Hello, I am a programmer. I have always toyed with the idea of paying an artist to do create some "set pieces" for one of my hobby games. I always ignore the thought because I have a feeling that it would be tremendously expensive. But I just realised I am not an artist, I don't encounter artists in my day job, and so, maybe I am completely wrong.

I recently played a VR game which had a very nice set piece. So I thought to use it as a case study.

To be clear, this isn't a classified ad. I am not proposing to pay anyone to build this.

I just consider this to be a very nice example with moderate fidelity (not highly detailed, but still detailed enough). So I was wondering what a professional contractor would charge me for this sort of work (and how long would it take?). [no rigging/animations. Just modeling,texturing,and lighting ]

No need to be precise I'm just looking for ballpark figures: (1 week/1 month/ 3 months, etc...) and: ($1000 / $10000 / $100000). I just want to gain an understanding.

1 hour ago, SillyCow said:

I was wondering what a professional contractor would charge me

Hiring a professional 3D artist will depend on what you're expecting.

To get someone to model everything in that video you could be looking at a very hefty price depending on location. One company I've worked with locally does scenes like this (very high quality though) at a minimum of $15,000.00 (using drones as well). Everything is created from scratch.

I don't believe you're going to get an exact price because most people who work on contracts do not have publicly set prices, they quote based on who their client is, scope of the work, ect... You might be able to find an hourly rate, but again the end price will depend on the above. I cannot answer on time because some people don't always quote on actual time it takes (some people inflate time to generate more $, other times it's based on turn around time with estimates). Time can also depend on their current wait list.

I've paid a few hundred dollars just for one professional model (just the high poly, and low poly version - no animation or textures), which is one of the reasons why I've moved a lot of my 3D work internally now.

Prices will also change depending on if they're a local company, or you're outsourcing overseas. Be careful when getting modeling work from just anyone for your commercial projects. You need to be sure they're not stolen/ripped assets, and if those assets were made using unlicensed software (metadata is saved and can be reviewed to confirm if the model was made using a licensed version). There have been games taken down for containing such assets. I'm only saying this because you can find very cheap 3D modelers online, but they're just recycling common assets which may or may not be theirs. Also understand if you're buying models outright, or a license to use them.

@Scouting Ninja can maybe chime in on this as an artist.

5 hours ago, Rutin said:

There have been games taken down for containing such assets. I'm only saying this because you can find very cheap 3D modelers online, but they're just recycling common assets which may or may not be theirs. Also understand if you're buying models outright, or a license to use them

I was unaware of this. Are there any asset stores that i should stay away from? Normally I use Unity Store and Turbosquid. Are these safe? Would you recommend better ones?

Or is this just an issue with contractors?

4 hours ago, SillyCow said:

I was unaware of this. Are there any asset stores that i should stay away from? Normally I use Unity Store and Turbosquid. Are these safe? Would you recommend better ones?

Or is this just an issue with contractors?

There are countless examples you can find online about ripped and stolen assets on several online stores. I cannot say if those platforms are safe or not, but if you're going to be doing game development as a business you should treat it as such because if you happen to be using ripped assets you can get into legal trouble very fast. When dealing with IP infringement being aware or not aware of such infringement doesn't matter, only that the infringement has occurred. I bought a 3rd party asset awhile back which happened to be ripped and I received a lawyer's letter for IP infringement.

I've also known many artists who've reported their assets being ripped and sold on the Unity store. You can google stolen Unity assets as well to see the countless stories.

I would suggest you either hire 3D modelers in house so you own the IP, or contract a company or freelance artist that has a reputation and provides either a license of use, or rights transfer agreement. I'm personally not fond of asset stores even if I can buy a model for $20.00, I would rather pay more knowing I own the model, or rights to use it from a reputable source.

@Rutin said most of the things needed, so I will just fill in some gaps.

Long boring list of how much each should cost, more or less:

If we use the above measurements we can see that the scene will cost +/- $4 500 - $6 000 USD and will take 120-150 days to finish; if you only use one artist. (Time changes dramatically and is hard to measure.)

Whether you want the license will also impact the price, often if you allow the artist to re-sell models; you can get them for %10 of the price; because this is the price range 3D modelers use at asset stores.

This brings me to a easy way to judge how much a 3D model will more or less cost. Just go to TurboSquid find a model set like yours: https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/3d-model-of-archmodels-vol-144/832521 then take the prices and multiply with 10.

So $160*10 = $1 600 to have a set like this made for rendering. Then double the price to see how much it will cost for a game ready set: $1 600 * 2 = $ 3 200

If you want to make things cheaper you can ask the artist if they are willing to make a pre-purchase(like the above example) game-ready for you. You MUST ask the artist first, before buying the set, lots of artist consider this kind of work demeaning, and will refuse; leaving you with a set of high poly models that can't be used in a game.

20 hours ago, Rutin said:

you can find very cheap 3D modelers online, but they're just recycling common assets which may or may not be theirs.

Not only cheap ones, some scammers charge high prices for rubbish.

One common trick I see used by scammers like this is they will build a fake portfolio then sell assets downloaded from websites that provide free models. Portfolios are also very useless, a lot of these scam artist pay regular artists for models; then make a fake portfolio with it.

My advice is pay the artist for a single model first. Then ask for something unique that is hard to find, and not easy to fake: Something like Table with squid tentacle legs.  This will allow you to see quality, confirm payment methods, see how you will transfer files and allow you to check the performance of a asset.

When ever money is involved you will find scammers.

23 hours ago, SillyCow said:

I have always toyed with the idea of paying an artist to do create some "set pieces" for one of my hobby games.

Really you don't need a artist  and 3D pinbrushes for creaton of sets like shown on video. You need a engineer that expiriences into industrial CADs. Models of most mebles and household equpment can be created withing minutes using a CADs.  Really, nobody else but gaming "industry" uses "digital easel" to create technical and architectural models. The rest of the world uses a "digital drawing boards" intended for this purpose.

2 hours ago, Fulcrum.013 said:

Really you don't need a artist  and 3D pinbrushes for creaton of sets like shown on video. You need a engineer that expiriences into industrial CADs. Models of most mebles and household equpment can be created withing minutes using a CADs.  Really, nobody else but gaming "industry" uses "digital easel" to create technical and architectural models. The rest of the world uses a "digital drawing boards" intended for this purpose.

I'm not sure the original poster would want to use models made using computer-aided design software for a VR Game. In game development it's very important to have good poly counts, good topology, and uv maps so how does using something like AutoCAD fare? Even if you can do it yourself and save time, you still need game ready models to run in the engine. I personally don't know anyone who creates game ready models in CAD software but I could be wrong...

I'm no expert in anything CAD related, but wouldn't you still need to import those models into a 3D modeling program to clean up the topology (or even fully retopologize the model if it's extremely heavy and sloppy), then uv unwrap, rig for animation, and set up texturing, ect...? I'm thinking that the time you might have saved making the model could be drained up because you'll still need to clean it up to be game ready.

If you have used such models for games I'm curious to know the work-flow as this is new to me.

3 hours ago, Fulcrum.013 said:

Models of most mebles and household equpment can be created withing minutes using a CADs.

While there is no disagreement with this, CAD software uses a lot of stick and clip workflows when making assets like that. These results in models that look OK, although flat with very little depth, it also means that the models have too many edge information and double polygons, vertices, crossing UV maps, bad texel density etc.

CAD software is also very bad at organic shapes, making things like the arms and toys unnecessary difficult. Because of the weird UV mapping, extra UV maps will have to be made or special shaders like the ones CAD software uses.

All of this makes CAD software a bad choice for game development. Also it is much slower than most 3D modeling software like Blender or 3Ds Max that is build for fast modeling from scratch.

It's OK for fast architectural visualization but VR needs cleaner models to work.

53 minutes ago, Scouting Ninja said:

4 hours ago, Fulcrum.013 said:

Models of most mebles and household equpment can be created withing minutes using a CADs.

While there is no disagreement with this, CAD software uses a lot of stick and clip workflows when making assets like that.

I find this intriguing. If I needed to create something like a bookshelf cabinet filled with books and boxes, or a "home entertainment center": Are you saying that CAD would be significantly faster then using 3DS or Blender ?

Can you elaborate on this? I have never used CAD software . What makes the workflow faster than "regular" artistic 3D modelling software?

1 hour ago, SillyCow said:

Are you saying that CAD would be significantly faster then using 3DS or Blender ?

Not if you want to make your own assets from scratch.

CAD software work differently, yet all of them have a huge demand for furniture. So a common solution CAD software use is to have a prebuild library of parts.

This allows CAD users to

More advanced CAD software will have a "Shadow box", that turns 2D drawings into 3D models.

However, sticking parts together to make new models has a lot of problems, like the models look the same, because the models where made from the same parts. Bad UV maps, bad topology etc.

Shadow boxes do produce average quality models but can only make very simple forms. ZBrush allows a way around this but requires lots of practice; ZBrush is sculpting software.

Blender, and 3DMax also has tools that convert 2D to 3D and will do so much cleaner than any CAD software. The down side is you need to learn how to use it; with CAD software it only takes a click or two.

It's recommended you don't use CAD software. Yet if speed and ease of use is more important than functionality; then CAD software is a acceptable choice.

Just don't rush into buying yet, use a trail or a free CAD version. Try Blender(it's completely free) and see if it is worth it to you.