Can Budget be made a required field on 3D Jobs posts?

Both excellent suggestions!
Not only is time money, but you often you get what you pay for.

Exactly!!! It would be awesome because every time I ask what the budget is I never get an answer and that usually means it is a bunch of people trying to get free labor!!! There is enough free stuff out there and if I am going to stake my reputation and suggest the job to artists I know (which I do a lot of as a 3D recruiter) it had better be worth their time!!!

That's right! If they want people to work for free it should say from the get go this way people don't get conned into working for free. Also I have seen some ridiculous requests that should be rejected like create 4 high detail planes for 20 bucks or build CAD type engineer projects for just pennies. I am hoping no one is taking up such outrageous jobs...

@Marvimation,
Yes, I noticed that the words of responding designers seem to fall on deaf ears. Often you don't see a response when designers ask for additional info. Whether job requesters have initiated private discussions or not is unknown. But the appearance suggests that requesters have made an abrupt departure from the processes they initiated. There is an etiquette in business too. Even tenders that are rejected get a notice of rejection. I am glad to see the "Closed" label on the job posts, but I only hope every requester uses them or there is a systematic culling of old and inactive posts. They don't have to be removed - in fact, they should stay on the board so we can all see if requesters have failed to follow-thru on past projects - but perhaps they could be marked as "Inactive".

I've also seen ridiculous requests on People Per Hour. For example, a customized avatar for $5. That doesn't even cover the time it takes to present your portfolio or negotiate terms. And people are, in deed, taking up such outrageous job offers. As long as those posts are responded to there will be a devaluation of 3D and 2D skill sets. And there's little that can be done about that.

Someone really needs to create an artist union to protect artists. There need to be guidelines that re structure this stupid industry and give value to what artists do.

Buyers need to be educated on how difficult it is to produce 3D models so they can understand their true value.

There need to be realistic standards and guidelines of what a true quality model is and how it should be priced. Just going by what other artist are selling isn't really that useful simply because it is super tedious to search 3D sites and there are plenty of artists who are pricing their models too high or too low... Basically it is all random out there.

Being random and chaotic is what allows for this mess to be what it is. You would never find this kind of issue in great fields such as finance or government jobs where everything is very well structured and hard working people get paid what they are worth and at the very least they get minimum wage.

Right now buyers are so used to being able to get people to work for free that it doesn't make sense for them to spend any money to get what they want. The internet is saturated with really great free models and if they can't find it they can get artist who just graduated to make them for free.

You can't blame the students or graduates to take up the free work because they are desperate in trying to make it in the field but you can blame all the crappy universities and schools that are poorly connected with the decent companies.

On the other hand there are just a handful of decent art companies out there because it is so difficult to sell 3D these days and stay in business.

The industry leaders who are making money right now are the ones who are creating the super low poly stuff you can integrate into phone app games. They are creating stuff that can be made in less than a day consistently and with very cute and well designed features that appeal to a larger audience and you can't just get for free because it is very difficult to hack phone technology and the average Joe can't do it.

I think there are a few artist guilds, but it's hard to say how effective they are at stemming market trends. Supply and demand dictate prices. It might be that the 3D market is approaching saturation point. At the very least it's splitting into low-poly, photoreal commercial modelling and perhaps 3D printing. But, I think the push on 3D printing is toward sharing models and DIY crafts. That leave photoreal commercial modelling as the best genre for earnings. Can't see myself modelling cars, tanks or water/air craft, even if there was a profit to be made in it. Besides, the technical skills and specification data needed to model manufactured items are not something to be gained over-night. It's a high-skill genre that demands a lot of research. And there still are no guarantees. I keep seeing dead links for high-skill modellers of medical and architectural items. They didn't make it and that, despite their ability in their field. One day they're getting an industry mag article printed about them and the next, they're pulling their domain off the web.

Ah, yes Pixel Art is big in gaming right now. Cute and quick seems to satisfy the market demand. Surely, if you're gaming on a phone, Pixel Art assets are good enough. They have a sort of 'retro' air about them.

Hi guys, thanks a lot - great points there. We are currently reworking the 3D jobs system to provide better security for the client and the artist, so stay tuned - a lot of these issues will be solved in the second version of 3D jobs system. If you have any further comments, please let us know!

Hi Dalia,
Thanks for the update. Can't think of any other suggestions for the 3D Jobs board, but I did make a recommendation about marketing in another forum post that you might find useful.

This is the reason why I believe CGtrader is the best 3D site out there. It's support system is awesome both from the customer service side and also the artist community! Go CGtrader!!