How much next gen, normal mapped, quality characters models are worth ?

So ive been wondering if anybody has any quotes on prices for what good quality lets say 10-20k tris realistic characters models would be ? Not animated, rigged at most, fully textured and normal mapped spec map etc.

I used to think i know but i did some google last 2 days and im not sure anymore.
People seem to be charging soooo little for 3d working it makes me scratch my head.
And dont tell me "it depends", an average. i wonder if anybody has any number for what he or people he knows about use to charge for quality models or at lest whats the word on the street it the freelance or studio environment.
I guess 20-50$/h but how long a pipeline for a character usually nowadays lasts ?
Lets say Last of us or any other recent aaa game quality character models.
So lets say you got a concept already and want a 10-20k tris quality, normal mapped, clothed with any needed accessories, realistic, character model, how much would it be worth to you ?

 

Whether or not it is exclusive is another aspect to consider. I don't know the cost of characters, but most times I've seen requests being made have had the option of paying more for exclusive use.

 

For true AAA nextgen stuff I'd expect 10k+ and that plus could mean a lot more. Quality stuff for desktop that is a bit more "indie" you can probably get in the 1k-10k range (yes I know that's a big window, but it is all pretty variable).*

*Based on quotes I have received, and friends who are freelance 3D artists.

 

When I buy 3d models, these are the kind of things I look at that would inspire me to pay more than $20 for an asset:
- single model or a pack (packs make me happy, means more consistent art in my game)
- can it be customised (can I re-use the asset)
- does it look good (not poly quality good, does it look good to the 'eye')
- is it rigged (countless frustrations with poorly rigged characters grrrrr)
- is it animated (always nice)
- is it for a genre that I want to build for (not buying models of army guys if making a fantasy game)
- does the model fit a niche that is not well catered for (fae! centaurs! imps! cats! cute cartoon critters!)
- what feedback does the artist currently have on the asset store and other model sites (means a lot)
- is it someone I feel I WANT to support (based on their web/comment interactions)

I am not an artist and never would be, so convince me to spend $$ on you

 

wait, what ?

Im not sure on those numbers, that would imply a good month of work at a 50$/h range for one artists
Unless you count a lot of variations and the concept stage and im not sure the pipeline bloated so much already, its hard for me to imagine a high poly model taking more than 2 weeks which would be probably the most time consuming part of the modeling process.
I did see people quoting 15k$ numbers but i was sure they are taking the piss.

You cant be serious, even for something non custom i just cant imagine getting anything good for 20$, especially a quality character model. A barrel model, yeha maybe, but come on.

 

Exclusive use means that you also buy the rights to the asset. The artist cannot sell to anyone else, ensuring that the character remains unique to your game.

Generally can cost a good chunk more, as the artist must make up the entire cost of the project through you alone, instead of spreading the cost across multiple customers.

 

Yeah, you would think thats what you pay him ~40$/h for or lets say 5k$/ character.
I have never hear of somebody sapping additional cost on a model to make it custom.
Especially anything to make it cost 15k$ or something.
You already have no clue if anybody else will buy it, so you have to make up the costs in first go, any additional profit is just speculative.

Anyway i wasnt thinking of turbosquid models when i made the thread ;f

 

Main characters in a big AAA probably cost the studios in excess of 250k.

It's rumoured street fighter IV characters cost more than 1 million each (http://www.siliconera.com/2013/02/2...-each-to-create-heres-why-squigly-is-cheaper/) . This includes animations, moves, voice, etc, but I guarantee you there is more than 10k of modelling and texturing in there.

Roughly a character will take 2-3 weeks, but to go in with the view that there is not going to be any tweaking post the initial delivery is not realistic. Even if the concepts are absolutely perfect (hint: they wont be), you still have performance, rendering, animation and physics to account for.

15k is certainly not taking the piss, it seems like a pretty good price for someone who is an accomplished character artist.

All of that said it doesn't mean you can't get good characters for cheaper, even much cheaper, and generally getting multiple characters will give you a bulk discount. However your initial post seemed to imply you wanted the top end. And at the top end 10k is cheap.

 

Yeah in retrospect that wording I used was really odd. My experience has been limited to music and texture providers, but so far both seem to sell exclusive access for an additional fee. I very much imagine that remains the same for modelling below AAA budgets.

 

"Quality stuff for desktop that is a bit more "indie" you can probably get in the 1k-10k range (yes I know that's a big window, but it is all pretty variable).*"

That is my experience too. You can also get lower poly, cartoony characters with no animations for even cheaper (and they still look good in the right environment).

 

Sorry for gouging your market, bra.

But yea... my modeling quality is going up and Blender can do all of the things you've described with mapping and quality... so... with the development costs so low and how quickly I can work, I don't see the need to inflate the numbers. Hell if people wanna throw money at me, they can have the source file I used.

Maybe this is because 3D modeling is more like a hobby for me than anything else, but for a discount that is asymptotically approaching 100%, people will go after my models for the very slight decrease in quality since I can produce a rigged and animated model of just about anything in a couple hours. I modeled an entire closet for a company in 20 minutes and they seemed baffled how their previous artist took a week.

TL;DR: Undercut the competition by over 90% in price, word of mouth spreads, indie devs are compliant with the price for how good everything still looks, the perceived value of the field drops a little. There are more indie devs than AAA devs (for obvious reasons) and that'll be the source of the numbers you come across here ^-^

--edit

If your art is really amazing and mostly high poly, maybe you could try selling it to a big animated movie company like Disney? AAA games and animated films pay quite a large amount of cash for their assets.

 

I think you hit the nail on the head. It all depends on who your target market is. I cannot imagine anyone Indy here in these forums spending $10k and up per model for every asset in their game. I suppose it is possible but I think it is unlikely most could afford even $1k per model. Personally, back when I was dabbling in 3D I purchased exclusive contract models for $20 to $30 each.

Recently I searched for 2D sprite artists and found prices ranging from $3 per image / frame to $40 per image / frame. My view was $40 per frame of animation? I am not SONY or Disney. Lol So I quickly passed them by. Fortunately, I found several quality artists offering what I consider reasonable (affordable) rates... the $3 per frame. And I chose one of those artists to work with. I send over a request, pay up front and about a week later I get back the hand-drawn animation ready to drop in my game.

 

I've love to see the quality of work you sell for those prices. Got a store or portfolio link?

And to be clear: Are you selling them exclusively to 1 person, or can others buy the same models?

 

I'm an experienced 3d modeler and animator. creating content for indies mostly and selling on the asset store as well. to get an overall ideal of what an exclusive model would cost, you just have to multiply one of my non exclusive creation's price by about 40. But I guess what I'm creating is maybe not the top AAA stuff. A lof of big AAA studios in the US just pay about 5K / 6K their artists, but in that context the creation of a finished character means: concept artist, modeler, rigger, animator, sometimes a technical artist to create custom shaders for specific needs. This would maybe explain the 10K or more price for an individual character. and I forgot about some technicians for mocap and stuff. All that has to be taken into consideration and in that case 10 / 15 K is really cheap.

 

If it looks like a mutant when it should be a sexy superhero then, probably not much. If it looks like actual AAA game art then, probably quite a lot.

 

oh come on, lets keep here to reality not urban myths and obvious made up numbers
sf4 had what, 20 characters ? The whole budget of the game wasnt more than 25 mln, wheer are the environemnt programming music licensing engine testing etc. Even at 250k they would blow through the budget in a year.

We are still talking about modeling here ? Stop getting off track pls.
None of those things are relevant to the topic.

But yeah i agree that it could take 2-3 weeks to make a character, now my question is how much is that worth.
Im not saying its not 10k+, but would be good to get some quotes on that, since its seems quite a bit to me especially when outsourcing.

Yeah, but in modeling, especially character modeling you wont be using ready assets or texture sampling. Sure some things like cloth patterns etc can be used, but its usally artists depended and those are small things.
We are not talking about environmental texturing here which some lazy people just copy pastate in mass from photos.

Haha, i seriously doubt that. No, doubt is a bad world, i know you are lying, since i know a little 3d myself.

Anyway your post of baseless bragging has little relevance to the topic at hand.
And all you do by charging 10% of the cost is artificially lowering they price exceptionable of the market, things like this can quickly kill the indie market as soon as somebody tries to make a living out of 2$/h he will end up realizing its impossible. So luckily not everybody is this naive.

Also i didnt especially think of my own work when i posted this thread, seeing how i dont really do any game assets, i just realized i wont learn a thing by using google.

 

Ahh i agree, but i was wondering about the modeling side, how long it takes, how much people are payed those things.
I know that when you start stacking up thing like voice acting, mocap, animators, particle effects you end up with such a money sink that the question becomes irrelevant.
At that point instead of asking how much you should be asking how many thing you are willing to add ?
Pricing or how much it usually costs gamedevs for other stuff would also be nice to know, but i dont expect anybody to have a big breakdown of spending of some big project seeing how must publishers and devs are really secretive about thier fiances.
But if anybody did have such a bearkdown i would be highly appreciate.
As of now i would like to know about modeling and how much quality character models fly by.

 

It depends on what they are requesting. For a big budget, with exclusivity being expected, they would likely either provide me details on what they want or they would submit concept art. I would then go through an iterative process of submitting prototypes and asking for feedback until they were satisfied.

A smaller budget team, who does not care if it is exclusive, may simply request a model for a specific use. I would check over my existing library of assets and if one of them is close to the request I would start the iterative process.

If I do not have an asset that closely matches, I would create one to fill their request. At least for the initial prototype I would make it more generic than specific as that would become the asset added to my library of base models. From there I would start the iterative process.

 

Can't find any evidence for your 25m budget but it still roughly fits, characters and their movesets and balancing is most of the work on a fighting game so 17/25m on character doesn't seem unreasonable. But lets ignore the rumours, did you read the attached article, the small indie studio was spending 250k per character and took a paycut to be able to do the characters for 150k each for the crowd sourcing campaign. They aren't 3D but it just gives you some kind of feel for the money involved in high quality work.

If you can't see how these items affect characters then you have no idea what you are talking about:

• Your animators are getting weird morphs around a piece of knee armour, they need the character artist to tweak some of the topology.
• You are approaching the final game and your fps is starting to suffer, the engine guys tell you that you need to snip 2k from your per-character triangle budget.
• The characters awesome pony tails are distorting when she goes in to ragdoll on death, they need some rig updates so muscle constraints/IK can be applied to them.
• The environment and tech artists come up with some awesome shading and lighting effects that really make the game, but the character needs an additional map texture to show off the effect.

Just some random samples but the end result there's no way you are going to get NextGen AAA quality without some back and forth between all the various systems.

Anyway not going to waste my time here any longer, my final word: The 15k quotes you got were completely reasonable for the requirements you listed in the original post.

 

You wont find since i took a overall guess, it might have been less than 25 mln.
When you look at the list of most expensive games ever made you will see that even then most of them are 50mln at most except freak games like gta5 swtor etc. And that 50 mln is including marketing cost that usually is over 50% of the whole budget. Average for aaa games is actually just 20mln$.

Also, i didnt read that article, actually i assumed its about sf4, but now i did. And that breakdown makes me just laugh.
1/3 of the price is the cost of getting the money, 1/3 is the cost of sustaining the studio and the actual cost of the character is only 1/3 of the price, 50k. Not to mention quality 2d is much more expensive than 3d. Spending 30k$ to make one model seems just insane.

Im wouldnt count incompetence and fixes into the model cost, those are rare and most of them can be done over the existing topology since tangent space normal maps are very resistant to topology modification as long as smoothing groups stay the same, the texture obviously wont be affected at all.
If you F*** up so much that you have to make a model from scratch, then its safe to count it as a another model.
Re reriging and reanimating wasnt really my point of interest. I was asking about the asse prodcution not its use.
I really dont want to muddy the numbers with management. test costs, etc, i would like to know how much stuff costs to make, how much people pay for outsourcing etc.

 

Well ok I'll give you that. I can model, in a short time, anything that isn't organic. I'm ok with curves and I've modeled a few fish but damn organic things are difficult for me! I can't draw them in 2D either. My people come out worse than stick figures.

I also thought I made it clear I was kidding with the phrase 'gouging the market'. But eh, even if I were serious, 3D modeling is a little hobby so I can have unique assets for my projects, I wouldn't go out of my way to try and actually sell any models. Except for that closet job.

Maybe looking into production costs for blizzard games will give you the best idea. It's clear that their over the top cinematics cost more than anything else, they couldn't even afford to end their diablo expansion with a cutscene!

I don't have a store for my hobby. I guess any games I've linked in other forums would be as close to a 3D modeling portfolio as it gets since I use only my models. My textures are usually just RGB noise vomit from gimp lol.

If I'm giving something to someone for exclusive use, I'll save a few renders for my portfolio and then let them have the original model. That might just be blender's open source-ness and lack of reliance on 3D modeling for income influencing my philosophy and practice.

If you have a request, I can make it, skin it and get you a render by friday afternoon, as I am in school right now from 8AM until 11pm.

Oh and just to be clear that I'm a hobbyist, if you like what you see, you can have it for free! If the renders look good, I'll PM you access to a google drive folder with the model.

--edit

I attached one of my attempts to model an organic creature from this past July. The eye texture kinda messed up, but there's about 40 or 50 minutes of work. I started at some time around 11AM and finished before 12 (based on the creation date of this image and some renders sent to my cousin who drew this). So, as you can see, not so good with organics. It's a lot easier to model something with given dimensions, like the closet I mentioned before. The source is with the customer now, though.

I'd sell this for approximately $0.00 since I don't consider the quality of my organics worth selling. This model is rigged and correctly weight painted though, so there is a test animation showing that off in the .blend file. Still wouldn't sell it for more than $0.00 0/10 (heh, gas station prices are a riot!)

 

Must be back in 95 if that's next gen...

 

Check out Mixamo Fuse if you want decent looking diffuse, normal, spec mapped characters for a ridiculously good price.
You also get two free autorigs a week and they are about to drop a new version within the next month.
I always customize the characters in Zbrush and 3D Coat and animate them in iClone afterwards but if you do not have the skills to do this they are good to go as is. You can also create your own base models (including edited, lower poly versions of existing models), clothes and accessories in an external program, import them into Fuse and tweak to your hearts content using the built in Algorithmic Substances. As a starting point for humanoid characters Fuse is truly awesome and it will only get better.

 

A lot's changed in the months since July. That was also good enough for the project where it just kinda shows up briefly, wrecks a ship, and then disappears back underwater. It's also not 'next gen', it's just an indie-acceptable model that more would be done to if it were going to be used in something that was going to be sold. What does something look like that is both indie and next gen? Probably just what I have there, subdivided a few hundred times, and a PBR shader on it.

I started with blender around last december so, as a hobby, some progress is being made. That model has less than 1200 vertices and just over 2000 tris (accidentally subdivided and tried to decimate to get it back after closing, so no idea what it was in that render). Next gen was being defined as what, 10,000-20,000 tris? I have a feeling it would look a little better with 10x the tris it has now

But yea. ~2000 tris, some RGB noise acting as both the normal map and diffuse map, rigged and weight painted, one test animation, $0.00. Seems to fit the indie budget. Might have more than an hour in it if it was going to be used in something that wasn't for me. I don't think I'd even model an organic for someone lol, mine are terrible.

Still... the point being made originally was that it does not take much time. The validity to that point comes from the closet model I sold a few weeks ago. Didn't take more than 15 minutes, the previous artist took over a week. It will only ever be a hobby to me, but that should still be useful data to your field. Although I would have probably made a better case for this if I showed something NOT organic lol... and I probably could have used something more recent.

The website for Fuse says it all.

"Create characters in minutes, not days"

That's the point. Might a character look 20% better if you hired someone who would do it over the course of a few days? Most likely. But are you going to go for the 80% of your desired quality option for probably 90% less money? Most definitely. If your budget is enormous, then why develop an indie game? Go contract some AAA developers and artists.

 

Yeah, but its still just your generic make a human software with mediocre at best results and overall dated feel to the model quality. I guess things like this will work good enough for a small project where you need to make human characters in mass but for the upcoming new aaa games this would never pass. And if you are making aliens or fantasy creatures or animals in general you just plain up need to know how to do those things from scratch, and if you already have such a skilled team why not make human models that surpass in quality those auto generated ones.
And again, its not why i made this thread. Everybody seems to plain up ignore my first post and post the first model related thing that come to their mind ;/

If your example is any indication of the quality of your modeling then no wonder you did it in 15 minutes when other guy needed a week. You made box with a wood texture probably while the other guy was making an closet looking model. Your made up numbers prove it. 40-50 minutes and you think you did anything on that model ? It takes me 60 minutes to slap together few cubes to sketch in the forms and proportions of my mesh.

Your logic is truly baffling and insulting to indie developers. Not only you assume indie=S*** and that aaa studios have some kind of monopoly on well made games, you also piss all over real artists making proper game assets.

And no, you are not "Creating a character in minutes" you are using parts of an already made model but just swapping them around. Somebody actually spend weeks or months to make and bake those normal maps that you now so happily morph around with a single slider or those cloth meshehs you materialize with 1 button press. Slapping a new bumper to a car dosnt mean you made it, you modified an already existing one.
Games like bastion, trine or Hawken prove that indie devs can produce content as good or even better quality than aaa devs and dont need a retard handicap cap when talking about their products.
And the difference between your products and that of lets say Raphael Grassetti isnt 20%, its 99,9%.
I really didnt come here to walk all over your inflated ego, but somebody has to give you a reality check, you plain up have barely basic grasp of 3d modeling, yet alone know anything substantial about the industry.

 

It comes off that way, I'm sure. I'm that guy who had that 1 class on the topic of discussion and feels like a pro because I passed said class. Organics are a bad indication of what I can do, so I exposed my weak point for everyone to poke fun at. The closet was made quickly because I had measurements for widths, depths, lengths, etc. I really don't know how it took the other artist more than a week.

extrude... axis lock... number of units... accept... repeat...

Maybe it was the software being used, I really have no idea. I'm half way through my second modeling class and am working kinda close with indie devs so the input was valid I know most of what I've done up until some months ago is awful though. I showed that render I posted here to a handful of people at school. You know what some of the game dev kids said? "That looks awesome and disgusting" because the back skin looks... idk, veiny, slimey, etc.

You know what my advanced production teacher said? "It looks like a trash bag. Also, turn off the specular lighting."

Maybe indie devs from Newark are just easily impressed. And they are indie devs, they do occasionally bring products to college wide events to get greenlit or kickstarted. The original point being... the price:quality ratio to the sample of indie devs I was thinking of when making that statement works and forms the logic that followed. My apologies to people in the field who make AAA quality work and may have taken offense to the ramblings of an internet stranger. I'm a lowly hobbyist and I think after this asset production class there are no more to take so my best efforts will be deformed organics or not so bad objects if they're based off measurements.

--edit

That last line is what threw me off track for this forum. What might a model be worth to me made me think of what it might be worth to some of my friends in college who are devs and actually need models.

 

Most of the small indie shops don't have the budgets of games like Bastion, Trine, or Hawken.
Hawken for example had a budget of nearly 29 million dollars.

If you want to make money off your games, you have to think economical in the first place, which means reduce costs and the development time, which is not easy if you aim for AAA graphics. In case of Hawken it didn't work.

Otherwise I agree. Those automatic character generators from Mixamo, Poser of whatever will never give you the same quality, compared to a individual handcrafted model, done from scratch by an experienced artist.

 

Heh, small shops. The indie devs I know personally since my major is game design are usually a team of 1-3 people. The budget usually ranges to $0 (when people come to me for assets or fast prototypes for place holders) all the way up to a whopping ... $0. Since we have art & design students, 1 of the 3 people in the group is usually the art guy for the whole project. Funny enough, while art is the most lacking in all of our projects, the only money ever spent on projects goes into code samples!

Are those models you get from Mixamo in a format that you can open in your modeling software of choice and modify?

 

Sorry OT, but still somehow relevant.
I use http://www.blendswap.com/, http://opengameart.org/ and http://www.sharecg.com/ and tons of stuff I collected from the internet over the years.

blendswap has awesome stuff, all free. Non-exclusive, but who cares. Need exclusives? Customize it.

Edit: I often get game ideas from the models I see there, because I think about how I could use a model if I see a very cool one. Maybe a bad approach.
E.g. http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/73325

 

Yes a lot people are on a shoestring budget. So you mostly have no other choice to either stick to simple 2d/minecraft-like graphics, or use services like Mixamo Fuse, the Asset Store etc.

Regarding the models from Mixamo. According to their FAQ it exports as OBJ, and with rig as FBX, or Collada. So it should be possible to modify those characters in any mayor 3D package.

 

Cool, thanks for the info. Sounds like that could be useful for people in need of base models... maybe.

I think my art will improve once I officially switch to windows in a few weeks. I usually forget to mention this since it's obvious in person, but... all of my work since the beginning of my existence up to the current has been done on a mac touchpad. I've never been in a comfortable position to use a mouse, so I got used to the touchpad so much to the extreme that I can play an FPS game with a touchpad!

My work flow is a little wrist and the rest all finger movements. Pity me, the mouse-less computer scientist. Or pity me because <NSFW - PM FOR DETAILS>.

To get this thread back on topic...

Pewdiepie announced a few days ago he wants to make a game. The entire project will be funded by him. If you can contact him you might get some good figures on what people with expendable cash are willing to pay. He claims it's going to be an indie game, so maybe he's after the high quality indie art you speak of.