Animations

[glorybound]

I'm thinking $24,000 for a 4 min animation or $9000 for the first floor, the second floor, the exterior (all sides), and some pan/zoom in After Effects. Each room would get 2 views.

[Neilg]

4 minutes of animation is 6,000 frames. you're not taking into account the rendering overhead with that price at all.

[glorybound]

I just sent off the quote! I think it's a moot point, most architects I send quotes to choke for a rendering more than a few hundred bucks. I think both numbers would be astronomical for them. What kind of number where you thinking? I might be able to change it, just in case they agree to the 24 grand.

[glorybound]

They didn't get it, so I quickly changed it to $30,000

[jacksc02]

Bobby if you need a hand to render it let me know.

[glorybound]

Bobby if you need a hand to render it let me know.

Yes, thanks. I'll let you'll know what happens. He has two houses that he wants to do this to. His real estate person sent him to that example page saying if he wants to sell it, that's the kind of thing he needs to do. It's probably out of pocket until the house sells.

[squintnic]

there is a much better profit margin to be made in animation jobs especially if you are allready doing nice stills that are predominately 3D?
its a very easy thing to add to your services if you prepare and price for it properly. depends if you are willing to get more work

i wouldn't charge per second, what if that 25 frame second takes you a week to get right? charge per scene or environment

no one should be allowed to mention or do the 'ken burns' effect - its budget crap and needs to stay in 1998 where it belongs

[Sbrusse]

Hey Bobby,
I'm working on animations all year long for the last 8 years so if you need any help, just let me know, I'll be happy to help.

We usually lock of all the cams, render chalk renders to get the cams and animatics signed off, once they are, we work on the visual part and get them keyframes. For small paths, one keyframe is enough, otherwise, 3 keyframes (start, middle, end path). Once that's approved, we render it out.
You need indeed to keep post to a minimum and have way to post your shots with magic bullets colorista and looks and work with multimatte elements but keep the handheld tracked masks to a minimum and in best cases, avoid them.

Anyways, let me know if I can help, I'm always looking for nice challenges

[glorybound]

Very kind! I'll let you know.

Hey Bobby,
I'm working on animations all year long for the last 8 years so if you need any help, just let me know, I'll be happy to help.

We usually lock of all the cams, render chalk renders to get the cams and animatics signed off, once they are, we work on the visual part and get them keyframes. For small paths, one keyframe is enough, otherwise, 3 keyframes (start, middle, end path). Once that's approved, we render it out.
You need indeed to keep post to a minimum and have way to post your shots with magic bullets colorista and looks and work with multimatte elements but keep the handheld tracked masks to a minimum and in best cases, avoid them.

Anyways, let me know if I can help, I'm always looking for nice challenges

[glorybound]

I guess the Ken Burns is a way for me to chicken out on the real animation. I got a reply to my quote and they just wanted me to rephrase something I wrote. I was expecting a long silent pause and we decided to take another path email

there is a much better profit margin to be made in animation jobs especially if you are allready doing nice stills that are predominately 3D?
its a very easy thing to add to your services if you prepare and price for it properly. depends if you are willing to get more work

i wouldn't charge per second, what if that 25 frame second takes you a week to get right? charge per scene or environment

no one should be allowed to mention or do the 'ken burns' effect - its budget crap and needs to stay in 1998 where it belongs

[FLP]

We produce arch-viz for developers and architects. When the budget is in the basement and they ask for animation we offer Lumion. Keep in mind that our workflow is Sketchup for modeling and base texturing so we can produce HQ stills in 3DS/vray and animation in Lumion. Lumion is not in the same solar system as vray but it's fast and cheap.

[particlerealities]

Good luck Bobby - last time I did an animation, it nearly broke me. I put in three months of billable time over the course of one month (tons of all nighters and very long days). I did all my internal testing on my small farm, and everything looked great. Then I submitted all my camera paths to an online render farm one night before going home and woke up the next morning to thousands of dollars (and I'm being conservative here) worth of unusable frames because of various problems - keyframe problems, render settings, light caching errors, etc. Fortunately, we managed to get the render farm to credit us for the mistakes and chalk it up to learning curve. We ultimately switched to a different farm that was willing to take our files and do all the v-ray settings for us so they would pre-calc and render correctly.

I say all that to encourage you to take advantage of the folks that have offered to help you out, and do everything you can to reduce your render times to cut down on farm fees.

[glorybound]

I have read about Lumion, but I have never used it. I would have to do a lot of playing before I even thought of using it on a real project.

We produce arch-viz for developers and architects. When the budget is in the basement and they ask for animation we offer Lumion. Keep in mind that our workflow is Sketchup for modeling and base texturing so we can produce HQ stills in 3DS/vray and animation in Lumion. Lumion is not in the same solar system as vray but it's fast and cheap.

[glorybound]

Yes! You just described my fears perfectly.

Good luck Bobby - last time I did an animation, it nearly broke me. I put in three months of billable time over the course of one month (tons of all nighters and very long days). I did all my internal testing on my small farm, and everything looked great. Then I submitted all my camera paths to an online render farm one night before going home and woke up the next morning to thousands of dollars (and I'm being conservative here) worth of unusable frames because of various problems - keyframe problems, render settings, light caching errors, etc. Fortunately, we managed to get the render farm to credit us for the mistakes and chalk it up to learning curve. We ultimately switched to a different farm that was willing to take our files and do all the v-ray settings for us so they would pre-calc and render correctly.

I say all that to encourage you to take advantage of the folks that have offered to help you out, and do everything you can to reduce your render times to cut down on farm fees.

[flino2004]

It's better that they say "no" because you are expensive to them for animations than you say "no" because you think you are too expensive and not much experience in animations..... Put a high number and cross the bridge when you get there.