How much $$ would you ask for a 15 min video done with DAZ & premiere?

elhectro

Hi, I might have some paid works coming, and I need some advice from the pros. It would be 10-15 min videos, not very complex animations in daz (mostly 10-15 seq sequences) which will be mixed with still images, also done in daz. Then I will arrange animations and still images in premier pro, add audio effects and music. How much would be a fair $$$ to ask?

Thanks a lot!

Gordig

How long would it take you to produce that? Multiply that by how much you value your time, then at least double it.

elhectro

Gordig said:

How long would it take you to produce that? Multiply that by how much you value your time, then at least double it.

Thanks for your comment. However, I'm looking more for a standard cost. I'm a music producer, and many colleagues like me, have a set price for producing a song for certain genres, no matter of how much time it would take, instead of making clients pay per hour like studios do..

DrunkMonkeyProductions

Without knowing all the specifics, this could be a few hundred to a 10's of thousands of dollars project.

Just going to throw out some ball park numbers based on my costs and experience here.

 

A 15 minute animation is 27,000 frames at 30fps. Depending on your equipment, DS version, assets used, render settings, etc. this could take a few minutes per sequence, or an hour or more per frame.

If we go for the high end, at 1hr per frame, that would be 27k hours(~3 years) of render time. My render servers pull right at 1KW/h, and at $0.25/KWh electric rate, that's $6,750.

We go low end, at 1 minute per frame, that's 450 hours(~19 days) of render time, and a cost of $112.50.

You can rent render servers, but the costs can get rather exorbitant rather quickly, to the point it's cheaper to just buy new/more hardware.

 

Work time is where it's going to get a bit dicey and pricey.

If you're just doing the animation and post work, and not required to do the scripting, storyboarding, music writing and recording, etc. you might be able to get the work time down to a few minutes to an hour per sequence, plus post work.

This is, if you can use predone animation sequences, and don't need to do everything manually or a lot of corrections.

If you do have to do everything, scripting, storyboarding, manual animations and/or lots of corrections, etc., you could easily be looking at several hundred hours of work.

You'd also need to figure the cost of running your workstation during the work process.

My workstations can pull between 150 watts and 750 watts per hour, depending on what i'm doing. With my electric rates, i'm looking at $0.03/hr to $0.19/hr.

 

If i was to be overly optimistic, i could probably do a job like this for $250.

That's figuring $112 in render cost, and roughly 5 hours of total work at $30/hr(my standard rate).

 

On the other end, if i have to put in a lot of work(scripting, storyboarding, music writing/recording, manual animation,etc.), and the render times are high per frame(or i need to rent servers to meet the deadline), as well as needing an attorney to review any contracts, NDA's or other legal documents from the client, i could easily see this ballooning to over $10k.

$6750 in render costs, $3k in work time(figure 100 hours at $30 an hour), $10 in workstation operations cost, $2k in attorney fees(what i usually pay to get a contract reviewed), plus $300 in payment processing fees(figuring a 3% fee) and we're looking at over $12k usd.

 

Then there's the matter of whether this is for a commercial project or not.

If it's going to be used commercially, you'd need to consider if you should charge more or less, depending on if the project has the potential to make more money for you, such as residuals, or bonuses based on sales or views.

 

At the end of the day, it's going to be upto you to determine what you think is a fair price for the project, just don't wind up charging too little and losing money on it.

Best of luck.

elhectro

DrunkMonkeyProductions said:

Without knowing all the specifics, this could be a few hundred to a 10's of thousands of dollars project.

Just going to throw out some ball park numbers based on my costs and experience here.

 

A 15 minute animation is 27,000 frames at 30fps. Depending on your equipment, DS version, assets used, render settings, etc. this could take a few minutes per sequence, or an hour or more per frame.

If we go for the high end, at 1hr per frame, that would be 27k hours(~3 years) of render time. My render servers pull right at 1KW/h, and at $0.25/KWh electric rate, that's $6,750.

We go low end, at 1 minute per frame, that's 450 hours(~19 days) of render time, and a cost of $112.50.

You can rent render servers, but the costs can get rather exorbitant rather quickly, to the point it's cheaper to just buy new/more hardware.

 

Work time is where it's going to get a bit dicey and pricey.

If you're just doing the animation and post work, and not required to do the scripting, storyboarding, music writing and recording, etc. you might be able to get the work time down to a few minutes to an hour per sequence, plus post work.

This is, if you can use predone animation sequences, and don't need to do everything manually or a lot of corrections.

If you do have to do everything, scripting, storyboarding, manual animations and/or lots of corrections, etc., you could easily be looking at several hundred hours of work.

You'd also need to figure the cost of running your workstation during the work process.

My workstations can pull between 150 watts and 750 watts per hour, depending on what i'm doing. With my electric rates, i'm looking at $0.03/hr to $0.19/hr.

 

If i was to be overly optimistic, i could probably do a job like this for $250.

That's figuring $112 in render cost, and roughly 5 hours of total work at $30/hr(my standard rate).

 

On the other end, if i have to put in a lot of work(scripting, storyboarding, music writing/recording, manual animation,etc.), and the render times are high per frame(or i need to rent servers to meet the deadline), as well as needing an attorney to review any contracts, NDA's or other legal documents from the client, i could easily see this ballooning to over $10k.

$6750 in render costs, $3k in work time(figure 100 hours at $30 an hour), $10 in workstation operations cost, $2k in attorney fees(what i usually pay to get a contract reviewed), plus $300 in payment processing fees(figuring a 3% fee) and we're looking at over $12k usd.

 

Then there's the matter of whether this is for a commercial project or not.

If it's going to be used commercially, you'd need to consider if you should charge more or less, depending on if the project has the potential to make more money for you, such as residuals, or bonuses based on sales or views.

 

At the end of the day, it's going to be upto you to determine what you think is a fair price for the project, just don't wind up charging too little and losing money on it.

Best of luck.

Thanks a lot for your comment, it was definitely what I needed to give me an idea on how much 3d animation costs plus all the extras.Now I can make a budget based on what you said.

Best!