UPDATE: The position is covered. You can send me anyway your portfolio with mandaroty some spaceships or space-themed assets if I can fit you. Please avoid if you don't work that part.

Hi!

I'm looking for a 3D hard-surface artist to create the first production-quality spaceship for Sidera Caeli, a multiplayer first-person space project I've been developing alongside its own interconnected authoring/tooling framework.

What I'm looking for

I currently have a fully functional ship in-game, but the model itself is an AI-generated placeholder — somewhere between a Temu spaceship and topology gore. 😂

It has served its purpose: validating flight, physical boarding, cockpit interaction, weapons, hardpoints, collisions, interiors, multiplayer, etc.

Now I'd like to start replacing those placeholders with proper, professionally made, game-ready assets, beginning with this ship.

I'm looking for someone who can take the existing design/concept and rebuild it as a polished sci-fi spacecraft while preserving its general identity, proportions and gameplay requirements.

Scope

For this first ship, the focus would primarily be the exterior hull.

There is a cockpit/interior cavity because the player physically enters the ship and sits inside it, so it needs to look believable from the pilot seat and through the windows. However, I'm not looking for a fully detailed interior at this stage.

Cockpit MFDs, radar, screens and other interactive UI elements are generated dynamically by the game and should not be modelled into the asset.

I'd mainly expect:

• Production-quality exterior modelling
• UVs and proper PBR texturing
• Game-ready topology
• Approximately 100K triangles maximum for LOD0, preferably lower where sensible
• Good use of baked/normal detail instead of unnecessary geometry
• A basic but believable cockpit cavity/pilot area
• Clean GLB/glTF-compatible output
• Sensible separation of functional components where appropriate

I already have an automatic configurable LOD pipeline, so you don't need to manually create multiple LODs.

I'm also completely open to discussing the poly budget and production workflow with someone more experienced on the art side. I'm a software/systems guy, not a 3D artist, so if you think one of my requirements is stupid, please tell me. :)

Modularity

The project already has a functional hardpoint/attachment system.

Weapons and other replaceable components can exist as separate assets and be mounted dynamically by the game.

So my general philosophy is:

The hull is the hull. Functional things that can be replaced should ideally be separate.

For this first asset I'm not going to be ridiculously strict about modularity, though. Part of the purpose of commissioning this first ship is to establish a good art → game pipeline that we can reuse afterwards.

About the project

Sidera Caeli is currently a functional multiplayer test bed built around Three.js/WebGPU on the client and Colyseus/Rapier on the server.

The player exists physically in the world: you can walk through a station, request a ship, board it through the airlock, sit in the cockpit, fly in 6DOF, fight other ships, EVA, use FPS weapons, quantum travel and descend through planetary atmospheres to the surface.

A large part of the work so far has actually gone into the tooling behind it: prefab/entity authoring, hardpoints, ship configuration, procedural planets, LOD/scatter systems, particles, audio, diegetic screens, world editing, etc.

The current ugly assets have deliberately been placeholders while I validated whether all of those systems actually worked together.

They do.

So now I'd like to start making things pretty. :)

Potential ongoing work

This is a paid commission, not a revenue-share proposal.

I'd like to start with one ship.

However, I'm not really looking at this as a one-off Fiverr-style asset purchase.

If we work well together and can establish a workflow that produces assets that integrate cleanly with the tooling, there's potentially a lot more work afterwards: additional ships, stations, vehicles, environmental assets, modular pieces, props, etc.

I'd much rather find an artist — or small team — I can continue working with than find a different person for every asset.

Budget

I'm open to quotes, although for this first ship I'm hoping to keep the budget at around 250€ maximum.

I'm just one person funding the project myself, and at this stage I honestly don't know what kind of traction it will get, so I need to keep the initial investment reasonable.

That said, if everything works out well between us, this is definitely not the only asset I need. I already have other ships, ground vehicles and plenty of additional pieces in mind, so there's real potential for ongoing paid work rather than just this one commission.

I'd still prefer artists to tell me what they believe is realistic for the scope. If possible, please break down what your quote includes — modelling, high-poly/low-poly workflow, retopology, UVs, baking, textures, revisions, source files, etc.

I'm also happy to adjust the scope if what I'm asking for doesn't realistically fit that budget.

Regarding payment, I'm completely fine with paying before receiving the final files. I would just ask for a quick live call/screenshare first where you can show me the finished work in your 3D software, including the actual model and polycount, so I can verify that the asset exists and matches what we've agreed.

Once that's done, I'll make the payment via PayPal, directly to your account in regular fiat currency, and you can send me the final files afterwards.

I think that's a reasonably safe arrangement for both sides, especially when working together for the first time.

Interested?

Please DM me with:

• Your portfolio
• Examples of hard-surface / sci-fi / vehicle work if available
• Your approximate quote or rate
• Estimated timeframe
• Your timezone
• Whether you're an individual artist or a studio/team

I'm in Spain (CET/CEST), but my sleep schedule is questionable enough that timezone differences usually aren't a huge problem. 😂

I'm also happy to jump on a call and show the current build, the existing placeholder GLB (https://sideracaeli.com/space_fighter_v1.zip) and the authoring tools so you can see exactly how the asset will be used before providing a final quote.

Thanks!