Let's talk money. What are the best ways of making BIG money in 3D?
polycounter lvl 6
Hey there!
I'm starting this thread for two reasons, one is completely personal curiosity, the other is brainstorming.
So I've been doing 3D for a lot of time, around 10 years now. I've always worked by freelancing, never did I get a real job (I mean the one where you have to be at the office at X am and leave at Y pm). Now I'm wondering what would the specific areas in the 3D industry be that bring in the big money. Now I'm not talking about the biggest game companies and other related stuff like this, they obviously earn the big bucks. I'm more wondering of what is the area someone can start a business by himself and get it into making really big money.
The problem I'm facing is that it seems impossible to me to start by yourself on one area of the 3D industry and build that into making really good money. I'm looking at different kinds of smaller businesses in the 3D industry and I honestly don't think they make as much as I'd be dreaming of making with a business like that.
To be more precise, I don't mean earning just a few thousands dollars a month, I can make $8,000/month by myself, but that's not the big money I'm talking about. I'm talking about the kind of money that will turn you into a millionaire, I'm talking at least $30,000 - $50,000/month in profits.
From where I'm standing, it seems pretty impossible to build a business in the 3D industry that makes that much and is also very sustainable, not just a temporary hit.
- Selling assets on marketplaces won't get you that kind of money, I'm sure. I'm selling some on different marketplaces and other than a few hundred dollars a month there's not much else. Perhaps just the best in the business get to earn money like I mentioned (i.e. companies like Quixel maybe, but you need serious capital to start something like that)
- Doing freelance work... well that's just limited by how much you can work. I tried expanding and building a proper business with employees on this aspect of my income sources, but it's definitely difficult because I don't do just one type of jobs, so it becomes so much harder to employ someone who'd turn out to be profitable. What I mean by this: I earn money doing freelance, but I'm doing so many different things, that I cannot just employ a single person to help me with that part. I freelance doing video game art, game programming, film VFX, motion graphics, medical animations, archivz, and pretty much anything that could be done with 3D. I can only employ a person that does ONLY one of these things well, and that won't turn out to be profitable, because taking the money I make from only one of those wouldn't be enough to pay the needed salary and also make profit.
And finding someone who'd be able to do all those things, well he'd just ask for a huge salary... which he should if he has all those skills. And that won't be profitable either.
- Getting an actual job, that's also a no. You can only earn as much as your boss is willing to give you (not even taking in account the fact that having a job and being told what to work on is shit), and even a 6 figure salary wouldn't be the type of money I'm referring to.
So the only thing I see as doable, is making enough money in this industry that you can then invest into something else that'll be able to produce the huge amounts of money I'm talking about. As in, save up like $50,000 every year and invest these money into stocks, or start any other unrelated business and so on.
What are your thoughts on this, guys? I'm especially asking those who'd thought about getting rich off of this industry. What's your take on the whole possibility of doing it within the 3D industry alone?
I'm really interested in finding out how much do companies such as Quixel and perhaps Poliigon make with their stores, cause that's the most affordable type of business I think one could make in this industry.
I'm starting this thread for two reasons, one is completely personal curiosity, the other is brainstorming.
So I've been doing 3D for a lot of time, around 10 years now. I've always worked by freelancing, never did I get a real job (I mean the one where you have to be at the office at X am and leave at Y pm). Now I'm wondering what would the specific areas in the 3D industry be that bring in the big money. Now I'm not talking about the biggest game companies and other related stuff like this, they obviously earn the big bucks. I'm more wondering of what is the area someone can start a business by himself and get it into making really big money.
The problem I'm facing is that it seems impossible to me to start by yourself on one area of the 3D industry and build that into making really good money. I'm looking at different kinds of smaller businesses in the 3D industry and I honestly don't think they make as much as I'd be dreaming of making with a business like that.
To be more precise, I don't mean earning just a few thousands dollars a month, I can make $8,000/month by myself, but that's not the big money I'm talking about. I'm talking about the kind of money that will turn you into a millionaire, I'm talking at least $30,000 - $50,000/month in profits.
From where I'm standing, it seems pretty impossible to build a business in the 3D industry that makes that much and is also very sustainable, not just a temporary hit.
- Selling assets on marketplaces won't get you that kind of money, I'm sure. I'm selling some on different marketplaces and other than a few hundred dollars a month there's not much else. Perhaps just the best in the business get to earn money like I mentioned (i.e. companies like Quixel maybe, but you need serious capital to start something like that)
- Doing freelance work... well that's just limited by how much you can work. I tried expanding and building a proper business with employees on this aspect of my income sources, but it's definitely difficult because I don't do just one type of jobs, so it becomes so much harder to employ someone who'd turn out to be profitable. What I mean by this: I earn money doing freelance, but I'm doing so many different things, that I cannot just employ a single person to help me with that part. I freelance doing video game art, game programming, film VFX, motion graphics, medical animations, archivz, and pretty much anything that could be done with 3D. I can only employ a person that does ONLY one of these things well, and that won't turn out to be profitable, because taking the money I make from only one of those wouldn't be enough to pay the needed salary and also make profit.
And finding someone who'd be able to do all those things, well he'd just ask for a huge salary... which he should if he has all those skills. And that won't be profitable either.
- Getting an actual job, that's also a no. You can only earn as much as your boss is willing to give you (not even taking in account the fact that having a job and being told what to work on is shit), and even a 6 figure salary wouldn't be the type of money I'm referring to.
So the only thing I see as doable, is making enough money in this industry that you can then invest into something else that'll be able to produce the huge amounts of money I'm talking about. As in, save up like $50,000 every year and invest these money into stocks, or start any other unrelated business and so on.
What are your thoughts on this, guys? I'm especially asking those who'd thought about getting rich off of this industry. What's your take on the whole possibility of doing it within the 3D industry alone?
I'm really interested in finding out how much do companies such as Quixel and perhaps Poliigon make with their stores, cause that's the most affordable type of business I think one could make in this industry.
Replies
Oh I know Beeple very well, but that's not really what I'd consider to be a business. That's just a famous person selling his stuff. What he's selling is irrelevant, it's just a pretext. People buy it because a famous person made it.
It's the same thing as if Eminem were to sell some shit of his, it would go for tens of thousand or even millions just because it's Eminem's.
Let's get away from the whole NFT movement. That's not a business, that's just digital artists with big following making a use of their popularity and selling artwork any artist could've made, for thousands of dollars, just because they're popular. Not a business in my opinion, but good for them.
I'm thinking more in terms of building a very profitable outsourcing studio that gets hired on the biggest of the projects and you're able to bank in tens of thousands of dollars because of that.
Or own a popular marketplace which in return creates a perfectly, high, passive income for you.
Nope, I've been freelancing all my life, as I said. I always hated and refused having usual jobs. I run a very small digital production company (I've got 4 employees) and am looking into how to expand this little business into something a lot bigger.
I've been getting job offers from companies such as Ubisoft, Gameloft, EA ever since I was 15 (am 22 now) - but they're just trying to hire me, which I end up refusing all the time.
I'd love for this companies that want to hire me, to want me as an outsourcing company, not just a simple employee, because that's not what I'm after.
I'm getting job offers from many decent and big companies, but again, I will never want to be an employee. Especially not in my country where people get paid $1,000/month at most...
I think I need to produce a bigger project of my own that will serve as a statement that, indeed, I'd be up to the task of taking care of very big projects.
you can get rich from business but you have to work and you have to be smart and you have to have a certain amount of luck on your side. In other words, still plenty of risk of failure.
if you want easy money it's pretty obvious where to go: porn. It's pretty hard not to make more money there than you are probably making anywhere else.
That puts you up against people like Airborn - who are very good
The biggest problem is going to be persuading people who are experienced and talented enough to compete on quality to come and work for you.
Anyone good/experienced enough already has a job - probably a mortgage and a family as well. As such they're going to be very interested in the pedigree of the person managing the studio, the state of studio finances and what work is lined up for at least the next 12-18 months.
No offence intended here but at 22 with a few years freelancing under your belt you wouldn't pass that test for me - even if you have 10 million in the bank and a promise of two years working on COD content.
if you had 10 years experience as a exec producer or studio manager then I'd pay attention - without that I'd say thanks but no thanks.
It feels to me a bit like when people say they're going to go Indie when they finish at university - I feel bad for pissing on their chips but the fact is the only people who stand half a chance of indie success (blind luck excluded) are people who've been shipping games for someone else for 10 years.
...
Go aim for decent money income for normal decent life.
The BIGGest money in 3d would come from there where is the hardest to master craft. That would be hyper realistic cinematic and game ready characters.
So if you can make it with your quality,ability and speed to studios like BLUR , then you can talk the biggest money in the industry.
You don't get rich by working for other people
- The 'lucky' guy some people might characterize, who did something right and skyrocketed. Usually is an experienced person in the field who saw an opportunity. An example of that would be Riot games, over dota2 and other similar type games.
- Another type is by making the right decisions one after the other, being quite elusive and squeezing the cow in its best years. When the cow's production starts droping, they immediately search for another cow. Usually being a second or third generation in the family working in this field, or just a very smart individual (or a shark)
- Or, they break into millions by preserverence in the long run. That could be translated like, create cheap (for you) games that hit the trends and pass the quality bar. Get money to spend on bigger projects and add more love and details into them,and employ more people until you grow into a AAA studio.
- Or as @Alex_J said, tits sell. Wanna create the next leisure suit larry open world MMO rpg / tinder without cencorship in VR? I smell buckets of money. (Hey everybody, do not steal my idea)
If you believe that something is missing from the market and it would be really cool if someone made it, i'd say that should be your purpose to chase. Kickstarters, and funding organizations make it much easier to acomplish such tasks nowadays.This should be the biggest takeaway from this thread.
I too am getting paid just $70/day of work from my full-time job - and I'm getting paid this money for being both a Technical Artist & Environment Artist - and those paying me are from a much more advanced country when it comes to economy. The rest of the money I make is thanks to me putting up a lot of work on the side and a lot of sleepless nights.
I would love to be able to pay people $30/hour, but that's not going to happen any time soon. I can only afford to pay people based on how much profit they're making me, and I'm making money by taking a lot of different kinds of projects. In one month I can take projects that have to do with 3D Animations, then some projects that has to do with game development, then some other projects that require medical animations, then some other projects that require After Effects and compositing skills.
And while most people I can afford to hire can only do a certain type of projects, well then I'm going to pay them based on how much money I make off of that certain type of project, not based on how much money I make myself.
@Joao Sapiro
Please see my comment above so you can get a better idea of what's behind the curtains. I can only afford to pay people based on how much money they bring me, as it's logical. Taking in consideration that I'm working on 4 different kind of projects at a time, and the person that's working for me can only deal with one type of projects, well he's going to get paid based on how much money I make from that single type of project.
My profits don't all come from the same line of work. I basically work as a technical artist, environment artist, 3D animator, programmer, 2D artist, After Effects specialist, and so many much more, in order to be able to earn those 8K USD I was talking about.
Unless the guy that works for me is also able to do all those things and basically help me out on ALL the projects I work on, in which case I wouldn't have a problem paying him 3K - 4K a month because he's basically earning me another 4K in profits, then it'd be stupid of me to give him a much higher salary.
As I said above, $60/day in my country is really good money. Most people here work for $20/day, so I'm basically offering 3 times the average salary around here. Not to mention that anyone who's working for me doesn't even have to work 8 hours a day, and he's doing it from his home. He only has daily tasks, and once he finishes the daily tasks he's free to do whatever he wants. I don't care if he's finished his work for the day in just 2 hours, I'm still paying him full.
So there again, unless he's able to do all those things I mentioned above, there is no way I can afford to pay the man more. If he's only able to do 3D animations for me, then I'm going to pay him just 60% of the money I make off of those types of projects. I charge $100/day for the 3D animations projects, and giving 60% of those to the guy who's working on those. I don't know about you, but to me this seems like a good business for both people. The other guy gets more than I do from the projects I worked on getting for both of us. It's me who's making sure we get new projects, it's me who's constantly making sure the clients are getting informed and have a clear understanding of what it's going to happen, it's me who's in video calls scheduling stuff with clients, all while also working a full-time job. And for that I don't think it's bad to want 40% of that money for myself.
Well, while I see your logic behind telling me to work that full-time rather the my actual full-time, it is not that easy. The extra money I'm making on top of the full-time salary I make isn't something guaranteed. So for instance one month I could be making $4,000 from my side jobs, while other months there's no client reaching out to me, so basically $0 coming from all those side stuff.
For that I need to keep the full-time job as a warranty that I'll have at least X money at the end of the month.
One other reason is the fact that I also enjoy working in the video game industry and making games. So I also want to do game development and be part of making video games.
There's another really important reason, and that is because I'm getting bored extremely easy. I need to do all sorts of projects in order to keep myself as stimulated as I'd like, and not get bored of the mundanity. I like being able to work on projects that all stimulate certain parts of my brain.
I need to do game development, but then some months I want do work on 3D animations or Film. Then some other months I'd want to write programs and algorithms or game mechanics. Then some other months I want to just to simple 3D artwork rendering. But then some other times I'd want to do who knows what.
So, in short, I hate having to do only one type of projects because that becomes boring way too easily. I need to keep my mind stimulated in various ways, other wise it simply becomes irrelevant. For the same reason I like taking breaks from doing this kinds of work and for short periods of time I'd only work as a musician, making music. Or do portrait photography to relax myself and to have more ways of expressing my creativity, which is what I'm craving for at all times.
Then some other times I'd just want to create interesting ways of encoding data into other elements, so basically just doing steganography to relax myself.
There's no one single thing I'd do for the rest of my life, become no matter how much I love that one thing, it'll get me bored of it sooner or later. So therefore I need to keep my mind busy with all these stuff, and that also shows in the stuff I'm doing professionally.
Because all the things I enjoy doing, I have the tendency of driving that into some sort of business, because I enjoy doing things professionally and trying to be the best in anything I enjoy doing.
My pleasure in life comes from getting interesting in a domain, becoming really good at it, getting to a point where I make enough on my own that I afford to pay other people to do those jobs and basically automate that business in order for it to not need my assistance at all anymore, and them jump to another thing that caught my interest and repeat what I've done.
You gotta understand that geography plays a big role in this. $50 in my country buys you groceries for 1-2 weeks, and no employer will ever give you that kind of money here for an hour of work. If you earn that kind of money in a day (8 hours of work) trust me when I'm saying that you're basically above most people. People in my country are working, on average, for $2 - $4 per hour. $4/hour is what the average Romanian is getting paid. And people with +10-15 years of experience are the ones that get to have a salary of around $2,500 - $3,000/month, and even in those conditions, such salaries are like unicorns.
I'm not making anyone apply to my jobs if they don't feel like the pay is right for them. Of course people from western countries won't be able to even afford to eat with the kind of money I'm offering, but going more towards the Eastern Europe, you'll see that the amount of money I'm paying is actually great.
Thanks for actually trying to have a conversation not based on your own personal life experiences and the economy of your own country, first of all.
I don't have a problem with working on the same thing for months of even years, I understand that great products require a lot of time and effort in order to be perfected and released.
As long as I can, after those 8 hours, work on whatever I want in order to keep my creativity and need for brain stimuli.
But I'm 22, and even though I've been working on Programming and 3D Art since I was 9 years old, I still can't afford to charge a client $40 - $50/hour because my actual professional experience has started around the age of 17 or so.
So I basically need to take on a lot of different projects, and basically create myself a wage of $50/hour, by working on 5 projects that pay $10/hour (it's just an example).
I'm aware that in a few years, after I've worked on a coupe of released titles and gained a lot more experience, I'll be able to also charge my clients $40 - $50/hour. But that is years away, so I'm taking things into my own hands and making myself that kind of money the way I can.
Well, that also comes from my high standards of living. I don't just want to be able to live extremely well, but I want to be able to do whatever I want, when I want to, for however long I want to. Just like everyone else in this world, I'd assume. A life of luxury, I might say.
Of course I use a big part of my income to make other investments, such as stocks, real estate, crypto, and so on. Whatever assets I can get my hands on that make me money, are very much welcomed.
I put aside a lot of money in order to be able to invest in some ideas I have. The problem is I want to do and create a lot of stuff in the world, and all of those require serious capital, hence another primary reason I want to make the big bucks.
I do live very well with my current income, and taking in account that I'm living in a country where the average salary is something like $700/month, you can guess that I'm living more than just decent. I could live the rest of my life very comfortably with the kind of income I'm making right now, but I'm always dreaming of doing bigger and better things with my skills.
Anyway, I always assumed the people running the businesses must be doing very well given the rise in outsourcing so it's interesting to hear different opinions from different studios.
That said, despite us all working in an "Artisans Field" I think we have all thought about the potential financial ceiling on out careers. Particularly those with families or those living around expensive hubs like SF, London, Vancouver... We all work for companies that are paying double to the developer sitting next to use and It's not unreasonable to think about different long term salary goals.
If you want a larger, stable, paycheck in the games industry
- work towards a lead position and move between companies after shipping successful titles. Become the person companies hire when they want to step up for their biggest project ever.
- Get more technical, in both graphics programming and tools development. Take these up the chain of AAA studios until you become indispensable at a blockbuster company.
As the outlier big money, I don't think that's something you can plan towards. Start a studio, ship profitable titles, seek investment, court companies to buy you out and make an exit.Well I could talk about the romanian mentality as well, by picking on your comment. Please tell me where have I once asked in here to get the magic formula to success? I was only curious whether or not there's business models in the 3D industry that makes that kind of money, because I've been doing a bunch of online research and even those "greats" that you're talking about aren't making the kind of money I was referring to. So no, first of all wanting to become one of the greats isn't sufficient.
Secondly, I'm a business man before I'm anything else. I'm in here to do great business with the skills I posses, not just make great art. Doing what you love without making the kind of money you dream of is just as irrelevant as making big bucks but not enjoying what you're doing.
I'm also confused on how can pick on my, apparently, non-existing desire to improve my craft, when taking a look at both of our portfolios you can clearly see that one of us is miles ahead of the other.
But you know... you just keep and go ahead and assume you understand the contexts of everything by simply reading my name and seeing it's romanian. I see that's working well for you.
The person commenting on nationality as a stereotype was a foul in this conversation.
But you oversell yourself so much it starts getting annoying. It is good to believe in yourself, but set realistic goals and boundaries. One can say you suffer from narcissism, the way you speak.
For me it is common sense that we can discuss up to a degree in this forum, stuff that would increase your income, but what were you expecting exactly from this forum post? That you gather other like-minded people and laugh at the 2 cups of rice you give as salary to people you employ? That we're all going to come up with 'hey, sell food 3d models, they sell for SOOO high price, you'll be a millionaire'? Do you have any actual idea how business models work? Or do you just dream of spending 10k on crypto or a stock, like a disinfection gel company and it skyrockets?
Eventually by looking at your portfolio, even if you had exceptional business selling skills and connections, or even if we told you that hey, just make X and Y models and you can be a millionaire, with the current quality your portfolio has, I doubt you would achieve that. Yes you can do much better. Just work hard, suck it up, Rome was not built in a day.
Sadly though, money can't fix an obsessive disorder, and I don't think even if our young friend achieves their goal they will solve the true problem. Most likely they create problems for other people along the way as well.
Just look at the richest man on the planet. He is sending dick pics to women and racing other billionaires to space like he still has the ego of a ten year old. It's sad. Imagine having all the money in the world, but you are still like a little boy. Imagine being surrounded by nothing but sycophant's all the time, but you are just smart enough to know it. How lonely.
Anyway, yeah you shouldn't talk shit, it's bad business and you've said you are a business man didn't you?
If it was I'd be very much more successful than I am
So you didn't get the point that I was looking to receive from this discussion, but then you went ahead and made an assumption on what you thought I wanted to get out of this topic? How does that even work?
The only thing I wanted to get out of this topic was some info on some people/businesses that had reached that level that I was talking about, because I've been searching some time ago for some self-made people that had made it in this type of industry and I couldn't find many people, or even one for that matter.
The reason I wanted to see who that person/business is, is because I just wanted to see what kind of work volume and quality gets him/them that kind of financial revenue, and to better understand what is the level that one would need to reach in order to have realistic aspirations to such success.
Never once have I asked anyone in here to pin-point me to the correct formula, never have I said anything that I'm looking to get THE ANSWERS to success, all I've asked from the very beginning is if there's people who've made it like that in this industry. (Not counting the people selling NFTs).
Yet, there's still people who're missing the point of this discussion and wrongfully comment, like you've done right now.
And, yet again, please understand that "the 2 cups of rice you give as salary to people you employ", as you've put it, is kind of a lot of money in my country. If you're from a much more advanced country as far as economy goes, and you're used to much higher salaries, then good for you, but that doesn't give you any right to comment on what I'm offering - given that what I'm offering is 3 times the average salary most people earn here in my country.
If I were living in USA/Germany/France/UK and I would've still offered $60/day then I would've been the asshole surely, but please to explain to me how I'm the bad guy when I'm offering $60/day in a country where even the doctors work for $80/day, and the average worker works for $20/day?
In 2020 I've been working the whole year in a stock agency getting paid $27/day. That was a job in which I would be doing 3D Art, 3D Animation, programming video games in unity, doing After Effects composite over live footage, and a lot more. And that was a business that was much bigger than I am and had much more employees than I do. Ubisoft or EA, here in my country, are paying their employees about $35 - $50/day, and it's fucking Ubisoft/Electronic Arts... not some indie studio.
Here I am offering higher salaries than the biggest game studios are offering here in my country, and I'm offering those higher salaries for much easier jobs/tasks and a lot less working hours, and somehow I'm still the bad guy.
Well ... I'll be blunt and state that this alone shows that you are missing the point. No one in the whole history of craftsmanship (digital or otherwise) ever got filthy rich because of the "level they reached" or the "volume and quality" of their output - from stone carvers, to painters, to watch makers, to movie prop artists, to CG enthusiasts. That's just not how these things work.
Being an excellent crafstman gets one stable contracts, and/or a stable salary.That's it. Crafstmanship "level" doesn't scale up infinitely, hence the salary or fees don't scale infinitely either. And of course output volume is limited by time, so in order to increase it the only way is to scale up, like Neox mentioned it multiple times. And from there, prices can get higher because studios are very willing to pay more when they know that they are dealing with a boutique that not only delivers flawless quality, but also delivers it consistently and reliably.
But even that won't make the CEO of said boutique "filthy rich" - it will simply allow for a comfortable standard of living. I think.
The "filthy rich" bracket is another thing altogether, completely unrelated to craftsmanship. Investors, CEOs or big film/gaming companies, and so on.
Now all that said there are indeed artists who strike gold on their own - but that's pretty much never because of the "level they reached". It's either because they put together a transformative idea that they executed well on (innovation) ; or they created an IP so catchy that the publishing rights and/or royalties led to big money (One Punch Man, Attack On Titan). And ironically, these manga artists are far from "top craftsmen" in their field but rather they created stories and IPs that just work well regardless of how polished the art is. The CG/game art equivalent of that would be Minecraft and Roblox.
Aaaanyways. Romanians, man.
So, you are 22.
You have been doing 3d for 10 years now.
And you have been getting offers from Ubisoft since you were 15.
-
So... to recap. you started doing 3d when you were 12.
3 years later you were getting job offers from Ubisoft and you make 8k a month.
Cool.
Oh come on now. You didn't? Joke's on you! 😜