[overgard]

As much as I'd like to use Godot, there are two features missing that I really don't think I could do without:

- Asset store. I totally get it, handling payments, curating, etc. are a huge task... but man, I'm a coder, and I don't have the funds to pay an artist or a musician full time. Being able to just go buy a pack of trees for $20 or something is a huge timer saver.

- Animation re-targeting. It seems like there's a 3rd party plugin for this but it also seems like it hasn't been updated in a year. In unity I can buy a big pack of animations for pretty cheap and reuse it on almost all my humanoid characters. That's huge. I think this can be done in Blender or Maya, but it's so seamless in the engine compared to using a 3rd party tool.

[giancarlostoro]

> - Asset store. I totally get it, handling payments, curating, etc. are a huge task... but man, I'm a coder, and I don't have the funds to pay an artist or a musician full time. Being able to just go buy a pack of trees for $20 or something is a huge timer saver.

Heh I mentioned this in another Godot thread a few days ago. It sounds like a potential YC funded startup for anyone inclined and something that could be with the knowledge and collaboration of the core maintainers of Godot as a simple means to fund Godot.

[sergiotapia]

This doesn't sound like a good VC backed company. Bootstrap it, make healthy profits and grow at a normal pace.

[devmunchies]

This seems like a good way for Godot to monetize, while keeping core engine development incentives insulated.

[giancarlostoro]

It would be good if Godot adopted it into its UI, it technically has the UI for it. Then the company donates a reasonable percentage to Godot. You might see them never need to ask for donations again.

[to-too-two]

There's a few private/third-party sties that serve as a marketplace for paid Godot assets.

[TulliusCicero]

It seems unlikely that'll ever be as useful to people as an official store would be.

[georgeecollins]

I think people that spend enough time to learn to use a game engine will go to the trouble of finding the best site / source for assets. Unity and Unreal both have good sites for this, but that's partly because it is there business model. Godot is just not as much of a business. It seems like the two great potential business (attention HN types :) ) are: - asset / plugin library stores - simple libraries / frameworks for console ports that are not open source / or a port service.

[TulliusCicero]

> Godot is just not as much of a business.

Well, maybe it should be. I don't think anyone would begrudge the Godot team taking a small percentage as part of running an asset store, and that means more people who can work on Godot full-time, in addition to the convenience of the asset store itself.

I wouldn't want Godot to go full blown for-profit public corporation, but having more full-timers and more of a real business model like some other open source foundations sounds good to me.

[ttymck]

Why is that? (I'm not too familiar with Godot or the unity asset store)

[TulliusCicero]

Convenience/discoverability, the lack of which results in less people using it, and less people using it means you don't get critical mass.

The important thing here is the network effects, not whether you personally can find some store somewhere that technically fits the bill.

[to-too-two]

Mostly trust. Finding it. Usually lacks the polish and presentation an official asset store would have.

Unity's asset store is pretty top-notch and is a good one to compare other asset stores too. Unreal Engine's marketplace pales in comparison.

Link: https://assetstore.unity.com/

[to-too-two]

Agreed for the most part, although there is the possibility of one being really polished and catching on.

[chamakits]

I absolutely understand the upsides of the assets store. Although not as expansive as the asset store, there are lots of either free or extremely affordable; many of them with CC0 licenses or licenses that make them extremely easy to just use them. I wouldn't have been able to make my first game in Godot Puck Fantasy (available here: <https://www.lowkeyart.com/puckfantasy>) without them!

I would encourage you to try some of these! You'd be surprised how far you can get by using these, with and without modification.

These are my favorite resources, in order of preference.

- <https://www.kenney.nl/> is by far the best one and most expansive one. Everything he creates is CC0. A lot of great free assets available on his site. He also has a "Kenney Game Assets All-in-1" which can be bought on itch.io for $19.95. It has all assets he's ever made, neatly organized, and ready to use. All CC0. This also includes some music. The music and sound assets are much more limited than the 2D and 3D assets, but it's there, and it's solid.

- <https://kaylousberg.com/game-assets> has some fantastic assets also available for free, and has more available for a pretty affordable Patreon tier. Also has a CC0 license for the free assets. Mostly a specific style, which is great for consistency, but a bit more limited than the wide variety of Kenney; but I don't doubt that with time they'll build an equally strong library of assets.

- <https://quaternius.com/> has many free great assets. Also CC0. Has a high variety of styles and settings. Also has a very affordable Patreon to get easy access to everything they produce.

- <https://github.com/Miziziziz/Retro3DGraphicsCollection> is a general place linking to more assets that should be usable.

Separately from this, itch.io has a section for game assets that has a pretty wide variety.

[havercosine]

I second this. The variety on itch.io is a godsend. Godot is flexible enough that you can work with most of the assets available on itch. My experience is mostly with 2D and isometric games, but it was straightforward to import assets downloaded from itch.io and get going.

I also prefer the separation between the engine and asset store. I would rather not have a magic button I press in my IDE to have asset show up in the game.

[wly_cdgr]

If you're just talking about some models or sprites, can't you just buy them wherever in any file format Godot supports and import them? Ok, you might have to spend a bit of time wrapping them in Godot's nodes, but it seems like that would be quick and trivial

[overgard]

I mean, you can do that, but you have to consider a lot more things:

- Are these assets authored in a way that's friendly to my game engine of choice? IE, will the materials import correctly, will animations be correct, are things scaled properly, is the Z axis up or is it forward, etc. Having dealt with importing files between various engines and 3d modelers, seamless importing and exporting is no small thing.

- What's the license, and are the licenses standardized? Do I have to pay royalties or record attribution?

- What's the selection on these sites? Do I have to enter my payment info into like 20 different sites?

- This also only covers art/sounds. Unity has a huge selection of code assets that are incredibly useful.

None of those are insurmountable of course, but having one place that solves all those problems is great.

[TulliusCicero]

Okay, and is there an ecosystem that makes it trivial to find, buy and import such assets? How big and well designed is that store?

"You can technically do the same thing if you squint" misses the point.

[wly_cdgr]

Sure, but there IS such an ecosystem. For example, for 3D, there are sites like TurboSquid, which shows up on the front page of a Google search for "3d model asset store"

[dleslie]

Indeed. People think of Unity as a game engine and it's really not. Unity is a service provider, whose major services is the asset store, analytics, ad platform, and so forth. The game engine and editor is just the hook. Most long-term Unity developers have a toolkit of assets that massively overhaul the engine, anyhow; and Unity leans into that.

Godot is an interesting engine and editor, but that's not enough to make me switch. Show me the ecosystem of services and tools that surround it, and how _utterly trivial_ they are to access, and I might consider switching.

[to-too-two]

"Animation re-targeting."

Yeah, that'd be cool. However, there are tools like Mixamo by Adobe that provide lots of pre-made animations.

As for an asset store for paid assets, there are already a few 3rd party sites for this.

[esperent]

> Animation re-targeting

Does it need to be a tool specific to Godot? There are other tools that can do this, for example, have you tried mixamo.com?