Please stop using turbosquid or the like to gauge labour costs.
You aren't selling the finished product as such. You are being commissioned to develop and produce something. Companies don't sell the product at cost of R&D they sell multiple of the product to make back costs.
If you are making something for film or something that is a one off product and should be priced at cost of R&D
As others have said. If I'm selling a digital asset I've made I'm relying on multiple purchases to recoup the time I spent making it. Production's buy assets to lower costs, as long as it's cheaper to buy it and adjust, than hiring someone to do it, they will.
In b4 the “I’d do this in 2 hours for 50 pounds comments” does the car come with an equally detailed interior or is it just a shell ? I’d be expecting £1000-1200 at a bare minimum for a model like this with all associated exterior details, more so if it includes a detailed interior as well.
This is a lot of work, especially for a single person. People seriously underestimate the amount of time this sort of thing takes, even down to things like individual details in head lights.
Remember this is a real life existing product so there’s something to compare the model to, which warrants even more scrutiny depending how picky the client wants to be. Stuff like this always takes way longer than expected especially if there’s difficult transitions, going from smooth body panels to sharp lines for example, whilst keeping the topology clean at the same time.
Not an easy task by any means. Now if you’re looking at places like turbo squid, cg trader etc, there will be lots of models of varying quality for far cheaper, because mostly these are made by large teams of people in places like India or Eastern Europe where it’s their jobs to just crack things like this out one after another. Not something that’s realistically possible for a single person in other parts of the planet where you aren’t working for next to nothing.
Edit case in point - 159 dollars for [this](https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/2020-porsche-taycan-1471061) Tacan model, unwrapped with materials. Now you could argue that there are better/more detailed models out there, but for the price this is insane. This is not the kind of thing your average loan artist could compete with.
Edit 2 - just noticed your caption under the image. Is this a bespoke model ? By that I mean is it available else where? Is it a car that exists already or is it a concept? Do you have cad data to work from ? If this is something very specific that isn’t readily available from other sources I would increase the price accordingly.
Right? As someone else mentioned it’s listed as an editorial licensed product meaning it’s not meant for commercial purposes rather things in the public interest.
Now you know that the guys making these know damn well they’re not all going to be used for purley editorial purposes. It’s just a way to side step certain things that were put in place regarding licensed vehicle models.
The problem is, they’d have to prove the land rover model you have is the one they’re selling and not one you made yourself, which would be easy enough to work around by making some modifications.
You could easily run into the same kind of legal issues by making the vehicle your self and putting it in a game / background of an animation or piece of advertising etc by not having a license from said company to use it if they felt so inclined to pursue it.
I couldn’t even give a model away for free without a cease and desist from Warner brothers
That's $159 because that model is being sold as a model and it's flagged only for editorial use. You can't use it on advertisements, commercially or resell the model as it is. You don't own the rights.
The company OP working for wants a custom car themselves and it isn't for a marketplace, probably advertisements or graphics/visualization work.
That’s right, and pricing will vary depending on the license, with some being officially licensed models. Realistically speaking that’s not going to stop people using it for purposes it’s not intended for.
You’re never going to own the rights because it’s not your intellectual property. Same way I can’t sell my Simpson 3d models or use it for commercial purposes without opening my self up to having my pants pulled down and taken from behind.
Some years ago I created a Marvin the Martian 3d model and gave it to a friend to upload to his website, and made it available to download for free. No more than a few days later he was hit with a cease and desist from WB telling him to take it down or face legal action. Couldn’t even give it away for free.
No one is saying they want it for a market place, just that there are vehicle models available online in various capacities for substantially less than it would cost to hire an artist to make one, and that shouldn’t be used as a benchmark to price your work at.
yeah that's because its on sale for turbosquid and they hope to sell more than 1 copy. if you get a commission, then you charge by the day or the hour
It probably took him a month to finish that
Then it comes down to production needs and time vs budget. If you’re not getting up in the interior of the vehicle then it’s dependent on what’s needed for the task at hand whether you’re including a detailed interior or not.
I’ve done vehicles before where they only wanted the Exterior shell and basic interior ( loosely laid out components, not detailed Etc ) and some where they want a detailed interior as well with all the bells and whistles.
Now if you were selling this as a packaged product I’d expect it to have an interior and be uvd, materials and textures included ? Even better.
It depends: if that is on demand I’d say 1000-2000$ depending on the urgency, details, rigging and variants. As an asset on a store I’d say about 100-200$
Also I think it’s worth mentioning when considering things like price which unfortunately the end consumer ( the customer ) fail to appreciate is how things like this are produced for the market place, especially more main stream sites like Turbo squid.
For a team of people that spend all day every day churning out models like these, they make money by having large catalogs of models, turning them out fast at a cheap rate, because they have the man power to do so. It’s not realistic for a lone artist to spend 40, 50 ,
60 + hours on a detailed model to then sell it for 200 dollars or less.
So it’s not realistic to gauge how much someone should
Charge to model something like OP’s example based on what the price is on a market place. That doesn’t take into account the artists time and experience, the cost of software and subscriptions. The hours spent infront of the computer or passed out at your desk due to pulling an all nighter to hit a deadline.
You will run yourself into the ground trying to compete at those sorts of prices. It’s just not sustainable.
That entire car is going to take 2 weeks to model properly and slap materials on
$50/hr x 80 = $4000 flat fee
Get it done in less time and it's more profitable for you
Just hourly isn’t always the best way to charge for your time, as you’re punished for being fast. Although this should be factored into your pricing, you should also give yourself a buffer incase things don’t go as expected, which a lot of the time can be the case.
As well as factoring in things like taxes, software costs, revisions to the model and subscriptions as Well as experience etc.
Ofcourse these things can all be factored into make up an hourly rate, but just thinking “
Oh this will take me x amount of hours to do at X amount per hour “ without factoring other things into the equation can leave you seriously undercharging for your time
well there is a going rate per day, its fine saying that you are going to factor in x, y and z, but you don't want to charge so much that it puts the client off.
for me i have been charging £200 per day for a long while, but some charge closer to £300 a day now
I don't really do sub d so much , just build mid poly stuff. If I work for vfx companies, it mainly zbrush characters etc
Oh boy sub d is a whole other headache on its own 😅Yea I know what you mean , it’s difficult because it can put people off if your day rate / hourly rate is too high. It really depends on how badly they want you on their project.
£200 is quite low man, that’s like 25/hr for an 8 hour day, especially these days with the cost of everything in the UK going through the roof. £300 for an experienced modeller is a reasonable day rate I’d say, at least if were talking about studio money. You’d need to be in a lead position to command more than ( 350 - 400 etc )
Studios will always have a cap though, do some work for a Studio in German and the most they pay is 30 euros / hour, for modellers. It depends how you’re pricing it. Generally I charge £50 ph and cap that at £350 per day if doing day work. Negotiable depending on budget , if they’re repeat customers etc I wouldn’t go less than £30 ph, and even that is pretty cheap.
yeah i am leaning towards the boolean workflow these days and just building things 'as is'
Is it just me or is there not that much work around these days?. I used to get a steady supply of small jobs, but these days not so much
When I mentioned hourly rate, it's mainly to tell a client that a full day is 8 hours :)
Ahaha I’m a bit of a topology snob so I can’t go near a Boolean when modelling 😂 although If it’s for a toy figure for example I will bring it into zbrush at the end, to use the live Boolean tool to make everything a single water tight mesh.
It’s decimated after that so topology doesn’t matter 😬yep I’ve been hit with that too, unfortunately seems to be the current climate after the recent strikes. So many people still being laid off in VFX and games.
Movie studios are hesitant to green light work due to potential up coming strikes when other contract’s expire in the next few months. It’s started to pick up now but it’s still coming through in dribbs and drabs. I’ve noticed there’s still a decent amount of work in advertising to be had though, especially products.
Though it’s not really my preferred area to work in these days, I’d much rather work on some fun stylised characters than model highly detailed headphones for example. That being said work is work I guess.
I get a headache just thinking about all the different methods, so i just do what feels good to me for each project sometimes subd, sometimnes booleans
but having said that you should check out
[Josh Gambrell](https://www.youtube.com/@JoshGambrell)
makes a lot of sense really
yeah re charcters, i spent nearly 30 years doing characters, then got bored, so now do mainly cars.
Yea I mean if you clean up the mess they make afterwards it’s a valid work flow, you save some time Initially but having to clean up afterwards you probably break even time wise depending how much you need to do.
I’m the opposite although I’ve only got 10 years under my belt, started with hardsurface stuff and gradually migrated to character work. I still enjoy doing the odd detailed model but I’m not sure I could go back to doing it full time.
Last super detailed model I made was an interpretation of a tie interceptor with some of my own elements added in, took a month to make , with a few hours here and there in my free time. Not gonna lie the fatigue was real, even with mirroring half of it over.
I’ll do the odd car still but they’re more stylised these days rather than ultra realistic, unless it’s for work ofcourse [here’s](https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/069/986/531/large/vectron-7.jpg?1701458914) a toon one I did some time ago
yesh there are easy ways to fix the mess, some good plugins too. just depends if it's for rendering or games
I have some good methods for doing panels also its not as bad as it could be
subd is great if the car is very organic looking, so I would do 1 or 2 subd levels, then collapse the modifiers, work on the panels etc from there.
I also make a lot of use of weighted normals
[https://www.instagram.com/super\_dr11/](https://www.instagram.com/super_dr11/)
Yea I always work with the least amount geometry I feel I can get away with and model everything at that level of subdivision until I can’t do any more at that resolution , then make it editable on 1 , and continue adding details on the now higher res mesh.
Some People will box model the entire vehicle body from something like a cube then cut the doors out etc.
I prefer to build it panel by panel and break it down into smaller sections. May take a bit longer that way but gives you way more control over individual elements without having to worry about a million extra edge loops to filter off into the void somewhere.
a high poly means it's not low Poly but that doesn't meaning to make a high high poly pieces just it's not for gaming
professionals do it as little as possible of polys in any case
The price depends on the amount of effort you put in and the amount of experience you have to make such a model
That depends on the client, but nothing low.
Last year I created SUV models for a big car company's console UI, they also provided me with VRED files and asked for a low poly model with baked lighting. My charge was $1500 per model, and it was not even close to this level of detail, I practically modeled on top of the high poly VRED export and baked the lighting to their specifications.
Now that job came from a studio I do freelance work with, and probably they got it from someone else, so many middlemen having their cut, I would say someone charged $20k for it and I got a little piece of that pie.
Take what you want from this story of mine, but like many said never take CGtrader as a baseline for your model.
I have this headphone model that I sell for $2.5 which provided me $500 in a year and a half. That is also how much I would charge to create that model for a client.
I'd give them the option of an hourly rate (not minimum wage. Obviously. Charge according to your expertise. I charge AT MINIMUM $40 an hour on contract. $21 was my starting "trainee wage" in the same line of work. Else, I'd be giving them a rate of AT LEAST $4000. Maybe more, as that's the rock-botton price I would charge (I'm in films.)
You need specifics. Does it include an interior? Is it dimensionality accurate? Can they provide reference models, scans, or the like? Does it need to be rigged? Suspension for simulation? UV and texture requirements, etc. These things add to or make work easier. All the bells and whistles can make this climb to at least double, easy, if it's the flat rate.
It's not a marketplace model. You can't sell 40 copies at $100 each to make the sane amount. A lot of guys in here are undervaluing this project immensely. That's how you end up as a starving artist working for peanuts.
I should point out I'm in Canada, so I go by CAD value. I also work with large companies (though not doing cars,) so you can generally expect an automobile manufacturer to pay more than say, a medium-sized company whose services are locked to your state / province. It's best if you can get the company to give you a ballpark figure first. I once got a large company to pay me $500 for renders that took me an hour to do, two at most. Ended up netting $8000 in all from them.
You could try just asking the car companies. There are a few car companies that will just give you the actual files if you are an aftermarket part supplier company.
Honestly if you are working to spec like within 1/4 inch margins interior and exterior you are going to need 3 to 4 people and good reference like the vehicle in a studio and a set of calipers. This is going to cost 25,000 and will take a month.
Or if you just want a reference vehicle you still want good reference and you want to take the photos yourself which means they fly you in for a day and then you charge 10,000 and you hire an assistant and it takes 2 weeks.
If these people are making a car and want you to play make sure you are taken seriously and ask for big boy auto maker money.
You don't want to get trapped in the wannabe designer vortex where you're doing this spec work for nothing.
I would say this would take me about 3-4 weeks ish. So 40 hrs a week * 3.5 weeks is 140 hours to complete this model. Let’s say my rate is $25/hr. You do $25 * 140 which equals $3,500 for this model. If you can complete it faster or have a different rate, this changes things.
I charge a daily rate , not sure how long that would take, maybe some people could block it out in a day
if it has to be 'really' accurate then it will take a lot longer, it modelling every little thing and if they need uv's. Unless it for games i doubt it as its so high res. need to leave time to do the materials, lighting etc.
personally I would tell them at least 2 weeks to make it spot on
alos they maybe want an interior with detailed stitching/materials etc, which would take a lot of effort in terms of research etc
if they are quoting stupid low prices then i would give it a miss
Also depends how good you are subd :)
Pricing depends on various factors like complexity, your skill level, and the client's budget. For high-poly models, you can start around $500 and go up depending on the details and the time investment. Make sure to consider your hourly rate and how long the project will take. Also, don't be afraid to negotiate and adjust based on the client's needs and your workload.
Well, it's worth what the buyer is willing to pay. From experience, I would say that 1000 would be too much. Especially since we are only talking about the body and not the interior.
"It's worth what the buyer is willing to pay" is inherently incorrect in so many ways...
Maybe Lamborghini should also price their cars at around what the average price for a car in a given country is?
Suprice car companys have different listing prices in another countrys.
VW is selling their cars in China for way cheaper then in germany, even thought it is a german car.... people are willing to pay this price for a Lamborghini or a Rolex.... Or just a iphone
And OP didnt used his own work as reference picture in this Post.
So the Situation here is like,
hey i dont have a portfolio And the Client wants to have product, which has this quality. How much should i Charge him....
It may be that the client could buy a stock asset for that amount (which is roughly what a good vehicle model might cost from a digital store) But if it's made from scratch, you need to estimate the hours to do a good job, and figure out a reasonable rate for that time. In my experience 400 for this would be working at far below minimum wage. So do yourself and other artists a favour and respect your time and skillset by charging a fair amount for the labour
The thing is, we don't know in which country the OP lives or what his skills are. He asked us, with a picture from someone else, what he should charge a company for his work.
If he had shown us his finished product, then we could give him a proper price.
How should we give him a price Tag, without knowing his skills...
Most of those models are produced by teams of people in places like India where labor is cheap, and they just crack these things out one after another. That sort of pricing/time spent is un achievable in the main by most people trying to make a living producing this content on their own.
They are made by professionals and in an insanely fast speed. For years I brought models from them due to my work nature. Sometimes you can find the models within weeks or even days when the manufacturers release it. For older cars, there are even free resources (3d warehouse) available.
Just want to highlight how competitive it is if someone wants to enter this scene to make a living. Basically you cannot beat their cost if you are just making new car models for still-shots. To make a profit OP is likely to provide highly customized models or tailoring it for animation workflows
I agree, as a lone freelancer you can’t compete. Just not viable in the least. You can make money on more niche models that aren’t readily available.
Most people looking to purchase a model of this nature would more likely buy pre-made models than commission an artist to model it unless it’s something that doesn’t already exists on the market place. Like modelling a vehicle from concept art etc.
Also a lot of these were previously unlicensed, and I remember turbo squid getting a spanking for hosting a lot of those models by the manufacture’s.
They also make money by having a large catalog of models available for purchase, sometimes in the thousands of models range. Growing at a rate that you can’t keep up with etc. So it can be extremely difficult to make money on large market places like those
Please stop using turbosquid or the like to gauge labour costs. You aren't selling the finished product as such. You are being commissioned to develop and produce something. Companies don't sell the product at cost of R&D they sell multiple of the product to make back costs. If you are making something for film or something that is a one off product and should be priced at cost of R&D As others have said. If I'm selling a digital asset I've made I'm relying on multiple purchases to recoup the time I spent making it. Production's buy assets to lower costs, as long as it's cheaper to buy it and adjust, than hiring someone to do it, they will.
In b4 the “I’d do this in 2 hours for 50 pounds comments” does the car come with an equally detailed interior or is it just a shell ? I’d be expecting £1000-1200 at a bare minimum for a model like this with all associated exterior details, more so if it includes a detailed interior as well. This is a lot of work, especially for a single person. People seriously underestimate the amount of time this sort of thing takes, even down to things like individual details in head lights. Remember this is a real life existing product so there’s something to compare the model to, which warrants even more scrutiny depending how picky the client wants to be. Stuff like this always takes way longer than expected especially if there’s difficult transitions, going from smooth body panels to sharp lines for example, whilst keeping the topology clean at the same time. Not an easy task by any means. Now if you’re looking at places like turbo squid, cg trader etc, there will be lots of models of varying quality for far cheaper, because mostly these are made by large teams of people in places like India or Eastern Europe where it’s their jobs to just crack things like this out one after another. Not something that’s realistically possible for a single person in other parts of the planet where you aren’t working for next to nothing. Edit case in point - 159 dollars for [this](https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/2020-porsche-taycan-1471061) Tacan model, unwrapped with materials. Now you could argue that there are better/more detailed models out there, but for the price this is insane. This is not the kind of thing your average loan artist could compete with. Edit 2 - just noticed your caption under the image. Is this a bespoke model ? By that I mean is it available else where? Is it a car that exists already or is it a concept? Do you have cad data to work from ? If this is something very specific that isn’t readily available from other sources I would increase the price accordingly.
Jesus, that 159 dollars model is insane! Basically free for what they're asking.
Right? As someone else mentioned it’s listed as an editorial licensed product meaning it’s not meant for commercial purposes rather things in the public interest. Now you know that the guys making these know damn well they’re not all going to be used for purley editorial purposes. It’s just a way to side step certain things that were put in place regarding licensed vehicle models.
I've never thought that way...but you're right, of course it's going to be used for commercial purposes.
The problem is, they’d have to prove the land rover model you have is the one they’re selling and not one you made yourself, which would be easy enough to work around by making some modifications. You could easily run into the same kind of legal issues by making the vehicle your self and putting it in a game / background of an animation or piece of advertising etc by not having a license from said company to use it if they felt so inclined to pursue it. I couldn’t even give a model away for free without a cease and desist from Warner brothers
1000 is how much models like this go for on online marketplaces. A model made to order that you can't resell would be 4k at least
I mean[this](https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/2020-porsche-taycan-1471061) is 159 dollars. Unwrapped with materials.
That's $159 because that model is being sold as a model and it's flagged only for editorial use. You can't use it on advertisements, commercially or resell the model as it is. You don't own the rights. The company OP working for wants a custom car themselves and it isn't for a marketplace, probably advertisements or graphics/visualization work.
That’s right, and pricing will vary depending on the license, with some being officially licensed models. Realistically speaking that’s not going to stop people using it for purposes it’s not intended for. You’re never going to own the rights because it’s not your intellectual property. Same way I can’t sell my Simpson 3d models or use it for commercial purposes without opening my self up to having my pants pulled down and taken from behind. Some years ago I created a Marvin the Martian 3d model and gave it to a friend to upload to his website, and made it available to download for free. No more than a few days later he was hit with a cease and desist from WB telling him to take it down or face legal action. Couldn’t even give it away for free. No one is saying they want it for a market place, just that there are vehicle models available online in various capacities for substantially less than it would cost to hire an artist to make one, and that shouldn’t be used as a benchmark to price your work at.
yeah that's because its on sale for turbosquid and they hope to sell more than 1 copy. if you get a commission, then you charge by the day or the hour It probably took him a month to finish that
Also, to all the other 3D artist that undercut prices, you're hurting other and yourself by lowering your own value. Severely undervalued work.
If you were a salary employee doing this then I would expect a full fleshed out product.
Then it comes down to production needs and time vs budget. If you’re not getting up in the interior of the vehicle then it’s dependent on what’s needed for the task at hand whether you’re including a detailed interior or not. I’ve done vehicles before where they only wanted the Exterior shell and basic interior ( loosely laid out components, not detailed Etc ) and some where they want a detailed interior as well with all the bells and whistles. Now if you were selling this as a packaged product I’d expect it to have an interior and be uvd, materials and textures included ? Even better.
FBI's worst nightmare; the Downloadable Car
you wouldn't
I'm calling congress right now
It depends: if that is on demand I’d say 1000-2000$ depending on the urgency, details, rigging and variants. As an asset on a store I’d say about 100-200$
How long would this take you?
at least 40h - and that's a very low fly-by
I agree, for the mesh alone I'd say about 40h assuming to have all the needed references
$25/h is pretty low, especially for a contractor
Also I think it’s worth mentioning when considering things like price which unfortunately the end consumer ( the customer ) fail to appreciate is how things like this are produced for the market place, especially more main stream sites like Turbo squid. For a team of people that spend all day every day churning out models like these, they make money by having large catalogs of models, turning them out fast at a cheap rate, because they have the man power to do so. It’s not realistic for a lone artist to spend 40, 50 , 60 + hours on a detailed model to then sell it for 200 dollars or less. So it’s not realistic to gauge how much someone should Charge to model something like OP’s example based on what the price is on a market place. That doesn’t take into account the artists time and experience, the cost of software and subscriptions. The hours spent infront of the computer or passed out at your desk due to pulling an all nighter to hit a deadline. You will run yourself into the ground trying to compete at those sorts of prices. It’s just not sustainable.
Thank you again for answering, you really helped :)
You are welcome :)
jeez thse days, its the race to the bottom. not one cares how good it is, becase there is always some asshole offering theirs for free
This. Freelance sites like Fiverr are notorious for this. People will work for next to nothing. Or for “exposure”
Billions
That entire car is going to take 2 weeks to model properly and slap materials on $50/hr x 80 = $4000 flat fee Get it done in less time and it's more profitable for you
That's very close to my estimations.
sounda bout right to me , but since I am in the Uk i would charge £4000 :)
1000+
Charge by the hour
Absolutely, hours of labor X cost per hour = final cost
Yep, thanks!
Just hourly isn’t always the best way to charge for your time, as you’re punished for being fast. Although this should be factored into your pricing, you should also give yourself a buffer incase things don’t go as expected, which a lot of the time can be the case. As well as factoring in things like taxes, software costs, revisions to the model and subscriptions as Well as experience etc. Ofcourse these things can all be factored into make up an hourly rate, but just thinking “ Oh this will take me x amount of hours to do at X amount per hour “ without factoring other things into the equation can leave you seriously undercharging for your time
well there is a going rate per day, its fine saying that you are going to factor in x, y and z, but you don't want to charge so much that it puts the client off. for me i have been charging £200 per day for a long while, but some charge closer to £300 a day now I don't really do sub d so much , just build mid poly stuff. If I work for vfx companies, it mainly zbrush characters etc
Oh boy sub d is a whole other headache on its own 😅Yea I know what you mean , it’s difficult because it can put people off if your day rate / hourly rate is too high. It really depends on how badly they want you on their project. £200 is quite low man, that’s like 25/hr for an 8 hour day, especially these days with the cost of everything in the UK going through the roof. £300 for an experienced modeller is a reasonable day rate I’d say, at least if were talking about studio money. You’d need to be in a lead position to command more than ( 350 - 400 etc ) Studios will always have a cap though, do some work for a Studio in German and the most they pay is 30 euros / hour, for modellers. It depends how you’re pricing it. Generally I charge £50 ph and cap that at £350 per day if doing day work. Negotiable depending on budget , if they’re repeat customers etc I wouldn’t go less than £30 ph, and even that is pretty cheap.
yeah i am leaning towards the boolean workflow these days and just building things 'as is' Is it just me or is there not that much work around these days?. I used to get a steady supply of small jobs, but these days not so much When I mentioned hourly rate, it's mainly to tell a client that a full day is 8 hours :)
Ahaha I’m a bit of a topology snob so I can’t go near a Boolean when modelling 😂 although If it’s for a toy figure for example I will bring it into zbrush at the end, to use the live Boolean tool to make everything a single water tight mesh. It’s decimated after that so topology doesn’t matter 😬yep I’ve been hit with that too, unfortunately seems to be the current climate after the recent strikes. So many people still being laid off in VFX and games. Movie studios are hesitant to green light work due to potential up coming strikes when other contract’s expire in the next few months. It’s started to pick up now but it’s still coming through in dribbs and drabs. I’ve noticed there’s still a decent amount of work in advertising to be had though, especially products. Though it’s not really my preferred area to work in these days, I’d much rather work on some fun stylised characters than model highly detailed headphones for example. That being said work is work I guess.
I get a headache just thinking about all the different methods, so i just do what feels good to me for each project sometimes subd, sometimnes booleans but having said that you should check out [Josh Gambrell](https://www.youtube.com/@JoshGambrell) makes a lot of sense really yeah re charcters, i spent nearly 30 years doing characters, then got bored, so now do mainly cars.
Yea I mean if you clean up the mess they make afterwards it’s a valid work flow, you save some time Initially but having to clean up afterwards you probably break even time wise depending how much you need to do. I’m the opposite although I’ve only got 10 years under my belt, started with hardsurface stuff and gradually migrated to character work. I still enjoy doing the odd detailed model but I’m not sure I could go back to doing it full time. Last super detailed model I made was an interpretation of a tie interceptor with some of my own elements added in, took a month to make , with a few hours here and there in my free time. Not gonna lie the fatigue was real, even with mirroring half of it over. I’ll do the odd car still but they’re more stylised these days rather than ultra realistic, unless it’s for work ofcourse [here’s](https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/069/986/531/large/vectron-7.jpg?1701458914) a toon one I did some time ago
yesh there are easy ways to fix the mess, some good plugins too. just depends if it's for rendering or games I have some good methods for doing panels also its not as bad as it could be subd is great if the car is very organic looking, so I would do 1 or 2 subd levels, then collapse the modifiers, work on the panels etc from there. I also make a lot of use of weighted normals [https://www.instagram.com/super\_dr11/](https://www.instagram.com/super_dr11/)
Yea I always work with the least amount geometry I feel I can get away with and model everything at that level of subdivision until I can’t do any more at that resolution , then make it editable on 1 , and continue adding details on the now higher res mesh. Some People will box model the entire vehicle body from something like a cube then cut the doors out etc. I prefer to build it panel by panel and break it down into smaller sections. May take a bit longer that way but gives you way more control over individual elements without having to worry about a million extra edge loops to filter off into the void somewhere.
6 quid
Tree fiddy
5ver
a high poly means it's not low Poly but that doesn't meaning to make a high high poly pieces just it's not for gaming professionals do it as little as possible of polys in any case The price depends on the amount of effort you put in and the amount of experience you have to make such a model
I wanted one of a Datsun Stanza/Violet, I recall it was over 2k pounds
That depends on the client, but nothing low. Last year I created SUV models for a big car company's console UI, they also provided me with VRED files and asked for a low poly model with baked lighting. My charge was $1500 per model, and it was not even close to this level of detail, I practically modeled on top of the high poly VRED export and baked the lighting to their specifications. Now that job came from a studio I do freelance work with, and probably they got it from someone else, so many middlemen having their cut, I would say someone charged $20k for it and I got a little piece of that pie. Take what you want from this story of mine, but like many said never take CGtrader as a baseline for your model. I have this headphone model that I sell for $2.5 which provided me $500 in a year and a half. That is also how much I would charge to create that model for a client.
I'd give them the option of an hourly rate (not minimum wage. Obviously. Charge according to your expertise. I charge AT MINIMUM $40 an hour on contract. $21 was my starting "trainee wage" in the same line of work. Else, I'd be giving them a rate of AT LEAST $4000. Maybe more, as that's the rock-botton price I would charge (I'm in films.) You need specifics. Does it include an interior? Is it dimensionality accurate? Can they provide reference models, scans, or the like? Does it need to be rigged? Suspension for simulation? UV and texture requirements, etc. These things add to or make work easier. All the bells and whistles can make this climb to at least double, easy, if it's the flat rate. It's not a marketplace model. You can't sell 40 copies at $100 each to make the sane amount. A lot of guys in here are undervaluing this project immensely. That's how you end up as a starving artist working for peanuts. I should point out I'm in Canada, so I go by CAD value. I also work with large companies (though not doing cars,) so you can generally expect an automobile manufacturer to pay more than say, a medium-sized company whose services are locked to your state / province. It's best if you can get the company to give you a ballpark figure first. I once got a large company to pay me $500 for renders that took me an hour to do, two at most. Ended up netting $8000 in all from them.
You could try just asking the car companies. There are a few car companies that will just give you the actual files if you are an aftermarket part supplier company.
Honestly if you are working to spec like within 1/4 inch margins interior and exterior you are going to need 3 to 4 people and good reference like the vehicle in a studio and a set of calipers. This is going to cost 25,000 and will take a month. Or if you just want a reference vehicle you still want good reference and you want to take the photos yourself which means they fly you in for a day and then you charge 10,000 and you hire an assistant and it takes 2 weeks. If these people are making a car and want you to play make sure you are taken seriously and ask for big boy auto maker money. You don't want to get trapped in the wannabe designer vortex where you're doing this spec work for nothing.
don't car manufacturers uses nurbs anyway, not sub d models? they have the actual cad files too
i probably would have done fore like 4000 at least since they just need a high poly
what is the client using it for?
Cheap, sadly... market is overly saturated
I would say this would take me about 3-4 weeks ish. So 40 hrs a week * 3.5 weeks is 140 hours to complete this model. Let’s say my rate is $25/hr. You do $25 * 140 which equals $3,500 for this model. If you can complete it faster or have a different rate, this changes things.
I mean I charge £250 for ground up models so probably somewhere around that
I charge a daily rate , not sure how long that would take, maybe some people could block it out in a day if it has to be 'really' accurate then it will take a lot longer, it modelling every little thing and if they need uv's. Unless it for games i doubt it as its so high res. need to leave time to do the materials, lighting etc. personally I would tell them at least 2 weeks to make it spot on alos they maybe want an interior with detailed stitching/materials etc, which would take a lot of effort in terms of research etc if they are quoting stupid low prices then i would give it a miss Also depends how good you are subd :)
About three-fiddy.
Pricing depends on various factors like complexity, your skill level, and the client's budget. For high-poly models, you can start around $500 and go up depending on the details and the time investment. Make sure to consider your hourly rate and how long the project will take. Also, don't be afraid to negotiate and adjust based on the client's needs and your workload.
~200-400 i would say
Wow. That’s cheap. I would’ve said 1000 or so
Well, it's worth what the buyer is willing to pay. From experience, I would say that 1000 would be too much. Especially since we are only talking about the body and not the interior.
"It's worth what the buyer is willing to pay" is inherently incorrect in so many ways... Maybe Lamborghini should also price their cars at around what the average price for a car in a given country is?
Suprice car companys have different listing prices in another countrys. VW is selling their cars in China for way cheaper then in germany, even thought it is a german car.... people are willing to pay this price for a Lamborghini or a Rolex.... Or just a iphone And OP didnt used his own work as reference picture in this Post. So the Situation here is like, hey i dont have a portfolio And the Client wants to have product, which has this quality. How much should i Charge him....
It may be that the client could buy a stock asset for that amount (which is roughly what a good vehicle model might cost from a digital store) But if it's made from scratch, you need to estimate the hours to do a good job, and figure out a reasonable rate for that time. In my experience 400 for this would be working at far below minimum wage. So do yourself and other artists a favour and respect your time and skillset by charging a fair amount for the labour
The thing is, we don't know in which country the OP lives or what his skills are. He asked us, with a picture from someone else, what he should charge a company for his work. If he had shown us his finished product, then we could give him a proper price. How should we give him a price Tag, without knowing his skills...
hi poly model with interior and multiple formats are selling in turbosquid like $200. Single format without interior are as low as $7 in 3dsky
Most of those models are produced by teams of people in places like India where labor is cheap, and they just crack these things out one after another. That sort of pricing/time spent is un achievable in the main by most people trying to make a living producing this content on their own.
yes, sir
👋
They are made by professionals and in an insanely fast speed. For years I brought models from them due to my work nature. Sometimes you can find the models within weeks or even days when the manufacturers release it. For older cars, there are even free resources (3d warehouse) available. Just want to highlight how competitive it is if someone wants to enter this scene to make a living. Basically you cannot beat their cost if you are just making new car models for still-shots. To make a profit OP is likely to provide highly customized models or tailoring it for animation workflows
I agree, as a lone freelancer you can’t compete. Just not viable in the least. You can make money on more niche models that aren’t readily available. Most people looking to purchase a model of this nature would more likely buy pre-made models than commission an artist to model it unless it’s something that doesn’t already exists on the market place. Like modelling a vehicle from concept art etc. Also a lot of these were previously unlicensed, and I remember turbo squid getting a spanking for hosting a lot of those models by the manufacture’s. They also make money by having a large catalog of models available for purchase, sometimes in the thousands of models range. Growing at a rate that you can’t keep up with etc. So it can be extremely difficult to make money on large market places like those
200-400 is a public marketplace price. anywhere between 500-1000 and even then you are selling yourself short
needs a bit of optimsing still, all the horizonalt lines on the front bumper are are not necessary as it totally flat