How to Price an Archviz/3D project made in Unreal Engine 5 + Tips on How to Look for Clients

Link to download the Excel File: mdandrade.gumr...
Hey guys!
I've been asked this question many times so I thought, what better way to show it than making a video of how to cost things up for a typical project like the one on the last video, done in Unreal Engine 5.
Firstly, some thoughts and why you shouldn't compare yourself to other freelancers/studios, you're unique and I want you to know that.
Then we'll go through how to set the fixed costs, the variable costs, our services and finally make a mockup invoice for practising.
After the tutorial, I share some thoughts on negotiating prices with your clients and my advice on looking for clients.
Chapters
0:00 You're Enough
0:50 Fixed & Variable Costs
12:30 Price for Services and Upselling
15:10 The Estimate/Invoice
17:17 Checking Your Profit
23:10 Negotiating Your Price
26:00 Getting Clients
30:00 End
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[@3DTacademy]

Hi, Great video and good starting point to calculate prices but something i would change for sure is that formula in your expenses.
Yes, a year have 8760 hours but in order to pay for your expenses correctly and not compromise your profits on that, you can't use that number to get the hourly cost, the reason is you won't work 8760 hours a year, therefore you will never meet that amount. (and it will come from somewhere else).
You have to divide by your real working hours to cover everything, so to get that you first need to estimate how many days you will really work in the year. A fast way is to use weeks as a reference, there are 52 in a year but putting 2 to 4 week aside for vacations that leave 48 to 50 weeks, unless you are working 7 days a week with out any rest you need to count 5 to 6 days a week
so that will be 48 to 50 weeks by 5 to 6 days and multiply the result from that by how many hours you work in a day (not 24 for sure) maybe 8 to 10 hours.
An example would be 48 weeks (a month for vacation) * 5 days (rest all weekend) = 240 work days in a year * 8 hours = 1920 productive hours where you will be making money. i hope this makes sense.

[@mdandrade]

Thank you for sharing your feedback! It completely makes sense for sure! Especially for the utility bills side.
But for rent, software, hardware, etc, it makes more sense to me to calculate them globally because that’s what it costs me to maintain per hour whether I work or not. They’re always there and if I don’t work I keep losing money.
If you go down, to the point where you add the estimate for the amount of hours the project will take, that’s what my effective cost for this particular project would be, multiplying the time I spent on the project by how much it cost me per hour to maintain the business + the variable costs associated with that particular project.
I hope my reasoning makes sense.

[@AlphaPackProductions]

Thank you for your amazing words! I needed to hear this!

[@mdandrade]

I’m glad I could be of help in any way 🙂 🙌

[@Engram0913]

Amazing as always. thanks Miguel

[@mdandrade]

🙏

[@3djimmy]

Appreciate your kind words.

[@mdandrade]

🙏

[@sinthetyx3417]

another great informative video, thank you so much for this. future video idea that you could explore is about the hardware requirements to successfully do this would be great, so maybe a minimum req and then recommended req. Also you could give a breakdown of time spent rendering and what methods you use, path tracing vs lumen and how that impacts costs and time management of projects.

[@mdandrade]

Thank you for the feedback and ideas, will explore these on future videos ✅

[@CanisoGaming]

Hi miguel, im new to unreal professional work, been using it for personal projects so never really gave much thought to this topic so i gave bo clue how to price something like a house project (the result they want is just a video recorded virtual tour, no static renders etc). How should i approach pricing this? Do i just go with hourly? I can never pin point a price for this 😂

[@mdandrade]

Hi @CanisoGaming sure you can! 😆 think about how long it would take you to complete the project and wether they’re giving you the 3D assets or you need to model them from scratch. Modelling is where you’ll be spending most of your time and also, leave time reserved for client’s revisions too.
Then think of you as an employee of your company, how much your salary would be per hour for this project, what other costs are associated with your business during that time and add your profit margins.
In my experience, clients prefer a fixed price for the whole project (and I do too!) that way they can organise their budgets and you know where you’re going to be in terms of cash flow.
Always leave margin for negotiation, but never sacrifice your value, know when to walk away of a bad deal.
Also, always asked for 50% deposit and 50% after showing them the work and before delivery. Communication is key too in order to avoid too many revisions/reviews.
I hope it gives you an idea for this and future projects. With experience you’ll tweak things to fit to your own process and you’ll become better and better in costings and negotiation.

[@jeeteronsolana]

some question, you make the 3d houses in blender or sketchup? and what you suggest, and iff you take blender you have some suggestions from good tutorials or you planning to make also some tutorials? already thx allot for the great videos

[@mdandrade]

In blender, just because I’ll do the unwrapping there. I might receive files in sketchup format but I always prefer to bring them to Blender. I use sketchup mainly for technical drawings.
I’m planning this for the next tutorial but a great channel to watch is TheSketchupEssentials.

[@jeeteronsolana]

@@mdandradethx alot