Oh I’ve been there, I know all too well how quickly South these can go which is why I rarely do them, unless the budget is there.
Might be worth asking your client if they have a budget or price in mind?
Or give them a range of what it could cost and then gauge from their reaction.
Might save some time.
The last three animation I did I didn’t make any money from.
Each one different and a one off. At least yours are more specific and I’d say more predictable.
For a residential spec, tell them you can do it for 15k which will include X still images. Produce the X still images first and have them sign off on those in writing before producing the animation so you are:
A.) not consuming more computational resources than needed to render out the animation
B.) should they make changes once the animation is produced from the still images they signed off on, you have ample jurisdiction to charge for any change order(s) incurred
Best of luck out there! Stay safe!
is anyone taking into account that if quality of this sample is satisfactory for the client then after modelling all that producing imo better looking output takes a day or two of work and 400-500$ worth of software (D5)?
using vray for this seems like quite an overkill.
edit: also any rtx card but that should be easy I guess.
D5 does certainly look impressive. Will have to give it a go on my impending monster project. Thanks for the pointer 
I wouldn’t trust it for anything more than house like that. D5 although very promising still feels more like a toy than a tool.
consider lumion or twinmotion for something “monster”.
Good to know. I just installed it anyway, so will see what it can do.
It’s based on Unreal, which coincidentally is what the project currently is using
for testing, so it may be useful. If I can avoid having to put the animation through Vray I will
If it works, then I can come back to this post to offer findings which might help with determining
costs that don’t make clients run away
i wish the clients ive quoted animations for, would at least let me know they were running away…instead of silence 
D5, never heard of it, but I’ll check it out.
It’s Lumion… probably 5 seconds per frame. I like lumion a lot because with few hours you have something acceptable to sell your project.
Everything seems to be going towards Lumion. I was hoping Vantage would be a Lumion killer, but maybe not, at least not yet. I have downloaded it a few times, but who has time to learn new software… but I might not have a choice.
These guys use lumion… The exteriors, in general, are very good, interiors need more work, but still, they are acceptable good in my opinion.
Yeah, nice work. I don’t want to be naive and think these were not a ton of work too.
