Why not go straight to the source? Unity is known for its dedication to developers. Its gaming development software is free for professionals and hobbyists alike to make and share their creations. This approach is extended to their own asset store, where creators can both buy and sell their programs.

The Unity Asset Store is a community-created platform with over 7,700 free 3D models that come as FBXs and OBJs. All assets found through the store can be used for commercial purposes. Free models can be found by checking the “Free Assets” box under the Pricing filter on the right-hand side of the window. You can also browse through the featured free models by clicking the “Top Free Assets” link at the bottom of the page under the Discover heading.

To download models, you’ll need to have a registered version of the Unity game engine. Assets are then downloaded directly into the engine and aren’t compatible with any other platform.

• Community: The platform is supported by a community of over 100,000 users and includes an online forum for assistance. All assets are reviewed by the community so that you can have faith in what you’re getting.
• Diversity of assets: Even though there are paid assets, the platform also contains thousands of assets that can be downloaded for free. The range is huge, including 2D and 3D models, add-ons, audio, essentials, templates, tools, and VFX.
• Audience: The store has a supply for a wide variety of creators. Everyone can find something here.

Itch.io is an open marketplace geared towards independent video game fans. Users of the platform can sell their creations on their own content pages, and sellers don’t need to jump over any hurdles (like a number of votes to have their content approved).

Itch.io not only provides a wide array of independent video games, but also a collection of Unity assets, such as backgrounds, simple AI, languages, and styles. It’s built as a marketplace for creators to make money, but there are over 19,600 assets that can be downloaded for free.

To find the free assets, click the “Game assets” link under the Browse heading on the left side of the page. Then on the following page, click “Free” under the Price filter results.

• Community: Itch.io doesn’t have an on-site community, but it does have active Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter pages. Anyone can use the platform to share or sell their own creations.
• Diversity of assets: The website has thousands of free options, most of which are camera and style assets. But if you create your own models and are just looking for the details, this could be perfect for you!
• Audience: The site focuses on indie game fans and developers.

Mixamo is a great site for characters that was created by Adobe. It’s 100% free to use and download. All you need to do is establish an account, which is also free to do.

At the top left side of the page are two tabs: Characters and Animations. The available characters range from construction workers to sci-fi characters. On the Animations page, there are over 2,400 character animations. Just click on whichever animation you want and your character will start moving, whether it is running, jumping, dancing, dying, or whatever action you clicked on.

• Community: There’s an Adobe Support Community specifically for Mixamo. The number of members is not listed, but with 483 conversations, the community is quite active.
• Diversity of assets: You have one basic asset here: characters. But there are 108 characters to choose from and almost 2,500 animations to apply to a character.
• Audience: Thanks to the site’s collection of high-quality 3D characters, it’s great for both beginner and professional 3D artists.

GitHub is an online hub where developers from all over the world can learn about, share, and collaborate on software projects. The website is very community-oriented, with anyone being able to look at and update each other’s code to make it better.

GitHub might not have been your first thought as a place to find gaming assets, but it’s worth a look. There are some unexpected goldmines, including a huge collection of 3D models from NASA!

• Community: GitHub is made of a community of over 83 million people, but that’s across all of its many, many projects (most of which have nothing to do with Unity). It maintains a reputation for collaboration, being sure to include everyone in projects. People from the community are welcome to identify issues with programs and provide possible solutions or updated code.
• Diversity of assets: Everything is offered by fellow developers for free, providing over 100 pages of assets to choose from. With some digging, you can find useful programs like skeletal tracking and surface textures.
• Audience: If you’re a person who’s big into the development side of things, this is the place for you.

Poly Haven is a great site where you can download free textures, models, and high-dynamic range images (HDRI). The model selection is incredibly diverse and includes furniture, barrels, cannons, and even surprising finds like a Korean public payphone. The texture selection is equally expansive: You’ll find textures like rock, brick, concrete, fabric, and everything in between. Their wide variety of HDRIs will give you highly realistic lighting for your scenes.

And the best part is you don’t even need to create an account to download assets.

• Community: There is no specific community for Poly Haven, but the site does have a blog as well as pages for news and FAQs.
• Diversity of assets: The site features over 1,100 assets of superb quality spread across models, textures, and HDRIs – you can find whatever you need here.
• Audience: The site is targeted toward VFX artists and game designers.

TurboSquid is a marketplace with over 25,000 free 3D models and hundreds of thousands more in the paid category. The site provides both paid and free assets along with a brief description of the quality. The quality of a model is judged on aspects such as scale and texture resolution for the purpose of awarding either “Lite or Pro CheckMate Certification”.

The site is easy to navigate with a search bar in the middle of the screen and a carousel below the header image, which links to free models. In addition to 3D models, you can find texture maps, sound effects, scripts, and software.

To download a model from the site, you’ll need to create an account. Models downloaded from TurboSquid are royalty-free and can be used for commercial purposes.

• Community: The community is made of professionals and hobbyists alike who both buy and sell their 3D models. If help is needed, the website contains a support page.
• Diversity of assets: The site is a good source for 3D model packs from the community. There are both free and priced 3D models, including trees, characters, and devices, as well as other assets, such as textures, sound effects, and scripts.
• Audience: This website is mainly geared towards 3D artists and professionals, but the huge range of free options means anybody can benefit.

Sketchfab is a website geared towards making it easy for anyone to publish and find 3D content on an online platform. You can choose models with confidence by previewing them in Sketchfab’s real-time 3D and VR viewer and model inspector, which lets you interact with the models in the browser.

Sketchfab gives users access to over four million models and contains both free and paid content. Free models on the site use a Creative Commons license, and all are royalty-free. It’s difficult, however, to tell just how many of those are free. Even the “Free 3D Models” link under the Store heading at the bottom of the homepage returns results that include some paid models.

Although Sketchfab recommends OBJ, Blender, and FBX file formats, they also support many others. Downloading them requires you to create an account, but Sketchfab also has a download API. It allows you to search the entire Sketchfab database and download models into your application.

• Community: Sketchfab has a community of over eight million registered users. There are multiple community platforms such as blogs, forums, and Discord support.
• Diversity of assets: The site only provides 3D model assets, which could be used to add more elements to your independent game.
• Audience: Sketchfab appeals to both professional and novice model creators and architects.

Texturer is a superb site with a fantastic variety of textures. You don’t even need to create an account to download them. On the left side of the homepage is their list of categories. Here, you can choose textures for buildings, metal, transport, ground, weapons, wear, animals, and more.

You can create, for example, the basic shape of a building in Unity, import a cool texture for it, then apply the texture to your building object. It’s that easy!

• Community: There is no Texturer community on-site or elsewhere online.
• Diversity of Assets: At this site, you can get almost any texture. Although a specific number of assets is not provided, there are 21 asset categories with a varying number of subcategories and assets in each.
• Audience: Texturer has set its sights on not only 3D artists and animators but also designers of all sorts who need high-resolution textures.

Kenney is a great resource for game assets. Though the 3D model selection is a bit limited, in total, Kenney has thousands of images, audio files, and 3D models in 167 bundles. Every collection you download comes in a range of file formats by default, which gives you the flexibility to use assets in other programs, too!

Assets from Kenney are in the public domain and are completely free for use in personal, educational, and commercial projects. Downloading assets from the website doesn’t require an account; all a user has to do is search for an asset, select it, and download it. And while there’s no cost to download, the site does accept donations, and also has a page on Patreon.

• Community: The website has a Discord channel, where users can meet and share with other game developers. If you really want to get involved, there’s also a community on Patreon, where you can get early access to new assets as well as exclusive content (for a monthly contribution).
• Diversity of assets: While there aren’t as many 3D models as some other sites on this list, there are great selections of audio files, 2D images, and even pre-built games.
• Audience: Kenney would be a great starting point for beginners to build up a collection of assets, but with commercial use also permitted, there’s something for professional developers, too.

The Unity Asset Free team works 24/7 to deliver a huge library of Unity assets for the purpose of learning. They also provide tutorials to help a beginner developer become a pro in no time. The website is supported through donations.

The assets they offer range from things as simple as 3D character models to more complicated files such as VR interaction frameworks. All of the assets are intended specifically for use in Unity, so you shouldn’t have any issues.

• Community: There’s no real website community, but the site does have a page in the Telegram app. There are tutorials included with downloads to help you become a pro, and there’s a 24/7 team ready to help.
• Diversity of assets: The site contains 198 pages of free assets ready to download. Assets listed include VR interaction tools, models, and dialogue systems.
• Audience: This option is ideal for beginner developers with a tight budget. It’s a particularly good source if you want to get into augmented or virtual reality creation.

CGTrader prides itself on being the world’s largest source of licensable custom 3D models, over 21,000 of which are free low-poly models. The free assets can be easily found: Simply click on the “Free 3D Models” under the 3D Models tab at the top of the homepage.

The website is managed by a community of over six million users. The site also includes a feature that, for business customers, generates 3D models suited for high-grade augmented reality from 2D product images.

Like most sites, CGTrader also requires a login to download models. Files are available in 3DS, MLT, C4D, Blender, STL, and FBX formats. All models downloaded from the site have a royalty-free license.

• Community: The community includes over six million users sharing models and ideas. The site is open to enterprise customers and freelance developers alike. If you need support, there’s a customer help center and blog.
• Diversity of assets: The site is only for 3D models, but there are over 106,000 free models. You can also inquire about custom models, but there will be a charge.
• Audience: This is a place for 3D model developers and retailers who want to have a photorealistic model for presentations of products.

If you’re a huge fan of the old Atari- or Gameboy-style video games, Open Game Art is the place for you. Artists sell their creations, whether it’s backgrounds, characters, or music to anyone wanting to use them in commercial projects as long as they adhere to the license terms. When posting your own projects, you can indicate if you want to be credited.

Unlike most other sites, Open Game Art has all the resources a game developer would need for graphics and sound production. It also hosts over 4,000 3D models and a forum where users can discuss with other game enthusiasts.

• Community: The site features an online forum with weekly leaderboards ranking the most favored downloads.
• Diversity of assets: There’s a limited number of game templates, backgrounds, shading, music, and art styles. All of the art has a retro video game style.
• Audience: This is a great place for independent game developers and makers who are fans of retro-style games.

Like it says in its name, Free3D is a platform where you can share 3D models with the world. You can build a portfolio on the site to show off your skills for freelance work, or just browse and download others’ creations.

Free3D contains over 14,000 free models, and of that, about half are specifically low-poly. The models are available in a wide variety of formats, including 3DS Max, MLT, C4D, Blender, STL, and FBX. They can be downloaded without a login, but you’ll have to check the licensing of each.

There is a range of 3D models for things like vehicles, terrains, and characters. Free3D has also started selling “premium” 3D models priced at $100 or less alongside the free collection.

• Community: The website doesn’t have a community forum, but instead, there is a company contact section should you need help with troubleshooting. Creators can share their ideas to build a portfolio for freelance work.
• Diversity of assets: There are over 14,000 assets free to download, with most being 3D models and terrains.
• Audience: The wide range of file types makes this a useful platform for any creator, not just game developers.