How much to charge?

[darialeonova]

Hi guys,

 

I plan to become a freelancer, currently working on my portfolio. I would really appreciate your input on the quality of my work and the areas for improvement. Also, how much do you think I should charge per render?

 

https://www.darialeonova.com

 

Thanks!

[Tommy L]

I think your work has a lot of promise. Areas to work on would be post production (mainly addressing levels, you have a shallow range in these shots, your blacks hover in the grays), and your shaders, which are a bit crude. Do light studies before your render finals. Render your scene with grey flat material, no GI and get your brightest areas just below white and the darkest areas to black. Save to 32 bit, bring into PS and adjust in camera raw to where you are happy with the shot. If you cant hit it in grey, you'll def miss the mark in color.

So far as what to charge....well charge what you can. At this stage of your development you'll find a lot of competition and your first clients will be your worst nightmare as they will be trying to find something for nothing.

[heni30]

I think you should look at photos to get better compositions. The classic living has as strange emptiness in the middle as does the lobby.

You want your portfolio pieces to feel natural and not raise any design questions that you have complete control over at this point.

 

>Tom - sounds like your approach would make an interesting tutorial.

Edited November 28, 2017 by heni30

[darialeonova]

Thanks for the input guys. I agree, post-production is definitely my weakest point. Looks like I will need to follow some tutorials. Any suggestions?

 

P.S. Not sure why my answers disappear. I will figure out how to post a reply one day.

[Scott Schroeder]

Thanks for the input guys. I agree, post-production is definitely my weakest point. Looks like I will need to follow some tutorials. Any suggestions?

 

P.S. Not sure why my answers disappear. I will figure out how to post a reply one day.

 

Arqui9 has a fantastic YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBzPV2uSji-Z5-x_svnZV1w

[Ernest Burden III]

>Tom - sounds like your approach would make an interesting tutorial.

 

Rendering a clay version is critical to understanding what is going on, and sometimes what is going wrong, with a scene. Bonus--it renders faster! You can do an over-ride material in vray to easily apply clay to everything, and you can exclude materials, so you can keep glass or mirrored surfaces if you need (but forget the faster part).

 

What I also do is render tests with single lights at a time to see what effect they have (sun, downlights, lamps, etc.) and combine them in my mind or as layers in Photoshop in Screen mode to play with their levels to balance to what I want.

[Andres Saarnak]

What I also do is render tests with single lights at a time to see what effect they have (sun, downlights, lamps, etc.) and combine them in my mind or as layers in Photoshop in Screen mode to play with their levels to balance to what I want.

You should try Corona lightmix. If vray doesn´t have this feature yet, I´m sure they will add it soon. It´s a great feature. Doing this manually and with PS takes way too much time.

[Ernest Burden III]

You should try Corona lightmix. If vray doesn´t have this feature...

 

Vray does have the ability to that in multipass. That's fine, and most useful in finals, so you can have some tweak control without a long re-render. That's not needed for what I'm talking about. Usually I just add the lights in my memory, seeing what each one does. I render in viewport, sometimes just an area, so it's quick. You can screen-capture and paste into a Photoshop file. Quick test, grab, click PS icon, paste. toggle the layers to see your tests, and the capture will have the settings visible to see what got you this result or that. It's all very quick.

[Andres Saarnak]

I don´t know if I miss something, but I think lightmix can do all those things you mentioned. Lights in a scene, hit render and start tweaking instantly. No need to wait for finals. You toggle your lights, change light intensity, change colour even. Settings are visible.

[jeenawillson]

Daria, in general your works look fine. In the same time agree with Tom Livings regarding issues with light. Don't know how much freelancers charge for rendering, but I think it would be reasonable to set average price on the market, say, $300 - $400 and then just negotiate with clients.

[Ernest Burden III]

...it would be reasonable to set average price on the market, say, $300 - $400 and then just negotiate with clients.

 

What's this 'on-topic' stuff?

 

Rates have been asked/discussed many times in this forum, so search for those. Rendering rates are exactly what you can get a client to pay. They go up and down with a host of factors. The most important one is what you need/are willing to work for.

 

If rendering is your full-time job, what would you want to be paid annually? Is it a $30K/yr. job, or $130K? That gives you an idea of how much you need to net per month. Add your expenses/costs of business/taxes. Figure out how much of your available work time is billable, vs. overhead. You do not bill for building PCs or learning vray settings. Now you have an idea of how many hours are billable per month. And... therefor how much you have to bill per month to have the job you think your need and your skills would fetch if working for someone else. I say month to even out the workload--one crazy on-deadline week may bring in a lot of money followed by a crickets-in-your-soul week of no work. That's freelancing.

 

All that's left is figuring out how long it will take you to deliver that kitchen rendering, or set of room views. If two weeks, then you need to charge at minimum half your monthly gross number. More if you think the market will bear it. And then hope that the second half of the month is busy, too. If not, you need to factor in more downtime as fewer billable hours per month.

 

Freelancing is tough.

[NigelStutt]

Materials are very nice, but some people would definitely help the image. Also a lot of glare there dont know whether its post production or not but perhaps try to lower the contrast a bit. But yeah some people doing interesting things would make these images special - at the piano and walking through the lobby etc - try to tell a story in your images if you can. But overall nothing wrong in your ability, whether you can make a decent living out of archvis is another matter, can you do it on the side whilst working at something else?