How to Write Good Documentation

When you upload a product on Blender Market, we require that you provide documentation for it. Every product, every time. Thorough and accurate documentation helps educate prospective customers about the nature of your product—how to use it, its features and functions—and may be the deciding factor in a customer's decision to purchase your product. Your product's documentation will be visible to all potential customers, right from the product page, so take your time to write it well.

From super-advanced add-ons to simple models, how your documentation looks will depend on the type of product you are selling. Let's take a look at some good practices and general rules that will ensure that your documentation helps customers and gets your product past admin moderation.

General Rules

• Answer the question: How can my customer get started with my product once they've purchased it? 
• Identify aspects of your product that can be customized, and how they can be customized.
• Think about what you would want to know if you were purchasing the product. Include information that artists and developers will find useful.
• Don't assume that your customer will intuitively know how your product works. 
• Feel free to include links to more information.

Some things to put into model documentation:

• How to append or link the model and whether it is a group or an object
• How to interact with your model's materials
• How the modifiers are set up and how a customer can interact with them
• If there are multiple layers, what is on those layers

Here's a good example of thorough and informative model documentation.

What you should include in your add-on documentation will vary depending on the nature of your product. While we strongly encourage the creation of PDF, video, and tutorial resources to support your product, keep in mind that some customers may also want or need a written explanation of how your product works. Ideally, we would love to see you create both a video, which shows customers how to use your product, and a transcription of that video that includes images (PDF). We recommend packaging the transcribed PDF with your add-on files.

Here's a good example of thorough and informative add-on documentation.

Provide information on how to use the materials, shaders and/or nodes that have been used to create the product.

Here's a good example of thorough and informative shader/material documentation.

Render Setups

Here's a good example of thorough and informative render setup documentation.

Training

For training products, be sure to touch on the following, if they are applicable:

• The learning objective(s), or what you want your customer to walk away knowing after completing your training
• The skill level required of your students (beginning, intermediate, or advanced)
• What tools and software or hardware your customer will need to get the most out of your course
• The files that will be included in their purchase
• An outline of lessons

Here's a good example of thorough and informative training documentation.