Articles #2 | 3D animation price? - A few words about how we set the price of our 3D industrial animations

3D animation is well-known and being used for over 20 years now technique of presentation. It is widely used in advertising business, entertaiment and in the special effects. As viewers and cosuments we are used to its presence and this is what we know very well. However, 3D animation used as product presentation video in the technological and industrial business is relatively new technique. That causes doubts: how much is preparing professional 3D animation? What does the price come from? What does the price consist of? What kind of price we should consider as a normal one and which should indicate us there is something wrong with the company offering the service?

To answer these questions, firstly we have to wonder what consist of process of making 3D animation. In the 3D industrial animations we specialize in, we distinguish 5 main elements:

Each of these elements is a separate process and demands competences from different areas. During project consultation we discuss all the technical details of the project and animation’s scenario. The main goal of our projects is to provide animation performing function expected by our customers. If it is an animation basing on emotions and fast information transfer (eg. for trade fairs) then its assumptions are different than for instructional video.

In our projects most often we use 3D CAD models provided by the customers but very commonly they have to be supplemented by extra 3D models, so the next part of preparing 3D animation is modeling. In this stage we simply sculp all the objects appearing in the animation.

Animation stage covers setting in motion all objects of the project. At this stage we do also all the physical simulations of rigid/soft bodies, fluid, air and deformations of animated objects.

Next step is bring life to the animation by setting real-world textures, materials and proper lighting. This stage is necessary for obtaining photorealistic results.

The last stage is post-production. That includes adding sound effects, voiceover, color correction, motion graphics, subtitles and all final touches giving the project its final shape.

Next step is bring life to the animation by setting real-world textures, materials and proper lighting. This stage is necessary for obtaining photorealistic results.

To sum it up, the work inserted into each of steps described above needs to be reflected in the price of the project. So what we need to answer now is: what exactly does the 3D animation price should be, considering all stages of 3D animation preparation process?

Among companies from creative industry, especially in the 3D animation business we can encounter two main ways of setting the prices fo 3D animation:

The first approach is being used by companies willing to make the pricing stage easier and to give easily rough information about price for the project. Very commonly we can see pricing given in the formula like $100 per 1 second of animation

However, that kind of approach is slightly unfair – it overestimates the price for easy but long projects. At the same time the price may be to low when the project is very complex but short.

In Cadilight we perform individual approach for each project and setting the price basing on detailed guidelines. For main factors we take into consideration while quoting the project we can list: