Each project is unique and we at WhitBirch Studios treat each project that way. 3D Architectural renderings and illustrations are a passion of ours and we have a hard time stopping until the project is magical. Often our clients think we are done after we send them an image for review that has been texture mapped and has its lighting setup. To them, from what they have seen on the web, that is how a computer rendering is supposed to look. We think that was the easy part. Modeling, texture mapping, and lighting is very technical. With 20 years of experience this part of the work flow is easy. Once the model is built, texture mapped, and the lighting is setup, we start trying to make magic happen. We push, pull, and tweak until your image looks special. We think if it looks like a computer rendering then it isn't a good computer rendering.
At WhiteBirch Studios we charge a flat fee of $300.00 per day for creating your scene. Since our days can be 16hrs long we can't justify charging per hour. Most scenes can be brought to "the magic" point within 3-5 days. After your scene has been perfected (modeling, texture mapping, lighting) we charge an additional fee for the actual image processing. We place so much attention to detail your image might take 8hrs to process and this is on hardware that is state of the art. You cannot achieve the level of realism that we try to achieve without some serious horse power, which is quite costly. A typical scene rendered at 8.5" x 11" at 300 dpi would cost approximately $95.00. We basically charge 15.9 Cents per GHzh. Anything rendered out higher would of course be an additional fee, but we find most of our clients do not have needs above 8.5" x 11" at 300 dpi.
Having said all that, let us do the math. On a scene that has a "typical" level of complexity we can build it in approximately 3 day. Charging $300.00 per day for 3 days would be $900.00 with a processing fee of approximately $95.00. Most images you see in our gallery ran around $1,000.00.
