I’ve noticed a lot of artists do not publicly display their rates on their threads and there’s usually weeks of posts stating “Still available for work” and then the thread dies.
I was toying with the idea of starting a thread in ‘Commercial: Job Seeking’ and offering a promotional price to help indie developers using Unity3D.
Firstly, what IYO is a reasonable price quote for modelling a character (with textures) for use in a client’s Unity3D game? I’m referring to a personal piece made specifically for the client.
It’s impossible to say, it really depends way too much on the quality / detail / amount of reworking you’re willing to do / animation etc etc.
I’ve happily paid 800$+ for a single model, i’ve seen models i wouldn’t pay 10$ for.
I am not going to comment on the price for what you have asked, as i personally have no idea, but I would like to comment on the promotional price you said, as that is exactly what I do.
I offer my services at a fixed rate, but, I offer a 20% discount to returning clients, which is something id recommend you do, it gives them a reason to choose you again and again, and thats what you want, you dont want 1 off clients you want them to return and keep coming back for more.
As my experience in finding work on these forums has been quite successfully and sustainable, I was considering making a thread about monetizing, but then at the same time I thought, why would I tell people all my secrets? But if there is one piece of advice I could give, it would definitely be the returners policy.
I wish Unity has a something like a portfolio page for games, code, art, …
And for those that are new to coding and modeling, we all started somewhere, the user that created a forum account would have a home page on Unity that would have a checklist of things they needed to be considered a ‘well-rounded’ hobbyist.
e.g.
Blender Training
C# Training
Unity Training
with pointers to good independent (in the case of C# and Blender) training tutorials, David Ward on YouTube, MSDN, … and the ability to create their own sub-lists in the main titles with the different tutorials there have completed and should pngs, models, code, games they’ve created in teaching themselves.
Now I’ll admit although I learn a lot, particularly in modeling, I haven’t completed anything. Now my problem is more A.D.D. then lack of ideas or motivation; however I see so many come through these forums, trying to learn and me knowing it is just way to much for them, and hence the ideal above.
CG Cookie and more sites have home ‘portfolio’ pages, why not Unity? If think it would lead to a lot of jobs for people competent in Unity but realistic in their chances of making a big selling game. It would also help with the adoption of Unity as simulation/training/presentation SW by big business and government.
According to my experiences, ~300$ per model (that means pretty good quality with nice textures) is usual. Some work for less, some for a bit more. I am talking about low poly (2-4k tri) character models here. Probably a 10k triangles realistic model is far more.
This does not contain rigging or animation; I don’t know abut those prices.
At work we’ve used freelancing sites and hired people in india to model/texture for around $200, but it was almost 20k polygons and was supposed to be under 10k, lots of overdraw with meshes stacked on each other. It looked good though. For rigging we ended up using mixamo.
Depends on the quality though, for a low poly model that looks AAA we were figuring on it costing over a grand per, easily.
Thank you Sama, I was about to make a post asking if anyone has put any grids up for reference, when I saw your post lol. Do any other modellers here have similar on their websites?
Most modellers here are the amateur kind trying to charge what the Pros are getting.
You can ask them for their arts portfolio and you should do an art-test for them. Ask them model something difficult and see their reaction.
A ball-park price would be discussing about the full scene - model quality (less poly and high quality LOD…), # of poly and what optimizations to reduce drawcalls and increase FPS.
Ask about advanced things like painted textures in meshes, reflections, mobile dynamic lighting, real-time mobile shadow, smoke, sunlight and good water support in iPhone3GS without using UnityPro.
I use iPhone3GS as reference hardware because it is older and challenge to get good lighting, water, LOD and good FPS (Frames Per Second) support on it. You’ll be surprised you don’t need UnityPro to get the features you want.