3D Rendering or 3d viewer, walk thru fee charges

[Designer100]

I was just wondering what to charge for doing a 3D viewer or walk thru in a custom home besides my regular design fee?

do I set a minimum design fee and then charge by the hour or what.

 

 

[robdyck]

This is where your gut instinct comes into play. The balancing act is to find the sweet spot between the $ you'd like, and the $ a client would be willing to pay. You want to charge as much as you can, while ensuring it's low enough that a client will agree to the added service and feel that its valuable.

What would you be willing to pay for such a service? A little lower than that is probably your answer. I charge extra for the 3D viewer access and inform my clients that most people opt in for that value added service. Plus, it allows them the flexibility to view it at their convenience. It keeps clients out of your office, and limits request for additional renderings and new camera views.

[robdyck]

56 minutes ago, Grumpka said:

If you use something like Twinmotion, the process for BIM is nearly effortless.  This keeps labor costs down and added value to the client up.  Twinmotion is free up until November. The other nice thing, you can export to a stand-alone executable BIM walkthru.  As to charging, I was always taught not to leave money on the table, lol.    However, look at what you are up against in this current market.  Rendering skills don't hold the value they once did.  There are so many online companies across the ocean and even in the states that charge next to nothing for these services.  I'm personally working towards the traditional business model.  Buy the best equipment that gives you the best results with the highest return.  Well, free equipment is nice (twinmotion), and the results are pretty impressive.  If you are trying to do all this in CA, I'd guess it will take more time, lower quality results, and the inability to charge appropriately for such.

I'd have to say that in my own experience its much quicker to get high quality results in Chief compared to the free version of Twinmotion. Obviously this is relative to one's experience with each type of software. Chief's PBR is my go to for client visualization. I setup and save cameras so the lighting can be quickly customized for each camera, and the views are live on their own layout so they auto update with each revision.

It's also worth noting that there's a difference (or at least should be) between medium-high quality images for our clients' visualization compared to very high quality renderings for marketing purposes.

I was a bit disappointed in my first quick trial with twinmotion and I fear I won't have the time to be able to learn it properly. I really only wanted it for 'real' grass anyhow!