News

Our newest 3D Challenge: Female Characters is about more than just prizes and awesome models. It also comes with a strong message. We are holding our biggest challenge yet with over $8,500 in licenses, rendering credits and other prizes. There are no technical requirements, so every designer has a chance to participate and help create a friendlier virtual world for women. Everyone is invited to join the challenge by creating, sharing and promoting female-friendly 3D...

Render times are a pain. With more studios and designers turning to render farms, our good friends and supporters of 3D challenges: Space and Female Characters – Rayvision's Fox Renderfarm – talked to us about rendering Academy Award (The Oscars) winners, YouTube celebrity videos and Bollywood blockbusters. They also revealed some technical hurdles they had to beat to satisfy 70,000 demanding customers, and some myths users often have about render farms. You’ve been in the...

Gone are the days of simple cutouts of people in static architectual visualizations! AXYZ Design studio is the leading innovator in archviz, bringing high-end dynamic assets and software to professional architects, the movie industry and everyone in between. In this interview, Diego Gadler, the CEO of AXYZ Design, shares his insights and experience in archviz, the blurring lines between games, VFX and archviz, and the huge potential of ANIMA – the first and widely used...

Have you ever thought about starting freelancing or selling your 3D works online, but didn’t? Maybe you’re doing it right now but are unsure if you’re doing it right? Maybe you think… 1. It’s impossible to do if I have a full-time job First, having a full-time job in no way prevents you from making your own models. Many CG artists create their models after work. Even if you have only an hour to spare...

Last year, CGTrader invited students from around the world to take a look at how games could be used for social good and playful learning. Our staff had a wonderful time reading their essays and voting for the best ones. We want to thank everyone for participating and congratulate Allison Smith, a student from Medical Lake High School, on winning first place and the $2,000 scholarship with her essay. Runners-up Gregory Welsh from Villanova University...

As millions of gamers are taking their first steps in virtual reality (VR), we want to find out more about the people creating awesome VR experiences. This is why we'd like to introduce Oliwer Svensson ( @oliwervik) to our 3D designer community. Oliwer is the Art Director at SVRVIVE – an independent VR game development studio known for making great games with immersive environments. In this interview, he shares his insights on developing transformative games,...

Last month we announced the winners of our 3D Challenge: Space. We got in touch with them and asked a couple of questions about their design work. Now, with the well-deserved spotlight on them, we give you their answers. Tell us a bit about yourselves. How did you start 3D modeling? jackfurneri1984: I'm an Italian 3D artist with a Master’s degree in 3D Computer Animation held at the University of Kent (Canterbury - UK). My...

Dekogon Studios is a collective of top artists in the gaming industry. We got the chance to talk to its founder, Clinton Crumpler, who told us what Dekogon is focused on now and shared some insights about the 3D modeling industry. Clinton, tell us a bit about how Dekogon Studios came about and what you do. Dekogon is an artist collaborative group, our work is created by a collective of multiple contributing top-talent artists from...

You know how announcers on classic radio stations talk for a couple of minutes before playing that piece by Vivaldi, or how you get those booklets every time you go to the Opera? (You guys do go to the Opera, right?) These things are there because a great work of art deserves a story. Our Digital Design Awards brought the art and now we bring you the stories! As the winner of the Sci-Fi category...

Are you ready for another challenge? We’ve already awarded a total prize pool of $15,000 to winners of the Designer Schwag and Sports & the Hobbies challenges, and now we’re kicking off another friendly competition: this time we’re searching for the best PBR models of interior objects! Join our Interior Design Challenge today! Eligible models This is a single-object model challenge, so no environments or interior sets can enter the competition. You can, however, take...