Everyone,
We’re in the process of rolling out our new search algorithm, and CheckMate will be more important than ever! With that said, I’m pleased to announce that we’ve been working diligently to simplify the CheckMate submission process across the board for you, and as of today, we have made the following official changes to the specs / requirements and inspection processes.
TurboSquid CheckMate Submission Assistance
Artists hate having their models fail a CheckMate inspection and so do we. In looking at the problem, we’ve discovered that in many cases, minor technical issues with submissions were preventing success. These were things that were generally easy or trivial to fix, so we’ve decided that we can help the artist by making the tweak on their behalf and uploading the fix from our side instead of forcing them to do it on their side. This is big for everyone involved and we’ve been doing this quietly for the past month or so. So far, it’s led to a reduction in submission failures by roughly 50%. More on this later, but first some other changes.
Cinema Wide Signature Image Requirement Removed
We will no longer require the Cinema Wide version of your Signature Image and will only continue to request the square aspect 1200×1200 pixel minimum version. That’s one less image artist will have to generate as part of their submissions.
Cinema Wide Image Aspect Relaxed
As several artists who create different types of models pointed out, our Cinema Wide 1:1.85 aspect ratio doesn’t always align well with real-world photography for some classes of images, so we’ve reviewed all imagery on the site and determined that the vast majority of artists are already rendering and publishing their work with an aspect ratio between 1:1.5 through 1:1.9. As such, the term Cinema Wide now will include this range of image aspect ratios. We still encourage 1:1.85 as the ideal, as it fits our site site design best, but artists won’t fail CheckMate submissions if their images have an aspect ratio within the 1:1.5 – 1:1.9 range. Note that all images should be a minimum of 1480 pixels wide, so any image with a minimum resolution between 1480 x 988 (1:1.5) to 1480 x 779 (1:1.9) is acceptable.
Wireframe Subdivision Image Requirement Removed
CheckMate Pro models that were intended for subdivision have always required a minimum of two wireframes that showcase the various subdivision states of the model including a text overlay. That requirement has now been reduced to a recommendation instead. We still believe these extra images help a customer understand how your model will subdivide, but we will no longer fail CM Pro submissions that don’t include them.
Non-Native Files Pose and Framing Relaxed
Previously, CM Pro and Lite submissions required that all non-native 3D files match the same pose and framing of the native file (and your Signature / Context Signature images). Moving forward, all non-native files submitted simply need to open so the entire model to be visible in the viewport and not have any parts hidden. They no longer have to match the pose / framing of your Signature Image. Please note the native file that is part of a CheckMate submission is still required to have the pose and framing match the Signature image.
Collections Can Be CheckMate Certified
If you want to get a search boost and bundle existing CheckMate certified models into a collection, you can now submit that collection for certification to get that search boost. To be clear, we are not yet accepting new model collections where the components haven’t been certified yet individually, but we are allowing existing CheckMate files to be bundled and certified. The type of certification badge you get depends on the contents of the collection:
- Collections that contain all CM Pro models can be submitted for Pro certification
- Collections that contain all CM Lite models can be submitted for Lite certification
- Collections that contain both CM Lite and Pro models can be submitted for Lite certification
As a side note, we’re still working on allowing collections of new models, but that requires further development on our automation pipeline. For now, you must open a support ticket with your collection Asset ID so that our support team can review it internally.
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Getting back to our new assistance system to help artists pass CheckMate when minor technical glitches happen: part of the reason we wanted to do this was due to the feedback we received from a number of artists. Those of you with slower Internet connections were essentially being penalized upon failure because small, identified changes (1-2 minute fixes in) took hours of your time because it required a download and re-upload once the fixes were made. That was never the intent of CheckMate.
To be clear, we’re not making major changes to files, and some issues will still result in failing a CheckMate inspection, but we are happy to provide small cleanup as needed to help you pass an inspection and achieve CheckMate status. We have been quietly doing this for about six weeks now to gauge if the process was viable, and not only are fixes short and easy, as mentioned earlier, they have already helped reduce the number of CheckMate submission failures by roughly 50%.
As everyone likes to say, “We all make mistakes.” And, likewise, we have decided to do what we can to help here to make the process smoother while continuing to educate our community on how to develop good publishing practices.
As a final note, we are currently working on defining even more scripted tools to help artists (and our internal team) clean and prep their work for CheckMate submissions, and we’ll be sharing them when ready.
In the interim, let us know if you have any questions on the spec changes that we’ve presented.
Sincerely,
-=Beau
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