PoiThePoi often makes the steelman version of this argument (though given where some of his paychecks have come from, he would), but I'll also point to LycheeSlicer.
For those unfamiliar with resin 3D printers, like conventional hot plastic (aka fused deposition modeling, or FDM), they require an intermediate program to convert 3d models (usually but not always STLs) into instructions specific to your printer and environment. Unlike FDM, resin printers have a few very popular specific use cases, the majority of which are around small plastic figurines. It's not everybody using the things, but if you made me guess I'd probably estimate 95%+.
I expect this is eventually the open-source-like thing that eats Games Workshop alive, though resin printer firmware and software is a lot more closed-source than the FDM Marlin-variant world, excluding PrussaSlicer. And since most thing are closed source, they're paying people. Some vendors make this work through premium capabilities, other through weird partnerships with resin and printer part suppliers, and others with advertising. (most with a mix.)
For LycheeSlicer, the ad support comes in as thirty seconds of advertising before you can save the file for a (often hour-long) print, many of which are things you're also going to want to print. Which is a hilarious feedback loop, but it's also in theory a good solution to the discoverability problem.
There are a lot of sites with input STLs and tools for creating those STLs out there, and there's also really hard to find what you're looking for. Patio11 points to myminifactory, but there's a few dozen different sites focused on this sphere, as well as generalist sites that also have 3d models for sale to some degree. And search is hard: even if you know what you're looking for, text-based search is a mess when the best project might not even be in your language, there's a ton of overloaded language, and you also care about issues like dimensioning and complexity that not all search engines even support. A lot of times if you're just looking for inspiration, gfl.
But emphasis on the "in theory". I'm not much into the minifig world -- another use case for resin printers is producing fiddly gearing and other small parts FDM printers don't really do well -- but I just started a slice operation and the entire 30-second block was set for an advertisement for this group (not endorsed). There's probably someone who cares about these guys. But they're very much the most generic common denominator, and most importantly they're subscription model so you're paying for nearly-random material. So I'd expect that they're optimized more for ability to pay for advertising, rather than ability to get new purchases. To be fair, this isn't constant: the next try gave these folks, which seem a little pricey for their skill level but at least could plausibly be good arguments for someone who played with (or was curious about) whatever that system is.
Part of this is because a lot of decent advertising in the resin printing world has moved to other formats: patio11 points to kickstarter and youtube, but word of mouth and other approaches still apply. But a lot of it's just that advertising well is hard, and advertising poorly is economically viable for an obnoxious amount of content. It doesn't take that many people signing up for a patreon-like to pay for a small ad buy, even if they literally never use your product.
And in the resin printing world, the buyers at least get something that they paid for out of it, even if it's not necessary the deal they expected (uh, modulo kickstarters). That isn't the case for everyone. The various furry fandom ad systems tend to be a scattering of actual promotion mixed with grifts or scams and a delivery system that tries to make the ads block as much of your display as possible; Amazon will try to advertise repeat purchases of things you'd almost never buy twice in a lifetime and its 'promotions' system is a mess at best; Google's search ads are increasingly toeing the line into extortion schemes for big-name competitors.
Which leaves the question of, if advertisements could be good, why they degrade this way so readily.
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Notes -
PoiThePoi often makes the steelman version of this argument (though given where some of his paychecks have come from, he would), but I'll also point to LycheeSlicer.
For those unfamiliar with resin 3D printers, like conventional hot plastic (aka fused deposition modeling, or FDM), they require an intermediate program to convert 3d models (usually but not always STLs) into instructions specific to your printer and environment. Unlike FDM, resin printers have a few very popular specific use cases, the majority of which are around small plastic figurines. It's not everybody using the things, but if you made me guess I'd probably estimate 95%+.
I expect this is eventually the open-source-like thing that eats Games Workshop alive, though resin printer firmware and software is a lot more closed-source than the FDM Marlin-variant world, excluding PrussaSlicer. And since most thing are closed source, they're paying people. Some vendors make this work through premium capabilities, other through weird partnerships with resin and printer part suppliers, and others with advertising. (most with a mix.)
For LycheeSlicer, the ad support comes in as thirty seconds of advertising before you can save the file for a (often hour-long) print, many of which are things you're also going to want to print. Which is a hilarious feedback loop, but it's also in theory a good solution to the discoverability problem.
There are a lot of sites with input STLs and tools for creating those STLs out there, and there's also really hard to find what you're looking for. Patio11 points to myminifactory, but there's a few dozen different sites focused on this sphere, as well as generalist sites that also have 3d models for sale to some degree. And search is hard: even if you know what you're looking for, text-based search is a mess when the best project might not even be in your language, there's a ton of overloaded language, and you also care about issues like dimensioning and complexity that not all search engines even support. A lot of times if you're just looking for
inspiration, gfl.But emphasis on the "in theory". I'm not much into the minifig world -- another use case for resin printers is producing fiddly gearing and other small parts FDM printers don't really do well -- but I just started a slice operation and the entire 30-second block was set for an advertisement for this group (not endorsed). There's probably someone who cares about these guys. But they're very much the most generic common denominator, and most importantly they're subscription model so you're paying for nearly-random material. So I'd expect that they're optimized more for ability to pay for advertising, rather than ability to get new purchases. To be fair, this isn't constant: the next try gave these folks, which seem a little pricey for their skill level but at least could plausibly be good arguments for someone who played with (or was curious about) whatever that system is.
Part of this is because a lot of decent advertising in the resin printing world has moved to other formats: patio11 points to kickstarter and youtube, but word of mouth and other approaches still apply. But a lot of it's just that advertising well is hard, and advertising poorly is economically viable for an obnoxious amount of content. It doesn't take that many people signing up for a patreon-like to pay for a small ad buy, even if they literally never use your product.
And in the resin printing world, the buyers at least get something that they paid for out of it, even if it's not necessary the deal they expected (uh, modulo kickstarters). That isn't the case for everyone. The various furry fandom ad systems tend to be a scattering of actual promotion mixed with grifts or scams and a delivery system that tries to make the ads block as much of your display as possible; Amazon will try to advertise repeat purchases of things you'd almost never buy twice in a lifetime and its 'promotions' system is a mess at best; Google's search ads are increasingly toeing the line into extortion schemes for big-name competitors.
Which leaves the question of, if advertisements could be good, why they degrade this way so readily.
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