What's the going rate for 256x256 Game-Ready Textures?

[Sybixsus]

I was hoping to get a rough idea of what to expect for this. I am talking about game-ready textures, not cropped & tiled photos. Think UT2K3 but only 256x256 ( I'm not making an UT clone, it just happens to be a decent example of the level of work on the texture. )

So let's suppose I buy them in sets of 10. That way the artist can bail if he has other commitments, and doesn't feel bound to stick with me, and I get small packs of textures which fit together, so I don't end up with a lot of textures which don't work together if I have to switch artists. How much should I expect to pay for a set of 10 256x256 UT-style game-ready textures?

I'm not looking for a quote BTW, at least not yet, but I am looking to get an idea of the kind of budget it's going to require to make this game, so that I can plan the financing accordingly.

[ErikH2000]

Can you explain the difference between a cropped and tiled photo and a game-ready texture? Making smoothly tilable textures is really easy and takes maybe 5 minutes of work per piece starting from a library of good texture photos to use as source material.

-Erik

[Sybixsus]

Well a picture.. thousand words.. etc..etc..

This is a cropped, tiled photo :

http://www.animebowlingbabes.com/testing/junk/photo.jpg

And this is a hand-worked game-ready texture,created from a cropped, tiled photo :

http://www.animebowlingbabes.com/testing/junk/texture.png


I'm after the latter, not the former. I have shedloads ( well ok, DVD-loads ) of the former. But neither the time, skill nor inclination to turn them into the number of game-ready textures I will require.

[ErikH2000]

Okay, I get you.

I haven't paid for textures like that to be made. My experience is as an amateur artist that has done a small amount of professional artwork on retail games, and I've contracted/supervised artists on a handful of projects for my own games and another company's games.

Suppose you had a spec that was either very specific or very flexible so that an artist need not worry too much about sending you revisions when he gives you something wrong. Very flexible would be like "Give me 10 textures for walls in a futuristic, industrial style. Use elements like tubes, computer displays, wires, vents, access panels. Half the textures should be designed with less elements on them so they can be used more repetitiously." Very specific would be like "Texture 1: Dark grey metallic wall, access panel with illuminated buttons on it, tiles seamlessly on left and right sides with textures 2, 3, and 4. Texture 2: ..."

"Specific" sounds obviously better than "flexible", but then you might have an artist spending 20 minutes per texture instead of 10 and maybe on details that aren't that important, i.e. one artist may have a hard time drawing your specified "creeping ivy", but if you were flexible, he might have added some other detail to a texture like cracks or rust that was quite easy for him. If you're already bargain-hunting and looking for those newer artists or artists in countries that don't communicate well in your native language, then you'll have problems with getting them to make exactly what you want anyway. New artists often sign up to give you a lot of art for practically free, but then when you start asking for changes they become unmotivated and stop sending you art. So you could err on the side of flexibility and look at this as a two-pass job. 1st pass: get a bunch of cheap textures without much speccing. Don't bother artists about what they are giving you as long as it is 90% right because that will slow them down and demotivate them. 2nd pass: Hire a very experienced, professional artist you can communicate with easily to clean up the textures, give them a consistent look, and make sure they hit all your requirements. That artist might actually be chosen from your first group of artists after you've had a chance to see how people work and communicate.

The first artists I would pay by the texture and expect something like 10 minutes/texture at $10/hour. The second artist I would pay hourly or flat-rate for small collections of specced tasks at the artists quoted rate, and expect a rate more like $25/hour. Maybe your cost per texture ends up being something like $2/texture.

It would be nice if someone with experience specifically in contracting 3D textures will post. Maybe at least my post will motivate someone to jump in and explain how I got it all wrong. ;) I admit I'm extrapolating a bit from similiar projects that were 2D-based.

-Erik

[Mike D Smith]

Just asking for textures seems like you're using them in a very generic sense like "Here is some grass", "Here is a wall" etc.

Depending on what level of quality and control you need, I would just use free ones off the Internet.

If you need specific modelling and art, you may want to setup to parse existing Quake 3 levels or something like that. Then you can have artists build you whole levels instead of worrying about just textures.

[Sybixsus]

Erik: Thanks, some very good information and thoughts in there. The two-pass system does sound like a great plan and, although I'm not looking to be cheap, this is a big project and keeping the finances under control will be vital during development. I'm going to have to support myself for a long time with existing projects to develop this one. Quite possibly working with people from Eastern Europe / South America / Asia, particularly for the first pass textures will be the best plan.

Mike: If you'd like to point me to free textures of the type I've described ( and shown one of ) on the net, I'd love to see them, because I never have. I'm not parsing Quake3 levels or anything like that because it's not a FPS, or anything close to one. And the reason I only want textures is because :

(a) A good texture artist is not necessarily a good level editor and vice versa.
(b) I would prefer to do the level design myself. I know how the game works and teaching an artist a whole new engine is time ( and hence money ) wasted.