Price question (a village)

[iridescence]

Hi,

 

Sorry if I am posting in the wrong forum, the admins can move the thread if they wish. Now to the issue. We are soon about to be given a village numbering around 100 houses consisting of maybe 5-6 different types of houses. I'm interested in what's the average price for that kind of work. There'll supposedly be a dozen of still images at high resolution for the exterior - each 4000 pixels wide, ~20 interior renders, and a maximum of two minutes fly-trough animation and I suppose a lot of post-proccessing. Presumably there will be a lot of site modeling too. I want to emphasize that this project is going to be made from scratch - no models(I allude houses) for this project are going to be provided. The whole thing would be made using vray as rendering engine. The team is very small - actually 3 people. I wouldn't mind if someone shares a tip about organizing the work on a project of that scale. Thanks!

[AJLynn]

120,000 Euros.

[kippu]

1,20,100 euros + tax

what about vat?

[AJLynn]

Does Bulgaria have VAT? And do these Europeans actually charge VAT on B2B services?

[iridescence]

Wow, are you guys serious?! I can say that surprised me. I еxpected to hear something like 40, maximum 50К euros. I gues one should also take into account the country. Kippu, I think I didn't understand you well. What do you mean by "1,20,100 euros"? And yes, there is VAT. Here's what our latest work looks like for a better comparison:

 

 

[AJLynn]

I was joking. Try breaking down the work you will be doing - modeling 5 houses, modeling the site, texturing everything (is it one palette or are there a lot of differences between the houses?). The exterior shots will have straightforward lighting but the interiors will have different setups that will all need to be worked out. Then there's that animation - you're talking about 3,600 frames, which is a lot, so you'll probably need to contract with a render farm. Is the animation exterior only or does it go inside houses? This will also influence the amount of detailing work you will do.

 

Once you know roughly how much work is involved, think about the contract. You'll need to come to an agreement with the client over checkpoints (at what points does your client review and approve your work? - e.g., if camera views are client approved before the rendering, you are in a better position to ask for more money if the client asks for changes later on) and how design changes or delays caused by the client wanting to change materials will be handled. A good contract will lead to good client relations because you will both be clear on what the expectations are and there will be fewer surprises.

 

From all of this, you should be able to come to an estimate of the number of billable hours required (if you have past projects, look at how much time they took - good record keeping of the amount of time spent on particular tasks is very important - and you should already know how much to bill for each staff member's time) and the amount of other expenses (render farm time; will you need to buy object libraries or tree software; etc) and you can come up with a number. The client will negotiate it, and if you have a line-item estimate it will help you in your negotiations.

 

BTW I think you need to rotate the ashlar stone on the gate 90 degrees, and your car looks overbright, but I really like your grass. If you put a bit of variation in the roof tile colors it will come off a bit more real, and you could make your wall textures a bit less flat. Also, there are a lot of ways to do this, but try to mak the grass not come all the way to the edge of the building; nobody plants like that.

[iridescence]

AJLynn, thank you for the guides.

[kippu]

good work jordan ...and expect to see the animation when its done !

[SandmanNinja]

Shuan Qi - the original poster was NOT looking for anyone to do the work for him.

He never hints at wanting someone to do the work for him.

You are advertising, which is against the terms of usage.

And you're advertising on your first post??

No introductions to the community?

[WAcky]

interesting as I've just had a big influx of outsourcing spam in my inbox over the last few days...

[iridescence]

Thanks for the help, Dick.Barrat but we preffer to do it ourselves.

[innerdream]

Edited September 28, 2008 by innerdream

[Horhe]

Hello Jordan, don't worry, I can do it, no problem. I am from China and we are a big firm in this area. We are senior to cooperate with European companies. You can visit our URL: do-cg.com/, and if you are interested in us, you can mail to me: dochchina@gmail.com

 

LOL, some posts on CGA never stop to amuse me....

 

Ps. Jordan, the samples look nice.

[pg house - AG]

Hi all, hi Jordan.

This is simple formula.

x=k*S;

S=A+B+C+D+E+f+g;

A=a*at;

B=b*bt;

C=c*ct;

D=d*dt;

E=e*et;

 

a is modelling time in hours, at is costs for modelling per hour;

b - same but for mapping;

c - for lighting;

d - rendering;

e - animation;

g - if you need renderfarm;

f - unforeseen expences;

 

k - your modesty coefficient. Without false modesty keep it more than 1.

Edited September 29, 2008 by pg house - AG

[innerdream]

Good formula but it doesn't work at the quantum level.

[AJLynn]

The problem with this formula is that it doesn't account for time compression factors based on the changing values of V and delta-V as a function of time and latitude. (These functions are elementary orbital mechanics and relativity and should be determined by each artist for the location of his/her desk.) Call this corrected time function t' - then take the integral of, for example, c*ct' (replace t' with the function; do not collapse it) from T0 to T1, T2 to T3, etc., representing each period of work done by each artist. Using this formula to find the optimal time for a lunch break is left as an exercise for the reader.