Artist

By: Matt Wisdom

Matt Wisdom — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 04:19:40 +0000

As a practical matter, TurboSquid can’t bear the cost of certification for the stock 3D industry and so we have to focus on our exclusive catalog. It is a significant investment in CheckMate and the people and infrastructure to make that happen. We have customers telling us constantly that they want very extremely well constructed models based on standards. If we do this well, customers get more value, pay somewhat more money, and artists get a return on their effort. TurboSquid does well because customers will use stock 3D more frequently.

Everything is of course a trade off ~ there were a variety of reasons that we didn’t police our catalog at the same level in the past. Now it is abundantly clear that this is an absolute must for the future. If we let the catalog be a “wild west”, we wouldn’t have the same costs of running the business, but that is the wrong path. Google (Trimble) Warehouse is the other extreme on this. I’ve had terrible experiences from there where I imported an Eiffel tower and it was 1 million meters tall, or 10 centimeters tall, or 3000 kilometers from the center of the scene (located in Germany!).

Anyhow, customers want clear value, and we should all set our expectations that this is where the market is going. Standardization is a good thing in a marketplace like ours.

By: A.

A. — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 19:13:00 +0000

I think it’s kinda a way of attempting to persuade us into exclusivity as well, I imagine it is having a negative impact on the sales of those who do not wish to sell on one site alone.

By: dvnobles

dvnobles — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 13:59:55 +0000

I think the CheckMate certification is a great idea. The industry needs something like this to guarantee that customers are getting a quality product. However, as an artist, I feel I am being penalized for not using one of the few software packages that are allowed for certification. Certification should be available for all, regardless of the software package you are working in. Charts like the one above show my sales are being penalized as well.