As I’m sure you’re all aware of by now, things have been moving fast this week here at TurboSquid! We released our policy updates on AI, generative 3D, and data deals on Monday. The following day, NVIDIA announced a first of its kind partnership with us during their keynote at GTC. The rate of change in the 3D industry (and really all creative industries) has been moving at, what seems like, an exponential rate these last few months. All powered by breakthroughs in AI technology. Our new partnership with NVIDIA puts us at the forefront of what will be possible in the world of generative 3D and that understandably comes with questions and concerns from all of you in our artist community. This will be an ongoing conversation over the next few weeks and months, but I wanted to answer some of the earliest questions we’ve received.
Before we get to the questions, I wanted to make one important point – we view our artist community as the most critical part of our business. The partnership with NVIDIA will enable us to supply the world’s biggest companies with the 3D content they need now and in the future. But this will require an ongoing supply of amazing new models from all of you. AI looks like the next frontier of technological innovation and we want to make sure we embrace it. But we want to move forward responsibly, in ways that work for our customers and our artists. As Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s CEO put it in the GTC keynote, AI is about to have its “iPhone moment”, and we are ready to make sure all of you can be vital participants in that moment.
The TurboSquid library will be used by NVIDIA to train foundation models which will be used to power generative 3D tools for both our contributors and customers. It’s our goal to use this opportunity with partners like NVIDIA to create tools and workflows that empower our 3D contributors by reducing many of the tedious tasks required for 3D model creation, and improving the creation process. We’re continuing to build upon our syndication pipeline, utilizing AI to help with file conversions, conforms, decimation, and publishing. The use cases for AI span far beyond simple model generation.
The fears and feelings around AI are not lost on us. Generative AI has the potential to change so many industries and job roles, and we’ve seen results getting better and usage growing rapidly. Shutterstock has recently seen and embraced technological disruption as an opportunity to make things better…to solve pain points for customers and contributors. At TurboSquid we will do the same, and we’ve decided to lead on this journey for the 3D industry rather than try to ignore it or think we could somehow stop it.
– Paul Teall
VP of 3D Strategy & Operations
FAQs
- How much will I get for every usage of my model?
- This is the first question everyone has….we know this is a business for everyone selling with us on TurboSquid. Shutterstock has established the Contributor Fund to compensate contributors for their work used in training these models. We will set aside a portion of each data deal into the Contributor Fund and pay participating 3D contributors whose models are used. It is important to note that data deals are different from the traditional licensing of 3D models from TurboSquid. The request and the customer use case are often related to volume more than specific content, and as such the price per asset you receive will be lower than the asset price on TurboSquid.com. That being said, this is an opportunity to make additional money off of your existing content with a new type of customer. This demand will be ongoing and we think it will increase as more companies develop new products and experiences. We view this as an additional important revenue stream for you while you continue to make money off of our core marketplace.
- Will my models be used to train AI generators that make me and my collection obsolete?
- If money is the first question, this is certainly number two. We firmly believe that the world will always need talented 3D artists creating handcrafted 3D models, but the demand for 3D content has already increased significantly. We need to look for ways to increase the supply to meet the rising demand. One of the primary use cases we are envisioning is putting the 3D generative tools we develop into the hands of our artists. We think we can speed up your content creation so you can help create more models to sell with us. We believe there will be an ongoing and crucial role that talented 3D artists will play in creating models using generative tools and taking them the “last mile” to have them ready for customers to use.
- When will these generative products be available on TS/SSTK?
- Shutterstock’s generative 3D API, created in partnership with NVIDIA, launched in July 2024. Shutterstock also announced in July the start of early access to its 360 HDRi generator API, also built on NVIDIA Edify, which generates rich and detailed natural environments for lighting 3D scenes. These features are not currently available for use on Shutterstock or TurboSquid but will be at a future date.
- Will they use 3D models, or my renders only?
- It depends on customer requests and use cases, so it depends. Some are interested in everything, including metadata and keywords associated with the published models. It is likely that we will have deals that use everything associated with a published 3D model while others will only want access to particular aspects.
- Does this impact both PixelSquid and TurboSquid libraries?
- Yes, both PixelSquid and TurboSquid libraries could be included in data deals. If you opt out of data deal participation you will be opted out of both PixelSquid and TurboSquid.
You can learn more about Data Deals and Contributor Fund earnings in our Data Deals FAQs.