Outsourcing, cheap markets - ethics

[jujubee]

Evermotion models are typically VERY high poly. They're not the best to render for scenes - especially animations unless you have a huge rendering farm where it will not matter as much. Some of their mats still have like 40 subdivisions on them - the colors almost always have to be tweaked as well.

I also get enough custom work which will keep me on my feet - "change this sofa, change this chair, we're using this lamp, etc' that it will not work with a company that doesn't know how to use the application in a timely-fashion.

In all the renderings and proposals for outsourcing I receive daily, I've only seen three that have caught my attention in a positive way. And it turned out that one of them from China stole renderings from a company up in Canada to put on their website.

The fact is - the consumer really needs to know where their money is going. I say let them send out their work - they'll do it once and that will be perhaps the last of it.

[JeffG2]

Ahhhh! Adapt or die.

Those bleepity-bleep water buffalo are taking over our watering hole!!!

Eventually we'll all get out clocks cleaned by technology. When game engines produce realtime images like the stuff we see coming from Vray/Maxwell/Fry then who's gonna need an illustrator? The client will load the model and play with it on his desktop.

Creativity can't be coded.

Long term solution, start moving towards something uniquely creative.

[Sawyer]

Pirated software happens here in america as well. I have worked at many architectural firms and almost everyone has a "copy" of Max. Sometimes I have to tell people that I actually bought my version and I have been asked many times if I could make a copy of my software. Recently I saw a competitors work who seemed to have a copy of every single software out there. His work was bad but thats beside the point.

Everyone has to deal with oversea markets who can charge less. They could charge less even if they bought all of the software, my largest bill is my rent not my software purchases. Right now the archi/viz market needs to create a strong identity of quality artistic work. I think of it as photography - architects will pay $200 per hour for a good photographer to take pictures of their buildings when they could pay an intern $20 to take a picture with their cell phone. They know the difference in quality and are willing to pay for the good images. Still more often than not the 3d illustrations I see are like the cell phone photos poorly done and sometimes horribly done. The web has a strong artistic community but I think we have not saturated the market yet so clients demand good work. I still see sky.bmp backgrounds that are streched and sideways or with horrible horizon lines. And someone paid for this and it was a California company that rendered this but it only passes off because the client is not aware what is possible. No this is an art form it follows all of the same rules as any art form once this becomes less than art then the overseas companies can have it. Then the cad drafters can have it then it can be a push button career and it will deserve to be. The only way architectural illustration survives is as an art form that it highly skilled and technically accurate and beautiful and exciting.

[pailhead]

hello pailhead,
i would like to know what exactly is your definition of the third world in geographical terms.
Evermotion as far as I know is polish company, which is located in the centre of EUROPE...not sur eif i got it right from your post but if u call Poland 3rd world then thats a bit ridiculous.

I never said that poland is 3rd world, but it used to be a country in transition, along with czech, hundary etc. I know that a lot of 3d studios spawned there because of a significantly cheaper economy compared to the US, and western europe.

I was referring to their forum (a topic triggered by Lele), where there is a hyper inflation of stunning work that goes in pair with poor threads. It's not really a discussion group, it's more of a show - off forum, with a lot of other labels which could be sticked on it.

I am not a big fan of Evermotion as some of their stuff is cooked really quickly and some of their Archinterior models are a real pain to decompose. On the other hand their comunity brings the know-how to a vast majority of 3d enthusiasts and professionals which makes the market a real challenge, which in my opinion is great. It makes me try even herder each time i start a new project.

But even that is not realistic. If you want to buy all of their collections, it will will pose a hefty sum. One that is hard to be pulled aside if you are making $100 or less per rendering. It's not really becoming a standard, meaning that as soon as you start fooling around with 3ds max and vray, you get all of these fantastic models and scenes out of the box.
The same thing that makes you try even harder, makes me want to give up. I'll spend countless hours testing and tweaking a material or a scene, only to find that in the meantime ten of them have been already created by evermotion, and tommorow ten thousand people will have access to it simply by downloading it from warez sites.

How exactly can we define high quality work? Does it have artistic value, if so, which values are those? Is it the whole service that we offer, good communication, a tidy office, or something like that?

When it comes to pricing....quality should reflect the price....if the client wants low quality render for evaluation purposes at low price ...then so be it....i can come up with such a render within a day and set its price equally.

A stolen mercedes-benz can probably be found cheaper than a new ford, but that doesn't reflect it's quality.

I would not blame any "3rd world" country (as u call it) for flooding western markets (west is a very subjective term) with cheap viz....take a look at the viz companies in the UK....there is loads of them exporting viz exactly to those countries u were talking about...

So if I were to contact one of those UK companies and commision a rendering, they would quote 150 dollars per image, or $1500? My idea of outsourcing is to take a huge risk by sending work overseas and having poor communication with your sub-contractors, but for a much higher profit margin. Outsourcing in order to undercut the market, and cut the branch you're sitting on is simply put, insane.

there is no such thing as dumping.....if one i capable of producing good render at a good (in someones eyes) cheap price i dont mind its good for him...let him make some money...those people need them!!! and if he uses pirated software thats is his problem if he gets a good sleep....question of honor i guess

I'm sure that we all love stuff that fell off the truck, but where exactly would we end if everything you buy was stolen.

[studioDIM]

The same thing that makes you try even harder, makes me want to give up. I'll spend countless hours testing and tweaking a material or a scene, only to find that in the meantime ten of them have been already created by evermotion, and tommorow ten thousand people will have access to it simply by downloading it from warez sites.

How exactly can we define high quality work? Does it have artistic value, if so, which values are those? Is it the whole service that we offer, good communication, a tidy office, or something like that?

But it's not, man, come on.
It's being portrayed as if evermotion collections are the bang for the buck, or are at all usable to sell a scene.
They MAY be, after you spent time and effort optimising them (which is the case of everyone i know using them) to suit your workflow, render quickly and look good.
I used the word ART a bit too laxly, but for instance my "art" often expresses in making a render render fast, and look good, THE compromise between speed and quality.
Or script, and save me or anybody else, countless brainless clicks.
Neither of these can be found anywhere but from hired people.
That is, if you want something to really adapt to your workflow, and not the other way around.

A stolen mercedes-benz can probably be found cheaper than a new ford, but that doesn't reflect it's quality.

Oh it does.
The car may be good, but accidents and breakdowns happen all the time.
Part of the greatness of that brand you mentioned is service.
As it is for VRay.
Steal it, and be reduced to watch it all happen from outside, or get the know-it-all to fix your car for you.
Choice.

I'm sure that we all love stuff that fell off the truck, but where exactly would we end if everything you buy was stolen.

oh, come on now.
Shock at piracy?
We'd end precisely where we are now, where we've always been, and likely always will be.
Those who can, and want, will.
Those who cannot, want not, will not.
I'll repeat myself.
With 300 euors a day, it's easy to shell 800 for a product.
With 300 euors a month, it's not, and i would not expect those people to, to be honest.
If you have never , ever, touched a pirated software, you are either the son of a rich man, you never had a real passion for these things -never wanting to use them at home, but just using them when and where others provided them for you-, or you're never been a student at college...

Neither of these three categories are particularly famous for their productions, imo.

Lele

[teabag]

pailhead:
taken from wikipedia

In economics, "dumping" can refer to any kind of predatory pricing. However, the word is now generally used only in the context of international trade law, where dumping is defined as the act of a manufacturer in one country exporting a product to another country at a price which is either below the price it charges in its home market or is below its costs of production. The term has a negative connotation, but advocates of free markets see "dumping" as beneficial for consumers and believe that protectionism to prevent it would have net negative consequences. Advocates for workers and laborers however, believe that safeguarding businesses against predatory practices, such as dumping, help alleviate some of the harsher consequences of free trade between economies at different stages of development (see protectionism). The Bolkestein directive, for example, was accused in Europe of being a form of "social dumping," as it favored competition between workers, as exemplified by the Polish Plumber stereotype.

A standard technical definition of dumping is the act of charging a lower price for a good in a foreign market than one charges for the same good in a domestic market. This is often referred to as selling at less than "fair value." Under the WTO Agreement, dumping is condemned (but is not prohibited) if it causes or threatens to cause material injury to a domestic industry in the importing country. [1]

..............so......respecting the fact that countries such a s China, Russia, India etc r starting to grow economically...u just need to expect threats like these, its absolutely inevitable....so either u have to do something with your business to make it better and more competitive in a certain way or you may decide to leave the industry afterall....the choice is yours man.

best regards

Martin

[pailhead]

Oh it does.
The car may be good, but accidents and breakdowns happen all the time.
Part of the greatness of that brand you mentioned is service.
As it is for VRay.
Steal it, and be reduced to watch it all happen from outside, or get the know-it-all to fix your car for you.
Choice.

Yes, but you can't type in spot3d.com in your browser when you steal a mercedes in order to get it serviced.

[pailhead]

If you have never , ever, touched a pirated software, you are either the son of a rich man, you never had a real passion for these things -never wanting to use them at home, but just using them when and where others provided them for you-, or you're never been a student at college...

Neither of these three categories are particularly famous for their productions, imo.

Lele

So the first thing you're supposed to do when you touch warez, is to obtain thousands and thousands of emails, and spam them with your flashy $10/h gifs?

Come on, a student using pirated software to learn and satisfy his craving passion is one thing. People using pirated software to make it hard for decent people is a whole other thing. And can you honestly say that it's not harder now than it used to be?

I wouldn't mind poor people using pirated software while keeping it local. Arch-viz people can't afford software, architects and developers can't afford renderings, it's a compromise. But when you undercut honest people, in such an aggressive way, it's really not fair.


If we say that half the price of a mercedes is its brand, and the other half the actual material cost, how much would you say that it costs to create an average rendering, withoug your labor?

@teabag

I don't think that it's "dumping" that we're talking about. It's more of a "steal from the rich and then sell it back to the less rich".



I would be at ease if all the work coming from russia, india and china was done in blender with all it's limitations (like the learning curve).

[teabag]

look pailhead.....the standard price of a DTP hour in czech republic varies between 12 and 25 euros per hour....that depends on the size and name of the company

lets say, that one of those people thats charging tohse 12 euros is capable of building up the scene in 2 hours and rendering in another two....in total he would charge u lets say 35 euros (considered that he charges 1/2 price per hour for the rendering)....so thats two hours of work, another 2 hours waiting for render and doing something else....

do u find this sum way below the price u charge your clients or not?

[studioDIM]

That website you keep touting as the 10$ an hour is actually almost double what an US worker gets to work at walmart.
And it is above what i happened to gain doing some jobs over the net, even from some based in the US.
And if you look in the career section, you'll see they leverage on freelancers.
So it may not be a company at all, in the strict sense of the word.
They may not have an office, or a software license, but rather outsource themselves to freelancers around the world.
The 10$ an hour may have plenty of strings attached, and may levitate to well something else by the end of a proper quote.

With the risk of repeating myself: companies which use pirated software to make buck are to be prosecuted by law.
Still, what you're proposing is that CG be elitarian.
I can't see how someone with a 200$ a month wage should save for ten years to buy max and vray.
And it boils, again, down to the mechanics set in place by the west.

It keeps sounding more and more, to me, as if competition is good if you win, bad if you lose.
It's fine to pay chinese (indian, pakistani, italian, even...) people pennies a day when you buy their products cheap, but if they want to do CG, they HAVE to buy the software which is targeted for a VERY different market, where people spend in beer, night in, night out, what those people there gain in a day.
It has to hold both ways.

It's because most of our hardware comes from chinese Fabs that we pay so little for it (whatever makes up to the final price is MOSTLY down to the maker hefting up on it, not the production cost/labor cost).
Ask IBM personal computer who Lenovo is.
After 20 years of leveraging on their cheap labor, how could they complain about lenovo turning around and buying them off?
While they might have, the result changed little: they were bought off.
And i can't say i was unhappy, tbh.

Me, i personally dig competition, EVEN if i lose out, as it's going to push me further into bettering my skills and finding radical ways of proposing myself unto the market.
And if it all goes to shite, IKEA is just around the corner, they'll sure always need people to lift loads.

Lele

[teabag]

perfectly said studioDIM

me personaly....i know loads of CG artist who started with pirate software....and when they have finally worked their way out and made enough money, they bought the soft....and i dont blame them at all!!!!

look at autodesk....the amount they charge for product such as max is a daytime robbery (considering all the bugs it has that have never been fixed)...who could afford such thing from start....u cant even use leasing companies to buy software...so sometimes (in certain countries and economic conditions) the only way to work your way up is to take some illegal steps...and once u there its payback time....u have to go legal and buy all the stuff that u have used to make bucks.....................................if all this takes one freelancer a year for example....then fine....those large soft companies dont loose that much waiting a year for someone to make their soft usage legal.

[pailhead]

With the risk of repeating myself: companies which use pirated software to make buck are to be prosecuted by law.
Still, what you're proposing is that CG be elitarian.
I can't see how someone with a 200$ a month wage should save for ten years to buy max and vray.
And it boils, again, down to the mechanics set in place by the west.

You're twisting my words.

All i'm saying is that i doubt that anyone who advertises in those emails wants to save, or is capable of saving to buy legit software with the rates that they charge.



Anyway, i've heard enough. I just wanted to test the water, it's good to know that while other people are trying to protect their professions, we are totally ok with running ours to the ground.

I just hope that you understand what you just said Lele. One minute you're calling yourself an artist, the other you're comparing yourself to assembly workers.

[teabag]

i just think there is no need to panic whatsoever....pailhead if u run out of jobs in US (or wherever u r from) simply fish in different waters.....there is jobs everywhere...and if for some reason youre fed up with being freelance....get yourself employed in some CG company...the pay is great and if youre talented enough, htere are massive opportunities waiting for u everywhere

[studioDIM]

Pailhead, the difference between the two is indeed small.

When working within a team of artists, to produce a piece of art, paid properly, and with enough time given to accommodate for superior quality, i consider myself an artistic character.
When i am given a model with a deadline of 24 hours, and 100$ to make it happen, i consider myself LESS than a factory worker, whether the request comes from the US, the UK, Italy or China.

In the end, it's what i enjoy doing that defines me, not labels and tags.
If needs be, to survive, i can sure go lift boxes at IKEA.
I ain't that sweet a palate.

Lele

[ShaunDon]

I don't really understand, there really is NOTHING that we can do about it, one way or the other. Software piracy will exist indefinitely, and the leveling of the global economy would be the decimation of so many muti-nationals' profit margins, so there's a lot of money behind keeping the status quo for as long as possible.

But I really don't see this being as huge a problem as folks are afraid it will be. All it takes for a company to swear off outsourcing is one disaster that costs them. It's hard to find companies that can consistently make deadlines and respond to all the client demands. I'm sure some firms have found cheap outlets for this stuff, but many more are out there trying and failing and going to present buildings to owners with horrible imagery if nothing at all. And then they're risking THEIR reputation.

Maybe if I felt the tide turning the other way I'd be more desperate, but at this point I don't want to work for anyone who thinks it's normal to pay $500 for renderings and animations that take a month's worth of man-hours to produce. They're ALWAYS going to be unhappy with us, and they don't care if our images look better because we're so damned expensive. So I say let them play with fire and put their presentation of a 20 million dollar development project in the hands of someone they can only Skype or email. That's their own foolishness, and I know given how stressful and demanding it is to perform well in this industry, that it will one day come back to bite them.

'nuff said for me. Good chat, everyone. This is really an issue I like to keep tabs on how the folks here feel about.

Shaun