Being a professional 3D visualization artist requires more than knowing the ins and outs of complicated rendering software and a keen eye for composition, color, and movement - it requires resourcefulness. Any artist worth the seventeen teraflop mega PC they do their work on knows where to look and who to ask in order to take the shortcuts necessary to maintain a lightning fast workflow schedule.

TurboSquid 3D is one of these places to look.

It is an online service that hosts hundreds and thousands of pre-made 3D models for 3D visualization artists to use to populate their work. It’s a digital library with a variety of categories ranging from cars and people to entire works of architecture. It gives rendering artists the ability to design what’s important and then pick and choose from TurboSquid to fill in the less important blanks.

3D models are distributed on a pay-per-model basis. Once you’ve purchased a license to use a particular asset - let’s say a blue 2017 Ford F150 Raptor - you’re then free to use it to populate an image or animation in whichever way your creative mind might dream up. The models available are all world-class quality, and are made by the same professionals who are buying them on the back end.

And for those same professionals - that would be you - TurboSquid is a great place for you to show off (and potentially sell) your modeling work. Your models will need to be held to the highest of industry standards, and will even be run through a CheckMate certification in order to ensure accuracy and quality. Once your model has been approved, it will be uploaded to their marketplace and sell for as much as $1000.

Additionally, if you’re part of a team, firm, or digital rendering office and are looking for a more robust, ongoing relationship with TurboSquid, the offer a free membership to their Enterprise Program, which allows members to work with TurboSquid to establish budgets and workflow constraints to ensure the most help for the least investment.

TurboSquid is also great for architecture firms who are looking to bolster their 3D model library when doing rendering work in-house. This isn’t always the most viable option for smaller firms, but for offices with big-budget projects, there are plenty of landscape, entourage, and figure options to make the architecture pop. These models will add the movement and context needed to allow the focus to be on the merits of the design, and not the weird looking rendered kid with three feet and seven eyes.

For 3D rendering and visualization artists looking for a consistent and reliable resource for the most meticulously crafted 3D models the internet has to offer, look no further than TurboSquid. It has a weird name, an easy-to-use interface, and the parts and pieces that will take your work from good to WHOA! The investment is worth the reward.