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How do I hire a CG artist to sculpt a 3D model from an old portrait?
The goal is to bring the subject of a painting to animated life, so I would want the model to be rigged as well as photo-realistic. I don't use Facebook products, and have been searching in all the wrong places so far, so why not here, too?
Thank you very much to all who chimed in. Here's an update, if anyone finds themselves in my shoes, or feels curious about my progress:
With the Metahuman Creator you can magic an extremely realistic 3D human into being with minimal effort. I couldn't use a VPN to access their cloud-based app, had to rely on Chrome, and had to install three or four new programs to do anything with the asset. It won't export to Maya (despite Quixel Bridge), so I'm left hoping I can edit and animate the model with Unreal Engine/Editor, though I'm completely new to it.
A few creators responded. The going rate for the work I proposed seems to be $5,000 - $10,000 USD per head for the pros.
Fiverr is probably your best bet for creative gig work like that. Just look under the character modeling category.
I haven't used it yet myself, but I have seen quite a few videos on YouTube where they have hired a bunch of people from fiverr to do stuff, and there is some impressively talented artists on it. It can get pricey for the vetted professionals work, but you may be able to find someone who charges less and can still do a great job. Just make sure to check out their portfolios and read their reviews first so you don't get ripped off or jerked around.
I hope you have a deep wallet. Sounds expensive to me & if it isn't the artist probably is underpaying themselves :/
What do you think it would cost? I'm neither rich nor keen to be exploitative, just ignorant of going rates.
Character modeling is some of the hardest CG work there is. Honestly, in your situation, I don't think you could get it for what could be considered a reasonable price. It would take a talented character artist a day or two to sculpt, a few days to texture, and a few days to rig. At a game or movie studio, there would be probably a dozen people, each specializing in one small aspect of character modeling. If I had to guess at a price, I'd say it would easily cost well north of $1000, if not far more.
Fiverr is an option, but I would expect most of the artists there are using something like Daz, and won't be able to match the likeness very well.
I'm not from the industry, but the last time I saw model work for sale it was like 300-400 USD for a fully rigged model, and it wasn't even photo realistic, it was more cartoony, but with realistic proportions.
Hey, I'm a 3D modelling artist with experience in this area. Would love to hear more about what you need it for, and possibly see what references you have of the subject. I have a day job so I'm not exactly out to make beaucoup bucks if cost is a concern.
PM me if you want and I'll share my portfolio link.
I'm not disagreeing with the other comments, what you're asking for is generally not cheap. Specifically because you're asking for a recreation of a specific person.
However, the digital humans area is undergoing some interesting changes. Among them are tools like the Unreal Metahuman Creator which can generate some extremely high quality digital humans, for free. Modifying one of them to look like a specific person though, is difficult (I tried to recreate myself when I got early access this week).
Ah! The interesting thing is, the one and only verified portrait of this individual lacks fine detail. It's rather painterly and flat. Creating a model to represent him was always going to require an artist's interpretation and a willingness to play along on the viewer's part. So, what I'm looking for is verisimilitude without accuracy per se. He should just look more real than cartoony and close-ish to the portrait.
This tool is an exciting prospect! I will read for more info, such as potential for exporting to different 3D programs. Hope I will be able to sleep tonight!
The generated models can be exported to a variety of programs (3DsMax, Maya, Unreal, etc) through the Quixel Bridge. If you use it in an Unreal project, they allow use of the program and generated assets for free.
Well, I got in to try it. I thought that if I could produce a distant resemblance, I would export that for finetuning, but you're right, the Metahuman Creator's limited sculpting functionality defeated me.
Yea, it's a really powerful tool, but limited in that respect. I do wonder if they did that on purpose, to avoid the hassle of dealing with people using it for deepfakes. For the purposes of "I need a person that looks sort of like X with Y skin tone" it's extremely useful, I'm excited to use it on some projects we're working on.
While others have mentioned the cost could be somewhat high I would suggest you search for someone for each step. That way you don't get stuck with someone for the whole project. Or at-least break the tasks down into Modeling, Texturing, Rigging, Animation, and possibly Rendering. That kind of covers the things people specialize in. Modeling/Texturing and Rigging/Animation can probably be grouped together if needed.
I usually find artists from https://www.artstation.com/. You can check their profile if they are available for contract or freelance work. You can check their portfolio to see if they do the type of work that you're looking for.