At some point during any large project you will realize how hard it is to make every asset from scratch, while pushing through is one way of doing it, getting free blender models is another solution.
Licensing
The licencing of models determines what they can be used for, here are the most common ones:
CC0 Means you can do whatever you want with the models down to selling them in their original format (But don’t do that).
Royalty Free Cannot be sold or distributed in any 3D form (eg. Project Files, Resources… ) but you are allowed to sell it in the forms of 2D artwork, films, animations, stock photography, video games and physical models and toys.
Editorial Not for commercial use, must credit original creator.
3Dmdb
License: Multiple
3Dmdb is a really cool site, because like 3DAssets.one it searches across a bunch of different 3D model websites, giving you a huge variety of options and making it easier for you to find what you are looking for.
3D Scans of Louvre Museum
License: CC0
Using this collection of 25 photo scans is a great way to showcase procedural textures and can also be used in the background of scenes and artwork.
Smithsonian 3D Digitization
License: CC0
Smithsonian has taken photo scans of many of it’s displays. Meaning if you are ever setting up a museum scene, or need any historical artifacts it can be a great place to start.
Everyday Assets Pack
License: CC0
The Everyday Assets Pack is a huge collection of untextured 3D models, so if your into texturing this can be an amazing find.
Note: Gumroad would not let them give it away for free, so they charge 2 dollars. But if you use the promo code: freeforall then you can get it for free.
Blender Boom
License: CC0
Blender boom has a collection of free blender models as well as paid ones. The clean, subdividable topology of the models is quite impressive.
Poly Haven Models
License: CC0
Poly Haven has a medium sized collection of very well textured CC0 3D models as well as HDRis and Textures.
Quaternius
License: CC0
Quaternius is a really cool little library of 3D game assets. They come in .blend files, which makes the assets easy to modify before exporting for your games and projects.
CGTrader
License: Royalty Free
CGTrader has a huge variety of models and a very helpful “Free” search filter unlike many other big 3D model selling sites.
3D Jungle
License: Editorial
3D Jungle is an absolutely massive library of models, unfortunately they are under the editorial licence and cannot be used for commercial purposes.
Turbosquid
License: Royalty Free
Turbosquid and Free3D (Which are both now owned by Shutterstock) are kinda trash as far as free stuff goes, but sometimes you can find a hidden gem, so I’ll include them here anyway.
.Blend File
License: CC0
.blend file is a medium-small library of free blender models with varying quality.
NASA 3D Resources
License: Editorial
Though the official NASA 3D Model are for editorial uses only, they are fun to play around with and can still be used in artwork, as long as you credit NASA.
Sketchfab
License: Multiple
Sketchfab has a bit of free stuff, so why not include it?
And just in case you like light switches…
Thanks so much for reading to the end, I’d love for you to check out my other posts as well.