Clients wants to buy 3dsmax scene archive file

[muoto]

Hello,

i got some important client that wants to buy the image renderings, and from now on, the source 3dsmax model with textures/lights and a version with basic obj file.

First, i em not sure i want to sell my know-how and my settings/materials etc, and even if i did, i would not know how much you can sell it.
It feels like there is some kind of intellectual property problem with selling the source .max file, no ?

What do you think ?

[dlparisi]

I've struggled with how to price something like this and never came up with a good answer, sorry. Another thing to keep in mind though that not everything in the scene can actually be sold by you. If you have assets such as trees, people, cars, furniture that you got from a 3rd party library, those are licensed to you and cannot be rightfully sold.

[muoto]

It's just home made material, so no problem on that side.
The thing is that selling the 'secrets' feels really strange to me...and even if I would agree, i got no idea how to set a price on that...

[arobbert]

I never provide my files. Offering them for a high price will just make the customer angry. I explain that my files contain proprietary information and therefore it's against my policy. I've lost several large customers over this.

[flino2004]

When a client wants to get the max file with everything only bad things come with it. ...
-They will ask you for one image, get the model and render it out in-house.
- They are going to extract all the info from them and then renders in-house using the "standard" that you created for them.
- If you say "NO" they are going to get upset....maybe few more projects and no more in the future.

Bottom line to me, you are going to lose the client in the near future... So If I was you as Arobbert mentioned I would put a very high price tag and see what happen.

Usually, happen when they realized how much money they paid for your services and for that money they can have +2 full-time employees doing the same... I passed that situation before!!

Fernando

[NicoC]

Hello,

Pretty tricky situation indeed. From the experience I had in the past, when I was freelancer, I used to apply the following rule: if you sold your images on a 100 basis, then the price of your files should be at least 200. Generally it's enough to discourage them.
Like pointed by the others before me above, there are several points to argument this. Even if from the client's point of view he's just buying a .max file (like he just buys you JPEGs ...), it's actually all about your know-how he buys. Told in another way, even it took you let's say 5 days to complete this file, he should consider it took you several years of learning, trying, failing, to be able to complete it in 5 days. And the price of this is pretty hard to estimate accurately ...

My 2 cents