If you’ve surfed our website, you already know what non-fungible tokens are, how to create them and how much it costs. So you probably already know that NFT traits are crucial and affect the tokens’ rarity and price. But how do creators generate NFT traits? Well, it’s math. Don’t worry, I’ll explain the whole thing to you simply and clearly.
The Basics of Generating NFT Traits
Let’s start with the basics of generating NFT traits. There’s a background, a character and a set of attributes. When we add up these 3 categories we get NFTs just like it’s shown in the figure below.
So basically NFT traits are the characteristics of these non-fungibles. let me show you a clearer example. In the picture below, the NFT (A) is made up of all the traits shown in (B).
If you want to put together one NFT, this is easy. Just pick the trait for one and add them up. However, you can’t follow this process if you want to generate NFT traits for an entire collection. So this is where the fun part is… MATH!
Coming Up with NFT Traits
Let’s take an example of having an NFT collection of 10,000 items. First, you must generate several “layers” in order to produce 10,000 NFTs. And then create variations for each layer. These variations are what makes each non-fungible token stand out from the collection. Traits are for example the background, eyes, mouth, etc. Layers are what you change in each. For example, there’s different colors (layers) in the background (trait). You can see the traits and layers on the marketplace for example on OpenSea.
10,000 tokens seems like a lot of design work to generate NFT traits for. So, to succeed on one’s own seems just impossible. You may therefore easily apply the 0, 1, 40, and 10,000 techniques.
- You simply define the character of your artworks from 0 to 1. Take a piece of paper or use any graphic program to sketch your character.
- Then, create your character’s layers from 1 to 40. As an illustration, you might start by deciding on your layers for the background, face, hair, ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and possibly the glass.
The second step is to begin designing each layer with ten possible traits. You can create square and round face images for the face layer. You also sketch drawings of wavy and afro hair for the hair.
To create your first NFT, choose one version from each layer and merge them. - Finally, generating graphics out of numerous layers is a pretty strong idea. This is because you can create thousands of NFT assets with just a few layers. You previously selected four layers. And there are now ten distinct traits for each one.
So, with the “from 40 to 10,000” strategy, you can create 40 sub-images altogether. These 40 sub-images can be combined randomly to create 10,000 different NFT.
The math behind generating NFT traits
But how do you figure out how many layers do you need? Well, depending on your knowledge of the NFT system and your design objectives, there are two approaches to figure this out. Either you use the same number of traits for every layer. Or, you use different traits for each layer.
#1 Same number of traits for each layer
Let’s suppose you want all your layers to have the same number of traits. You can calculate the number of NFTs using the following formula.
Number of NFTs = (Number of traits) ^ (Number of layers)
Using this formula you can also figure out how many traits each layer needs to have to generate a certain number of NFTs. Let’s say you want to make 10,000 unique NFTs and your character has 4 layers. You’ll need 10 traits in each.
10 ^ 4 = 10,000
#2 Different traits for each layer
However, let’s say you want each layer to have a different set of characteristics, you’ll need the formula below.
Number of NFTs= ∏ (The number of every layer’s traits)
For example, if you produce 7 traits for the background layer, 8 traits for the face layer, 12 traits for the eyes layer, and 15 traits for the hat layers, you will get:
7 x 8 x 12 x 15 = 10,080
This is quite simple, right?
Now you know how to generate NFT traits alongside almost everything related to launching yourself in the non-fungible world. I’ll give you one more thing to make sure you’re well-set on your journey. Here’s an NFT rarity tool to calculate the rarity of your NFTs. Enjoy!