Here or CGHero?
https://polycount.com/discussion/215937/what-would-this-cost-roughly#latest
At the time I didn't have enough saved up to proceed with the project to the standard I wanted. I now have just over $11000 saved up for this project and the two main options for finding artists to undertake the work seem to be cghero.com and the freelance section here.
I was just wondering if someone could walk me through the pros and cons of each site. Since this will cost a lot of money, I'm slightly worried about having to use different artists for different parts of the model (one artist for the head, another for clothing, another for hair.ect) since their work may not match up due to different styles/working in isolation.
Also, if anyone is interested, here's my draft I intend to potentially post in the freelance section at some point when the time comes. Any feedback on clarity would be much appreciated.
[PAID] Looking for a talented 3d character artist with experience creating likenesses.
I am a 3d hobbyist looking to commission a high-quality 3d model of Shelob from Middle-earth: Shadow of War in her human form, recreating her model from that game as closely as possible. I am looking to spend between $8000 - $12,000. High-quality eye, mouth, and hair (haircards) meshes are essential due to my intention to use the model for facial close-ups. I want to keep the price down if I can, but only if the quality is not sacrificed.
The priority here is quality and price not speed, so I am fine with a project taking longer to get the same quality of work at a lower price point.
Some parts of the project are more important than others, so here is a basic layout of the order in which tasks should be completed.
1.) Head sculpt + eye/teeth/tongue meshes + texturing.
2.) Hair grooming+conversion into hair cards.
3.) Creation of hands and legs/feet + creation of in-game outfit.
4.) Funds permitting, I have a couple of variations of the head mesh I would like to create. Apart from her human form (the main model), there are also variations where she has various spider features. 1st one is mostly human-looking, but the eyes are different, she has some 'spider eyes' on her forehead, and her teeth are very sharp/pointed.
The more spiderlike form has pointed fingers, spiderlike skin and three-toed feet.
The reference images should make it clear what I'm referring to.
If the price proves to be too high we can discuss how to make savings. Payment is half up front, half after project delivery. Please provide a quote of the expected price and screenshots/pictures so I can get an idea of how things are progressing.
On this project, getting a high-quality head mesh with a good topology ready for rigging along with high-quality textures and haircards is the priority. Budget permitting, the commission will involve the character's whole body including clothing, again with good topology ready for rigging. However, this is dependent on how much the initial head ends up costing.
Use the video below to get a good range of reference footage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhBn2afZn5Q
The facial diffuse and dump/normal maps should be of a 4k resolution and the head sculpt should match the original in-game model as closely as possible. As such, I am particularly interested in hearing from people with a proven track record of producing high-quality 3d likenesses of characters and/or famous individuals.
Furthermore, the hair of the characters should be reproduced as closely as possible using haircards. This is due to the fact that I want to potentially use the model across a range of programs, including for rendering in blender and potentially various game engines at a later date.
An example of the model quality I'm looking for can be seen in this Call of Duty model below.
https://www.deviantart.com/flvck0/art/Samantha-Maxis-Aether-COD-BO-Cold-War-869618899
Here is a close-up of the original in-game head with no hair and good lighting.
https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/018/630/885/large/tom-tran-3.jpg?1560124992
Full reference images with be provided to the selected candidate.
If you think this project might be for you, please get in touch via the messaging system here at Polycount. Please include a link to your artstation profile and/or other portfolios.
Replies
Make sure to use a contract, and do your homework about copyright, taxes, etc.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Freelance#Legal_.26_Taxes
Just to be clear, this is not an active commission, rather a means for me to see if I still need to accumulate more funds in order for the project to be viable at my desired quality.
https://polycount.com/discussion/225174/here-or-cghero/p1?new=1
Thanks in advance
I'm happy to pay %50 upfront. Do you think $12000 would be enough to cover this project or should I keep saving?
One caveat is I know some artists like to work at an hourly rate, whereas I was hoping to work based on a set price for each milestone. I'm just worried that if I go with an hourly rate, I'll go over budget.
With all that said, there are two ways to answer your question.
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1 • The first way is take your question very literally and answering it in a bullet point manner as it has been done in other replies. This is the "producer's way" of looking at things going through all the minute steps and establishing a budget from there.
Want to get a high end game character made from scratch ? Indeed you'll need a high skilled modeler/sculptor/texture artist/rigger/animator (basically a one-man team, or an actual team of at least 2 people), who can do the work at the high quality that you want, and with all the features your request.
Basically :
Rough model / highres model and/or sculpting of the head and armor / high end texturing of all elements / rigging of all elements / animations sequences.
At first glance this seems like a list that someone could outsource bit by bit. But the fact of the matter is ... it really isn't. You may believe that the sum of all these parts will give you that character you are thinking of, but it likely won't - because for such a character to "look good", you first and foremost need to establish what it will be used for and then strategize accordingly.
> Still renders ? No problemo, this can work, as any modeler can do some basic skeleton weighting and character posing ; and if you're lucky you'll get some face blends too. You basically end up with a model that you can use to make still images from.
> In-game animation (walk/run/attacks/idle) ? That gets trickier because no one already willing to spend weeks/months on a model like this will also have the time to animate if for you. It's just too much work to do from scratch for a single person (some generalists will claim they can, but expect janky results). Or maybe you plan to use some ready-made solution for animation (Mixamo) ? Or animate yourself ?
> You also mention closeup shots needing to look good. Do you mean stills, or lively animated performance ? If you mean performance : how do you plan to create/drive these facial expressions and animations ?
When you get to the bottom of it what may sound like just one character actually means a full character pipeline from start to finish. This takes a team of professionals months to get up and running from scratch ... and even that can fall short of expectations. All it takes if for eyes and mouth to not be given the attention they deserve, or for shadows to be turned off for whatever reason, or poor lighting ... and then the months spent sculpting highres faces and detailed clothing go straight to waste.
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2 • As for the second way to answer your question : it is to first ask *you* to describe what you would hypothetically plan to do with the character. That is to say not describing the model itself , but the use and context it will be used in. Again if it's for you to just have it as a "virtual toy" to make stills with then it's relatively straightforward (refer to the estimates earlier in this thread). But if you plan to do animations/performance with it then that's a whole other story, and the model is just a very tiny fraction of that.
Now here's the kicker : if you frame things that way it becomes clear that your best bet it to tackle things in the complete reverse order. That is to say defining what kind of resource you have at hand already or plan to use for animation, performance, and so on - and start from that, to identify the actual practical needs to plug content in. The answer will probably involve Mixamo (animation library) and Daz (CG human creation tool).
So you might want to start with that. Get yourself a Daz license (or some equivalent CG human creation software) and make (or hire someone to make) the closest body/face/hair possible with it. Chances are you will get 95% close to your intended goal in just a few days/few hundred $ (the license + some decent models to start from + the hourly fee). There are hundreds of enthousiasts out there using this kind of software for illustrations, visual novels, role playing characters, and so on.
Then start getting familiar with ways to get that CG human into your target contexts. Still renders, animations, mocaps, whatever. That's a few weeks.
And then, hire someone to make just the outfit that will replace the naked body, providing said body as a reference for the modeler to build around. This will basically bring down the cost to much less than half of the original "full stack" estimate, as some people can crank out an armor model in a matter of days by cutting some corners (auto retopo, premade materials, and so on) and skin weighting will be a one-click automatic transfer from the source body.
You end up with a fully custom character, ready to be plugged into existing systems that are guaranteed to be maintained for years either by the software provider or the existing community of users - all that at a low cost.
- - - - -
And, good luck
the model is mostly going to be used for still shots in various poses. However, the face will be used in animated stuff like talking. Also, I can't use blendshapes\shapekeys for it due to some of the engines I want to work with not them. I need the facial rig to be driven by bones.
I'm thinking maybe I should just focus on getting the head looking just as I want it, then worry about everything else (i.e. if I just had a rigged had, I could still weld it onto a Daz body for my own personal use).
I could just use DAZ for the clothing/body, but.. with the head/face/hair especially, I want it to be just right.
"I can't use blendshapes\shapekeys for it due to some of the engines I want to work with not them. I need the facial rig to be driven by bones."
If I may say : this too is a bit of a backwards way to look at it ressources-wise. Let's say that you get that model done, with all kinds of bones for facial control : what is your guarantee that these bones will allow you to create the AAA, movie-like quality facial expressions that you want ? Of course I am not saying that it isn't possible, that's not my point. What I am saying is that this is another potential blind spot, unless A/ you ask the person making the model for you to also do a full face rig with bones and provide you with a libary of expressions created by posing the bones (which is very unlikely to happen after months already spent working on the model itself) ; or B/ you are an expert animator yourself and you know *exactly* the kind of facial bone rigging you need that will allow you to create the results that you want.
I hope I am making sense with all this. My point overall point is that "it has to look as good as possible" doesn't mean much at all in a vacuum. You basically need to validate your full tech stack and art stack first and foremost - for instance by testing all that on that CoD model you linked earlier since it is representative of what you are after. Only once you manage to get that model to express and perform exactly the way you want, will you then know exactly how to direct your contractor to get the results you need.
I'll post back here with what I think is a good technical specification. As I said before, I'm only a hobbyist, so I really appreciate people taking the time to help me figure things out.
And if all that is foreign to you at this time ... then your best bet would be to not worry about your desired model at all for now. But rather hire a animator who is also a technical artist for about 20 hours of tutoring ; or enroll in a realtime virtual production class. Or, get into the various communities of enthusiasts who are researching that kind of things. If you keep your expectations low and are comfortable with the results being somewhat jank you can expect something like this :
Now the million dollar question is whether or not it is comparable to what you want to achieve.
Main engine I plan to use is blender. Since I'm mainly interested in still shots, I think a basic skeleton should do fine. I can commission a more advanced facial rig if have need of it in the future. I think my main priority will be to get the head looking great. As long as the topology is good and I can commission a more sophisticated rig in the future if I need to, that will be fine.
I'll try and learn some facial animation techniques for blender as well.
I know these responses are very rambly and contridictary, so thank you for bearing with me. It seems I'm still working out what exactly I want/need out of the commission.
One last question, this cinematic head is of a very high quality. How much do you reckon it would cost with creating the head, eyes, teeth, lashes and so on as well as texturing them. Both with just the head on its own and the hair seen in other pictures.
https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/018/630/885/large/tom-tran-3.jpg?1560124992
Even if I only end up commissioning the head with a basic facial rig for still shots, that's still a good outcome.
So to sum up, how much could I expect to pay for the head on it's own?
I think you should carefully evaluate the source instead of randomly asking for estimates. Whomever is providing the quote needs to demonstrate via their portfolio that they can already hit that quality bar. Otherwise the estimate is bound to be wildly inaccurate.
Look at portfolios (see the Artists Looking for Work subforum, and Artstation) then contact viable artists and ask for quotes. Don't be tentative, just be straightforward and to the point.
Estimates are speculative by their nature; experienced freelance artists are used to negotiation and speculation, it's part of the job.
Wait, Blender Cycles and Eevee? Blender supports its shapekeys very well; it lets you to hook them into armatures and do wonderful things with drivers too. Time permitting it goes well beyond that, with a lovely tension map add-on and nice deformation modifiers that let you do fun things like eyelids sliding to accommodate realistically-shaped eyeballs movement if you're inclined to!
Limiting the rig to bones for the expected level of quality is to cause a lot of unnecessary pain to the artist, particularly if you're using Blender as main engine since you're scrapping the possibility of corrective shapekeys for limbs and everything. Wouldn't it be better to make the it the best model for your target engine and retro compatible with secondary ones that might not support morph target/blendshapes/shapekeys by shaving off features and adding super basic facial rigging? This way you ensure the model looks good where it matters with a reasonable amount of effort.