Free 3D models

Just wanted to add for anyone concerned about using pre-made models making the game not unique enough, games like Wasteland 2 (which got $3 million on Kickstarter) made extensive use of the Unity Asset store (and also got fans to make assets too) and still made it a cohesive looking design and feel and no one notices that many of the models are ones you can just get/buy yourself. Nick Pettit is right about free (at least decent) assets that are CC are few and far between, at least if you want to use them seriously, don't be afraid to spend some money if you are wanting to take this further. Doesn't have to be a lot and in context it can be great value for money, to buy a model for $10-50 that would take you 20-100 hours to make yourself for example. I'm only just starting to learn modelling myself (hence looking forward to the Maya LT course) but I've been developing in Unity for 5 years ish (others before that), absolutely nothing wrong with spending your valuable time on actual design and development rather than making individual assets.

For my own personal projects, I get lots of models from the Unity Asset Store and from Turbo Squid. No shame in using something if it's already built. I only generally model things if...

• It's something unique to the game
• I can't find a decent model at a reasonable price
• It's really easy to model and will just take an hour or so
• I feel like challenging my modeling skills

That said, even when models have decent geometry, their textures usually aren't PBR or the textures are too low resolution. Typically, I'll buy a model and then do some cleanup/customization in Maya, and then retexture the model.

I wrote about this a bit in this blog post: http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/resourceful-indie-game-developer

Free-to-use or CC-licensed assets are few and far between in game development, at least when compared to web, where there's a jQuery or WordPress plugin or icon set for anything and everything.