NFTs, Generative Art

Artwork and NFTs: How Many Traits Are Needed for a 10k Generative NFT PFP Set?

Ready to do your art? Here’s what you need to know.

The short answer: About 200 would be great. But, if you’re an artist about to prepare artwork for a generative NFT drop, let’s have a deeper look at that answer. (See what I did there, though? I gave the final answer in the first sentence! How many articles do that??!)

Before I go on with the long answer: If you’re an artist planning a generative NFT drop, here are some guidelines on how to set things up in your Photoshop / Procreate files layer-wise:

Okay, now for the longer answer…

In a generative NFT set — specifically, the of the profile picture (PFP) type — you generally will have properties and traits. Properties are basically categories — like background, skin color, shirt, necklace, mouth, eyes, hair, hat. And traits are the individual members of those property groups.

The math for calculating the number of possible combinations is simple: Take the number of traits within each property group, and multiply those numbers by each other. So, for example, if you have just five properties (background, skin color, shirt, face, and hat), and you have 10 traits within each, then the math is ‘10 x 10 x 10 x 10 x 10’ — or 100,000.

Even with that small example of 5 properties and 50 total traits, you can see that you already have 10x more than you technically need for a 10k generative set. But, as you would see if you actually used those numbers, your variety would be lacking. And additionally, you wouldn’t have left much room at all for a hierarchy of rarity.

Questions I Get a Lot:

• What should the minimum number of properties be? Well, again, there are no rules here — only math and aesthetics. So, the answer I’ll give is my own opinion based on my preferences. Unless you have unusual circumstances, I can’t imagine a set being super interesting with less than, say, five properties. But, with this small number, it would probably need to have quite a massive variety of traits within each property (much more than the 10 in the above example). More like 40, in my opinion.
• What would a typical number of properties be? In the 20 or so sets I’ve coded, I’d say the average range is 10–15 properties.
• What should the minimum number of traits be? In my experience coding, I don’t think I’ve seen a set with fewer than about 140 traits, and I wasn’t crazy about the variety there. The fewer the traits, the more properties you’d want, though. For example, assuming just 140 traits… If they were spread over just two properties (70 each), there would be only 4,900 possible combinations. If they were spread over seven properties (20 each), there would be 1.2 billion combinations. So, yes, you can get away with fewer traits for a 10k generative set. But again, you’re likely sacrificing variety overall.
• What would a typical number of traits be? Yes, this was the short answer, above — about 200+ is a sweet spot. But lately, I seem to be getting more clients with higher numbers of overall traits — more like mid-200s to sometimes 300s, even. It really depends on the artist. (And, sometimes the distinctions are significant; other times I’m seeing basically the same trait simply colored 10 different ways.)
• What would the maximums be for properties and traits? Again, there are no rules here. Only keep in mind that, the more assets you draw, the more work it is for the coder — which is not a big deal when you have 300 or 400 even. But, if you have like 1,000 traits, you really need to make sure you’re setting things up properly for your programmer. (I had one once with ~1,200 traits — which was challenging for some reasons, but we also had it super well-organized, so we got it done.) With massive numbers of traits, also keep in mind that you probably also need to be super organized when it comes to trait conflicts, as it could be tough to identify and code around each and every possible conflict on a set that big. And finally, with massive numbers of traits, you can run into some concerns with rarity rankings (which I won’t go into here too deeply).

Anyway, the above should be a fairly broad general guideline. If you’ve got any questions about your setup, feel free to reach out. And again, now that you’ve got a target goal for number of traits, make sure to setup your artwork files correctly:

And you’ll want to read up on rarity tables, as that’s the other half of the artwork consideration. Here are a few article on that: