Choosing the Right 3D Studio to Work On Your 3D Project
If you have an idea of what 3D visualization can do for your business, the next question that pops into your mind would be, “Is it a good move to hire 3D artists for your business?”
“Or is it a lot better to just outsource my 3D rendering project to a 3D studio?”
Regardless of which option you choose, there are advantages and disadvantages. Today, we’ll help you focus on the direct approach you should take when simplifying your choices in the 3D visualization studio
market.
Working with In-House 3D Artists
One of the major benefits of hiring 3D artists to be part of your company is that they will be able to work in-house. As a result, you can easily monitor their performance and make sure that they’re focused on working on your projects.
The problem is, this process has proven itself to be more expensive. After all, you have to cover overhead costs, which include:
- Employee benefits
- Computers, and
- 3D rendering software, office equipment, and more
On the other hand, if your company doesn’t conduct 3D projects regularly and only require the services of a 3D rendering company whenever the need arises, then it’s ideal to outsource 3D rendering instead.
This is often the case with companies in the engineering, manufacturing, and real estate industry. Looking for a 3D rendering studio to perform their 3D projects, which only occur during certain occasions, is more cost-effective than hiring in-house 3D artists.
By this time, you’re beginning to discover the advantages to outsourcing your 3D rendering and visualization needs. So, recognizing what to look for in a 3D visualization studio will be the foundation to your project’s success.
How to Look for the Right 3D Studio:
The best approach to choosing the best 3D visualization studio for your business needs.
While 3D visualization is still a specialized field, a lot of new studios have emerged in the past decade. In fact, you can see tons of studios offering 3D visualization services in almost every part of the world. The question is: how can you find the right one to work with?
1. Expand your search
When looking for the right studio to work with, it’s highly recommended to search globally. Don’t just focus on looking for local-based artists or studios. You’ll limit your options. As a result, you’ll likely end up receiving varied quality and results.
And don’t pass up this great opportunity to profit on diversity and creativity.
Don’t hesitate to negotiate with 3D architectural visualization studios from other countries. As long as you can properly communicate in English, there shouldn’t be any problem communicating with foreign studios. Doing so not only increases the chances of receiving high-quality 3D designs, but it will also help you come across a rate that’s within your current budget.
2. Settle with teams rather than individual freelancers
Nowadays, it’s fairly common to come across freelance 3D artists who offer 3D rendering services to small and medium businesses. Although their services are more affordable most of the time, you can expect several risks compared to working with 3D studios.
In some cases, they may suddenly disappear while working on your project—and so will your money and time.
This only means receiving an unfinished project, which could be quite disastrous for your business. Moreover, most of the freelance 3D artists are newbies who aim to obtain experience and grow their portfolio by offering 3D services at very cheap rates.
On the other hand, 3D teams are a lot more experienced. Also, they’re willing to work with you on a long-term basis.
Working with freelance 3D artists runs the risk of your project being abandoned halfway. Since they are self-motivated and work without any supervision, there might be instances where they stop working simply because they don’t have the motivation to proceed.
Stronger Rendering Power: Lastly, teams in a 3D architectural rendering studio have access to stronger rendering power. This allows them to render large files in just a few hours compared to a freelancer who will often take a few days to complete the same type of work. Render farms are quite expensive and are only available in successful 3D studios.
For example, we at Faraday3D invested around $50,000 for a local render farm, something which an individual freelancer won’t be able to afford. Since 3D studios have access to larger resources and more powerful systems, not to mention they have a wider variety of software licenses and skilled artists, they will be able to provide you with more possibilities for your 3D project.
3. Refer to customer testimonials and studio portfolio
We can’t stress enough how important it is for every studio to have its own portfolio and customer testimonials. To have an even stronger impact, it’s ideal to have an online portfolio on their own domain and not from some free website.
Customer testimonials are equally important as getting high-quality work. By reading several customer testimonials, you will be able to determine whether or not an architectural visualization company’s clients were satisfied with their work. You can also get an idea of the studio’s work ethics, thereby allowing you to narrow down your choices.
Not Always the Best Indicator: The problem with customer reviews and online portfolios is that they can be easily fabricated. You can find various 3D rendering companies that claim the works of others as their own and even create fake client accounts to offer seemingly perfect and positive reviews.
To work around this issue and confirm whether or not the work is theirs, you can do a Google search of their works. If you find several instances of that work in various websites and sources, then it’s most likely that they claimed it and pass it as their own. Here we must exclude popular gallery websites where studios showcase their portfolios like Behance, ArtStation, and etc…
Don’t Shy Away from Asking—Confirm! For fake reviews, you can ask for the contact details of the said client from the 3D studio and talk to them. By doing so, you can prove if they were really satisfied with the services they receive, or if they created that review at all. You can also ask them a few questions to help you further confirm the studio’s reputability.
A final note on portfolios: there are many professional 3D architectural rendering firms that only show a small portion of their portfolios to the public. However, some of them will explain it on their website and will only send you proofs upon request.
4. Smaller teams are often a viable choice
Even when it comes to working with a 3D rendering company, size does matter. Unfortunately, a lot of people are tied to the notion that the more people are working on a certain project, the better the output will be. This is not often the case.
When it comes to 3D rendering, smaller 3D teams provide better outputs and work a lot faster compared to studios with dozens of people working on a project. Also, smaller teams don’t waste too much time on needless bureaucracies compared to larger studios. As a result, they can spend more time working on your projects and catering to your needs since they only serve a few clients at a time.
Product and Customer-Driven: You’ll notice that smaller 3D studios tend to offer excellent customer support, which often goes unmatched even by larger ones.
As such, we can focus on your project and perfectly manage small to medium ones. When it comes to large-scale projects, we often work with other excellent studios around the world. Our small-sized team allows us to create partnerships more easily. It also allows us to be more flexible since we don’t have a lot of stuff to deal with compared to most large-scale 3d architectural visualization companies.
We, at Faraday 3D, for example, having only 2 board members, successfully finished a 3D visualization project with 10 freelance 3D artists onboard.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are tons of perks you can enjoy when you work with a 3D studio, especially an established one. However, always keep in mind that not every rendering company is the same; hence if you don’t do enough research, you may not be able to receive a quality output. As an architectural visualization company, we at Faraday 3D always strive to give you the best 3D rendering service there is.
Check out these articles too:
The Best Architectural Rendering Companies You Can Find Online
What should the best interior 3d rendering look like?
3D Architectural Visualization: Best 3D Exterior rendering
What You Should Know about Outsourcing 3D Rendering
Computing the average 3d rendering cost for 3D architectural visualization
3d artist portfolio: Can You Tell a Bad 3D Artist from a Good One?
3 Reasons Architects are Not Pursuing Your 3D Visualization Company