Hi all,

A client offered me a job to make a landscape scene including beach, rock, people, houses, and so on. He requested 5~6feet x 3feet print size (without loosing quality).

First of all, I never render such huge image with Bryce. It might take me days to render.

Secondly, I have to use 3DS Max to model some objects (I can use Poser to make people).

I like to know what will you charge for such offering, and what will you suggest the rendering size.

Many thanks in advance!

Hi. 5 feet (or 60 inches) would be about 6000 pixels and three feet (or 36 inches) would be 3600 pixels. So go Into bryces document set up and change the dimensions to 6000 X 3600. But the better question is how are you going to print that? I don't know what to charge...maybe $12/hour plus printing expenses.

Well, I have done this before and depending on how long it takes you to construct some of the models, and this may sound high, but at least $250.00 min. It should also be in .tif format for the best print available, that will yeild a huge file. And it will definately take you a couple days to render. Sharen

We charge $20.00 per hour to do this kind of work, but we also do the printing. Sharen

Thanks guys. At present, I don't need to worry about the printing. I can go to some printing shop something like that.

I don't know the complexity of the scene yet. We'll talk about it days later

I'm a self employed 25 yr Contractor/Craftsman, my bottom hourly price is $40.00per HR and it goes up depending on the complexity of the project. SAMS3D gives you an industry price, use that as your basis and consider that skilled Mechanics and Plumbers start at 50 an hour. Even if you sub out the Printing You definatly will need to chart your time, give an estimate, and a prescribed amount of revision for the customer. Customers can be time consuming with revision, afterall, they're paying for it. Good Luck, hope this helps. Let us know how you make out.

Thanks for sharing your information,Rod. I appreciate that:)

Well, for a nice print you would need the resolution at least 200 pizels per inch. That will lead you rendering a 12000x7200 pixel image. Anything less and you would be able to see the pixels in the print. Because this is a large format "visualization" scene, you could charge quite a bit of money. I would say 30 dollars per hour plus printing. (printing will be very expensive at that size) I would do a "preview" render at about 1700 pixels x 1020 pixels. Then when the client is happy with that, crank the resolution up to 12000 x 7200 pixels and render to disk. CAREFUL!!!! DO NOT USE PHOTO TEXTURES UNLESS THEY ARE VERY HIGH RESOLUTION! Using a low res phot texture will look fine at web size, but i will look absolutely aweful at large format sizes.

Wow, 12000x7200, that probably will tie up my pc a whole week! Thanks Max. and thanks again for everyone who give me the invaluable information. By the way, my client just want me to make one for hanging in his house, so i doubt he will pay me $30 or higher per hour :D

I think Sharen's Idea is the best - Charge a set fee, figure out how long it should take and multiply that by 20 dollars or so an hour (Remember to include the printing, reasonable delivery fees and any misc. costs).If you charge more than that, You might lose the business. Also If it takes you longer or less time than you figured, stick with the price you originally set.

Kennyliu, if your client wants a landscape at a 6K res fully detailed and with lot's of vegetation you can send him to me :) The price perhour of $30 is not really unreasonable. If your client is a friend you could ofcoarse decide to go lower than that, but else you might find that much lower pricing will reduce your profit to less than 0. Printing at 6 feet is also very expensive. Especcially if you want a print on good quality paper or even canvas. Printing alone might cost a few hundred. You should calculate the printing-price first before you decide on priceing.

$50 per hour for your time spent plus all printing costs. As for rendering time, most of my originals get rendered at 6000 x 4000 pixels and take about 75 minutes. Complex vegetation and shadows can be added in post-production.

Thanks all again. I'll only make a copy for him and he'll print it out by himself, so I'm not quite worry about the expense of printing :D

75 minutes is a pretty fast render time at that size. Are you using dual CPU?

Attached Link: http://www.renderblender.net/

100dpi is enough for large poster printing and the bigger they are the lower you can go (zazzle.com prints at 100 and their posters are excellent quality). Print a billboard and 15dpi is enough! :) Cost-wise for a single piece; I would agree 15 - 30 is fair, but I'd be extremely surprised if anyone is willing to pay more than 100 total. There are so many "good" artists around willing to work for peanuts that there's really no money to be made. Even a front & back book cover for a decent author will only get you 150, and to get the work in the first place you need to be absolutely sh#t hot. Unfortunately you can't compare trades when checking out costs, it doesn't work. For example, it costs 75 / hr to get my car serviced by some greasemonkey who knows absolutely piss all about cars, but 75 / hr is more than most big company directors get. The plumber comes round and charges 60 for a callout, which is more than I'd pay a Harley Street doctor for a half-hour consultation. And artists, unfortunately, are right at the bottom of the pile!

Thanks Max and Tuttle for your link and information. I appreciate them. I agree with what Tuttle said. That is a sad thing for many artists.

tuttle, if it makes you feel any better the "greasemokey" you refer to only gets about 20% of what you are charged by a shop if that - more like 5% and the mechanic is supposed to be able to double or tripple the book rate. The rest goes to his secretary I mean boss. If I were to do mechanics again I would open a shop and hire a secretary rather than work for one, but most mechanics who work for someone else are lucky to break even after buying extremely expensive tools and are really lucky to work the entire year. On top of that most shop bosses are too cheap to buy appropriat manuals or allow their workers the time to look things up. I can't speak for plumbers but I would bet it's the same there. I still have the tools that If I'd bought 3d art apps instead would have got me 3ds, lightwave, maya, rhino, bryce,carrara and poser from the very start and gotten me to the latest upgrades. Sorry, I had to speak out for auto mechanics having been one. But the thing I did learn from all that is that it is better to charge a set fee for a given thing and in that way the faster you can do it the more money you can make given a reasonable coustomer base. Also if the customer knows how much he'll be paying going in he's more likely to be satisfied providing the workmanship itself is satisfactory . . . and a satisfied customer is more likely to return. sorry for the rant, - TJ

Good luck with the job, kennyliu, 'cos the only way to get on is to "get your foot in the door", so if you get a few jobs under your belt you might be onto something. bikermouse - I was referring to specific greasemonkeys at my official car dealership - IMO they shouldn't be allowed to say the word "car" let alone work on one. That said, I now take my car to the local(-ish) mechanic down the road who charges about 30% of the price but does a superb job. So I'm not against mechanics in general, just crap ones. ;)

Kenny, I'm using a single AMD athlon XP 1800 with 1.5GB DDR cas 2.0 ram.

huh lets see, moving 3 tons of sand for the beach, mixing the mortar and stucco for the house, oh and not forgeting 20 pallets of bricks. Waiting time of about 3 years for decent plant growth. Hmmm tap that into the old calculator, uh huh, oops musnt forget waiting for the right weather conditions....... tee hee