Project Lighthouse: A Community Challenge

We’re Back!

And with our biggest community challenge yet! This time, we’re working together on a brand new game!

Work with us to create a library of free and open 3D assets!

Introducing the Project Lighthouse Asset Challenge

Poly Haven is developing its first-ever video game, Project Lighthouse, and we need your help to bring its world to life!

The game is our biggest venture yet, designed with three goals in mind:

1. To improve the quality and usability of free assets on polyhaven.com for game developers.
2. Prove and demonstrate the value and potential of our work in a real production.
3. And explore the idea of selling games as a way to fund our work creating free content. Read more about the big idea here.

We are inviting 3D artists of all skill levels to collaborate and work alongside us to create a library of themed props that will be integrated directly into the game. This is your chance to be a part of a greater project and leave your mark – help us shape the environment of Project Lighthouse!

Your work will not only become part of our game, but will also be published on Poly Haven freely under the CC0 license, helping to build a lasting library of free content for everyone.

Rewards and sponsored prizes are available for all contributors to help encourage quality contributions, however the true core of this initiative is to collaborate and create a set of free assets that anyone can use.

What is Project Lighthouse?

Project Lighthouse is a first-person atmospheric exploration-based puzzle game that plunges you onto a remote, craggy island with a simple mission: Restore functionality to a vital Lighthouse as urgently as possible.

But… your plans unexpectedly change the moment you activate the lighthouse mechanism. Encased in a shimmering energy dome, the island is violently transformed and the lighthouse becomes the epicentre of a mysterious scientific catastrophe.

Using highly experimental and otherworldly teleportation technology, you explore and solve environmental puzzles to uncover the fate of the island’s disappeared inhabitants, solve the mysteries of a catastrophic experiment, and escape from being trapped in an eternal, philosophical limbo.

Theme

The world of Project Lighthouse is a moody fusion between decaying military infrastructure and retrofuturism.

In other words, the rusted world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. meets the mysterious 80’s high-tech labs of Remedy’s: Control.

Still lost? Here is a reference board:

Rewards!

Creators of all accepted assets will receive:

• Access to a closed beta of the game, plus a full copy of the game on release.
• A copy of our Blender Add-on.
• Early access to all our upcoming assets, including the Vaults.
• A permanent “Project Lighthouse Contributor” role on our Discord.
• And of course, full credit for your work in the game’s credits, and for the asset published on polyhaven.com.

Sponsored Prizes

In addition to the base participation rewards above, like last time we’ve organized a plethora of sponsored tools, courses, assets, and plugins to hand out to the best artists at the end.

Unlike last time, we’ve got an absolute truckload of them! And we’ll be adding more as we go until the project concludes.

How will prizes work?

After the deadline, challenge contributors and patrons will vote for the top creations, and winners will get to choose from the pool of available prizes.

The artist in first place will get first pick from the prize pool; after that, second place will then pick from the remaining prizes; third place will pick after that; then fourth… until there are no prizes left.

As you can see, we try to arrange several copies of every prize, so that participants are more likely to get what they want even if their assets weren’t voted to be the best.

Ultimately we see this project as a community collaboration, not a competition, but we love the idea of handing out exciting bags of goodies to say thanks to you guys and help motivate good contributions.

What to Do

1. Pick Your Prop

Take a look at our reference board and decide what asset you want to make.

It can be anything! The references are for inspiration only; to give you an idea of the vibe and themes we’re going for, and ideas for some of the props we’ll probably need.

If you feel like it can fit in that environment somewhere, go for it 🙂

If you make something that completely doesn’t fit the project’s theme at all, like a certain sword in our alleyway project (Ulan, I’m talking to you!), we’ll do our best to find a place for it, but it might not make it into the game itself. We’ll still publish it on polyhaven.com and it’ll still be eligible for prizes.

If you’re not already a veteran prop artist, you might find our article about our Simple Prop Workflow helpful.

2. Share Your Progress

Join our Discord community and share your progress in our 🔨work-in-progress channel. This is a collaborative project and we’d love to see your process!

Follow other artists’ work, and give your feedback to help them improve. We’re all in this to make the best assets to release freely on polyhaven.com, and to help each other grow. The game is just an excuse to make something bigger than all of us together.

This community project is much longer than our last ones – heck Project Lighthouse as a whole is bigger than anything we’ve done before – so it’s key that we all communicate and share our work as we go, and not just wait until the deadline to submit things.

While you’re working, keep a list of the texture resources you use (where you got them). This will be required as part of your submission.

3. Submit Your Work

Submissions are not yet open.

Rather than wait until the final deadline to submit your asset(s), we’ll open submissions in February, and you can submit anytime between then and the deadline in May.

Likewise, we won’t wait until the project is concluded to publish your work! As soon as everyone’s happy with it, we’ll upload it to polyhaven.com.

Quality matters more than quantity. You could use this project as an opportunity to focus on a single prop, sharpen your skills, learn from the community, and walk away with an incredible prop for your portfolio. You can submit as many assets as you like, however, only your top 3 will be eligible for prizes.

FAQ

Can I submit multiple assets?

Please do! Create as many assets as you like, however only your top 3 will be eligible for prizes. This is to ensure that quality is favored over quantity.

If you submit multiple assets that are very similar (e.g. Small geometry tweaks or minor texture changes ) we might consider them as a single asset.

Can I use images from Pixabay/Unsplash?

These two websites do not actually use the CC0 license, but their licenses are similar enough to CC0 that for most images (except for those depicting a recognizable person or trademark) you may incorporate them in your assets. Just read their license terms carefully to ensure you’re abiding by them, and then in our submission form provide a link to the image(s) you used so that we can verify your source and credit the author (which is not technically required, but is nice to do and builds trust with our users).

For other similar sites, make sure their license is similarly lenient – if you’re not sure just ask in the comments below or on Discord and we’ll check it out.

Note that textures from popular sites like textures.com and Poliigon are not compatible with the CC0 license and cannot be used. For any other sites, read their licenses very carefully, or ask on our Discord.

Can I submit AI generated assets?

No. Poly Haven publishes only hand-made assets. Read our thoughts and plans about AI here.

What happens if I use copyrighted resources as part of my asset?

If you tell us about it, then we will unfortunately have to reject your submission. If you don’t tell us, that would be plagiarism. If you don’t include any sources, we assume that your asset is completely your own original work, and will publish it as CC0 on Poly Haven. Despite us sharing your creation on our website, you are the one publishing it and licensing your creation as CC0, so you remain legally responsible for it. If it’s later discovered that your design is plagiarized, we will immediately remove it and provide your contact information to the party raising the dispute.

Will the game be a paid product?

Yes, one of the major goals of Project Lighthouse is for us to explore the idea of selling games as a means to fund our work creating free assets for everyone. So in a way, you are not just donating your hard work creating an asset to our community project, but you are also donating it’s value as a part of the game as a whole to help fund the creation of future assets.

All of Poly Haven’s funds go towards creating CC0 assets for everyone, and we publish monthly finance reports to show exactly what we do with every cent we get: https://polyhaven.com/finance-reports

This is the first time we’re making a proper game so we’re not even sure if we’re going to make a profit at all, but if we do, then every cent will go back into Poly Haven as a whole to create more content for other creators and developers like you.

Anything else?

We’re on Discord every day, feel free to ask us other questions there, or comment below 🙂

Info and Links

• Discord community
• Project Reference Board
• Learning resource: Simple prop workflow
• Poly Haven 3D Model Standards: Technical Standards document
• Submissions: Check back in February