My bread and butter have been my house renderings. For the most part, they are fun, easy, and quick. I got a call from a marketing company who was contracted to update a house manufacture’s house designs with updated detail and renderings for their website. The phone call was going well. I got the, “we have an initial 30 houses with much more to follow”. I told him that I typically don’t quote based on the chance of potential future work, but I would take that into consideration later. After 15 minutes, he said he has a commitment, from an India company, for $100 per house. How in the hell can someone make money on $100 per house? I told the guy that I do not compete on price because nobody wins. Do you guys see this often? With iterations, I see each house taking 3 days. I don’t know, but I think we are worth more that $4 per hour, wouldn’t you say? What are these outfits paying their people if they are charging $4 per hour? RIDICULOUS!!!
It is a very bad market. But also it is true that there is space for anyone. It all depends on the quality you want. That’s why MIR charges 4000$ per render, and shitty renders from china cost less than 100$…
You keep your good work on, and everything will be fine.
The funny thing is, the manufactured home company has some decent renders on their site, which is the ones that the marketing company want to change for better ones. I told this guy that there are some decent render farms overseas, in India where he got his quote, but for $100 he’ll get what the site already has, if not worst. Who is MIR?
These guys? Pretty cool stuff!
They are the Gods of fog, and masters of lighting..
Yes, that’s who I found after a Google search. Not stuff!
And then I just get a call questioning my process. This guy wants to see color options on an existing building. I asked for the drawing files and he said, “I thought you were just coloring the photos we sent. If you are modeling it, your fee is really cheap”. So, one guy wants houses done for $100, thinking anything more is too much and the other thinks $800 is a real great price for a house. Both these houses are about the same size and complexity. Talk about manic!
I am a fulltime freelancer from India & i work from home. In my knowledge there is no company or even individual who works for so less! i charge minimum $500 for a small house render. I can afford to do it in $500 because i dont have much overheads, how can a company work for such a ridiculously low price. That guy must be bluffing.. And if some individual is doing, he must be a college student doing this for his pocket money.. such 3d guys you can get in any part of the world.. If you look at the site freelancer.com you will find guys working for as low as $5/hour from all over the world. Quality v/s Reliability ratio is the key.
Good to hear from you and good to know there are not people who are working for so little of money, except for the freelancer.com people.
I’m getting emails with offers of doing such cheap renders so nothing new. Maybe Trump will do something about this 
In the company I work for, I am the only guy doing the archviz renderings. But we have a Vietnamese departement too. And occassionaly they pass some of my work to be done over there. The renderings are just god awful, many geometry mistakes, crappy furniture, terrible colors, etc. Now we’re doing a contest on some big project and for some reason (money i guess) they’re sending it to be rendered over there. They asked a few quotes and we (them) agreed on a guy who was asking for 250$ per image. If you would know how big the project was, you’d be amazed. I saw some of the work the guy we’re planning to work with did and they are actually quite good. But I wonder how he’ll manage to do such a big project and keep the same quality for that price…to be continued.
mir is awesome! i loved those guys works from idk how long ago when i first saw their website, you cant beat India no way but issue is the quality, they work fast and cheap and the results are fast and cheap
Actually China renders are mostly surprisingly good nowadays
Everyone has their niche i’d say. You can jump from one to another - lower, higher - it’s your choice.
But if client is saying that i can get that from India for 100$ - that is definitely a client for another niche.
Some of these super-cheap outsource companies are getting subsidized by their government for doing international work. So you can charge a lot less but still get a good amount of money in the door to pay wages. It is essentially how the VFX side of things works these days.
It is also true that it depends on the size of the firm you work, or if you work for yourself and are a freelancer. Here in US, many times for big firms money is not the issue. The real problem is timing, and having full control of their work! It has happened to me that the firm preferred to pay three times the price of render done in china (1500 vs 500) only because it was so hard to deal with them. You need to do a change, shoot an email, wait half day because it is already midnight there..wait for the morning, they do the change, and they missed it! And you need to do it again trying to explain from scratch your intention. Their aesthetically taste is also different from what we are used to. Meanwhile the deadline has come knocking on your door! For these reasons firms try to do rendering in house where the designer can seat with the archviz guy and tell its intentions, or outsource it to local artists. Unless you need to win a competition, and then… you call MIR
Communication seems to be the biggest issue I hear. We have to sell our value as well as our product. The funny thing with this guy is, he was hired to improve a companies image. I guess their image isn’t worth much. Who known, they might try this $100 per render company and if it works for them, more power to them.
Yea, good for them. As I said in the previous comment, there is room for everybody in this world. The 100$ guy needs to eat too. You just keep your good work on, and everything will be fine. Will sleep better at night!
Yeah, I told the guy that it wouldn’t be worth my time under a certain $ amount. Any changes or tweaks would be low-priority, so nobody would win.