How much does it cost to hire a 3D animator for CGI work?

[Greggl]

Interesting, this gives me something to think about it. I haven't gotten into much heavy duty work, but I can see times where I'll need some extra CPU power. Thanks for the insight, I'll have to look into this some more.

I wouldn't

I'd build the 'time to render' into your bids and use weekends and downtime
to render personal stuff.

As a 3D artist, you should train yourself to be a much higher producer of content
than your hardware can support. Your 'downtime' should be spent rendering the
backlog of projects that need to be output. If you think of 3D and VFX as a 'realtime'
process and train yourself to rely on the interactive nature of the modern tools,
you'll only really be able to grow with the increasing speed of hardware. The goal
is to learn the tricks and techniques to exploit the hardware, anticipate the output
and bascially work faster than any machine that anyone could put in front of you.

I've yet to meet a pro that has ever been satisfied with the speed of their
hardware We *always* push the limits, so you need to learn to work within
limits or you'll constantly be chasing that ghost of 'one more node in the renderfarm'
or that '400MHz' upgrade that'll quench that speed-lust

 

[oneinfiniteloop]

I wouldn't

I'd build the 'time to render' into your bids and use weekends and downtime
to render personal stuff.

As a 3D artist, you should train yourself to be a much higher producer of content
than your hardware can support. Your 'downtime' should be spent rendering the
backlog of projects that need to be output. If you think of 3D and VFX as a 'realtime'
process and train yourself to rely on the interactive nature of the modern tools,
you'll only really be able to grow with the increasing speed of hardware. The goal
is to learn the tricks and techniques to exploit the hardware, anticipate the output
and bascially work faster than any machine that anyone could put in front of you.

I've yet to meet a pro that has ever been satisfied with the speed of their
hardware We *always* push the limits, so you need to learn to work within
limits or you'll constantly be chasing that ghost of 'one more node in the renderfarm'
or that '400MHz' upgrade that'll quench that speed-lust

Good point, never really looked at it that way. I can see how this will help one stay grounded in the artistry/content vs. the endless pursuit of power.

 

[robo3687]

in response to saying it could pay 5k:

heck i'd do this job for that kind of money...lol.....doesn't sound that involved really.....the animation part wouldn't be too much of a problem, and if the shots are locked off...camera's shouldn't be an issue either....

you say the model is pre-built, what about textures? would they need to be made?

i've had about 5 years experience in max now and am currently heading into doing alot of cg integration in a feature i'm working on....

 

[im.thatoneguy]

I personally charge $45 an hour for freelance 3d Max work, I would expect a good professional artist to be somewhere between $30 and $80 an hour for freelance work. But if the project is interesting and looks like it is going somewhere, you could probaby find someone with some down time to do it for free.

I would estimate if the model is already textured (to your satisfaction) and there was no actual modelling to be done that this would take about 15-20 hours. Plus probably 5 minutes per frame for 300 frames which is about 25 hours of render time, so a 6 node render farm would take about 5-8 hours to render. I only charge 1.5 hours for a day of rendering if it doesn't interfere with anything else, so I would expect to pay whoever did it about that. Final cost for those 3 shots if you had the model with materials ready to animate and camera match about: $1000 all said and done. It would take 3 days of dedicated work.

It would have been best if you had taken an HDRI light probe while you were there, in the future it would help out whoever ends up having to do the lighting match. you can buy a Garden Gazing Globe for about $15 bucks online, they aren't a painful expense, and save you a lot more money than that.

If the model needed a lot of work, or there was no material yet, it would probably spiral up to about 60-100 hours of work depending on how much needed to be done.

If compositing also needed to be done, this shot would probably take about 4 hours to comp all 3.

Apply previous rates, and this thing could get kind of expensive pretty quick.


In response to Greggl:

Not only that but sometimes you find out you overestimate just what your render farm can do.

I was on a project this year where I had to have the deliverable in their hands by a certain time the next day. By the time that shot came up in my render queue I did some quick math and figured out it was going to take 2 hours past my deadline to finish rendering... So I had to spend the next hour trying to save 3 hours (2 hours plus the hour optimizing). It's a real slippery slope spending time to save time... you never know if it's going to pay off. Moral of the story people: if you add anything to the scene which might slow down your render times, do a test render and make sure you can still meet your deadlines.