New guy with freelance question

[trancerobot]

Hi, I'm a new member here, and I just registered to ask a question.

 

For my first arch-vis job, I have been asked by a general contractor to model and render an operating room. They intend to use the image and the video as part of a presentation they will make for a client.

 

I met the Vice President and other VIPs of this company when they came to visit my lab at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. I work in the Virtual Reality Center there, and I'm a student. What I do in the lab along with my boss (who's a professor at the school) is present the Cave technology to prospective students, interested education officials, and business. For more information on what a Cave is, read this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_Automatic_Virtual_Environment

 

Often I will make my own demos for it, and I have done work for another general contractor who wanted to use the technology to present their work to clients.

 

Anyway, they want to work with me on some other things too, but in the mean time I just want to know how much I should charge for this. It will be my first time doing an arch-vis rendering for pay, and my main focus for the past few years has been in character modeling and design - so I really have no idea.

[John Dollus]

are you using the million dollar tax payer funded lab for this or was that just background info and you have your own company setup to handle for-profit work using all commercial software/hardware purchased by you? The answer to your question kinda depends on the answer to that one...

[trancerobot]

No, not this time. I did before.

 

This time the work will be done at home, on my computer, with my software. Even though I'm experienced with Max, it's just a student license and I will have to continue to use my commercial license of Silo and the opensource Blender program.

 

Though they seem open to the idea of buying a commercial seat of 3D Studio Max and Revit (I'm still new to Revit - it's something they want). I'll learn more about that tomorrow.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

look here: http://forums.cgarchitect.com/63090-freelancers-salary.html

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

You need to be very clear about what it is your are producing, and what they are receiving. A rendering and video is vague. A rendering depicting what exactly? And a video that show what exactly?

 

Off hand, I would roughly guess $4g to $5g if you simply want a number for a base rendering and average at best video. But, ...this is just a number that really means nothing because there is not a clear description of what your are delivering.

 

Also, ..make sure that they are not expecting a simulated Cave environment. If this is what they want and you don't personally own the equipment and software to produce it then you need to look into buying it, and probably triple to quadruple your fee estimate. But again, I am just randomly throwing out numbers and guesses.

Edited December 22, 2010 by Crazy Homeless Guy

[trancerobot]

look here: http://forums.cgarchitect.com/63090-freelancers-salary.html

 

Thanks! In that link is another link to the 2009 Survey Results. I remember looking at that months ago. The pricing chart was very helpful.

 

You need to be very clear about what it is your are producing, and what they are receiving. A rendering and video is vague. A rendering depicting what exactly? And a video that show what exactly?

 

Off hand, I would roughly guess $4g to $5g if you simply want a number for a base rendering and average at best video. But, ...this is just a number that really means nothing because there is not a clear description of what your are delivering.

 

Also, ..make sure that they are not expecting a simulated Cave environment. If this is what they want and you don't personally own the equipment and software to produce it then you need to look into buying it, and probably triple to quadruple your fee estimate. But again, I am just randomly throwing out numbers and guesses.

 

Yeah they know I don't have a Cave, and this project is for a presentation. Future projects may directly involve the lab though. The rendering will go in a power-point that will be played on a laptop in a meeting. I will learn more about it tomorrow, as our discussion on the topic was cut short today. I am an entering artist with very little arch-vis in my portfolio, so it's unlikely that I will charge that much.

[Tommy L]

Charge whatever you think you can get.