Anyone actually getting paid projects for vis in UDK?

[Anartist]

So do companies like the interactive visualization
cause it seems the main body of work is still prerendered viz right now

seems like a no brainer that its nice looking
but most execs don't play 3d games
so I wonder how hard it is to get people to actively navigate

I really wish there were a few more camera tools in gui form

[taz1004]

Companies that tried UDK are blown away. And none of our clients so far has went back to traditional rendering. Getting them to try it for the first time is the hard part.

You need to think about why companies use visualization and market accordingly. High quality slow renders are more for presentation and to secure budgets but real time visualization is used more during design process. And sometimes they find the quality to be acceptable to be re-purposed for presentations.

Biggest benefit our clients see is not actually the interactivity. It's the fast turnaround time and how quickly we can implement changes. We often implement changes within a day or two and that's what our clients value. If they want to change the carpet throughout a development for example, typical response from slow render production is "we have to re-render the entire animation". And they want to change light fixtures the next day, then another re-render and possibly, more cost. But with UDK, they have freedom to change anything at anytime. Changes are part of design process and we make it painless.

[Skiz]

I don't... But then again, I haven't asked anyone if they'd like it.

[Pangahas]

Speaking of getting paid,does the term for use of UDk apply to archi viz as well?I mean if your getting paid presenting UDk levels or perhaps simple rendered images does that fall under going commercial and in effect you have to pay some royalties?I'm unfamiliar with the topic so I'm curious as to how things work for this type of projects,or do you need licensed versions?

[stressless]

Speaking of getting paid,does the term for use of UDk apply to archi viz as well?I mean if your getting paid presenting UDk levels or perhaps simple rendered images does that fall under going commercial and in effect you have to pay some royalties?I'm unfamiliar with the topic so I'm curious as to how things work for this type of projects,or do you need licensed versions?

Recieving income by using UDK in any way (including presenting levels and such) falls under commercial use.

[Xenobite]

this part of licencing/pricing is bit unclear

for example:

1. you make UDK visualisation and charge it to a client - that's easy to calculate because you will have to pay % from your archviz services
if I'm correct, you would have to pay 99$ or so when you sell your work and then applies 25% "tax" after you earn over 50k$

2. your company is making buildings and decides to make archviz with UDK, but since it's done internal - there is no real price for archviz job you did and it actualy helped selling a building/house, and in that case money related to use of UDK is huge number, so would you have to pay "tax" on whole building/house building profit?

If you are using UDK internally within your business and the application created using UDK is not distributed to a third party (i.e., someone who is not your employee or subcontractor), you are required to pay Epic an annual license fee of US$2,500 per installed UDK developer seat per year. This license fee only applies to UDK seats used for development; no license fee is required for hardware where only the resulting applications are installed.

An architecture firm uses UDK to create a live walk-through presentation for their customers. They charge their customers a fee of US$500 for each walk-through. Before they begin to charge customers for the walk-through, they would pay Epic US$99 for a royalty-bearing commercial UDK license. They sell walk-through presentations to 100 customers in the first quarter, bringing in US$50,000 in revenue. No royalty payment would be required to Epic for that first US$50,000. In the second quarter, they sell another 100 walk-through presentations, bringing in another US$50,000 in revenue. They are required to pay US$12,500 to Epic. On subsequent revenue, they are required to pay the 25% royalty.

now, which licencing system would actualy apply?

- if your company charges visualization, then it's easy and it looks like it falls in 99$ + 25% after 50,000$
- if your company doesn't charge (free service for client), should it use 2,500$ per seat licencing?
or it would be like 99+25% but since nothing is charged they pay only 99$?


oh, and another question (IOS related)
what type of licencing/distribution should be used for selling IOS UDK archviz app?

[taz1004]

2. your company is making buildings and decides to make archviz with UDK, but since it's done internal - there is no real price for archviz job you did and it actualy helped selling a building/house, and in that case money related to use of UDK is huge number, so would you have to pay "tax" on whole building/house building profit?

I'm not with Epic but it seems pretty clear to me that is internal use and $2,500 per seat/year would apply. I'm sure there's no license agreement in the world that covers every possible scenarios. When in doubt, contact Epic. udklicensing@epicgames.com

I believe that licensing applies to iOS as well.

[Tearl]

Anartist, interactive viz is an "emerging technology". It is very effective in communicating an idea and in a visually pleasing way. If you are in it for money, hire a programmer to create camera functions for you, then you can just drop them in your Kismet and go to town!
Our programmer created a cool click-to-move, orbit cam with mouse wheel zoom, free cam, walk cam with custom parameters (like getting rid of the rediculous amount of head bob) and she also created a driving interface. I've also used a "click on this" to move the user to a fixed-position camera that can look around a constrained view. This set of navigation tools provides a lot of flexibilty based on the viz we're doing.

[Tom Shannon]

As for the royalties, for the first scenario, where you directly charge a client to produce a UDK rendering or interactive viz, it's the $99 then %25 after $50k on your gross income. Easy.
The next one is complicated, but we've had to tackle it so I'll share how we did it. When we are scoping a project that includes work in the UDK, we identify this work up-front. We provide the client an estimate to the direct cost of the UDK (the royalty), then we set up a task number for the project that's something like "UDK Labor" and anybody touching the UDK or assets that are being imported directly into the UDK bill to that project number. We set up another project called UDK Direct" that we fund with the estimated royalty payment. This allows us to create visualizations in UDK based on massive datasets and ensure the income from the UDK is accounted for and Epic gets paid right.
However all of this is academic and doesn't even fit all of our own projects all the time. Also, if you're getting really serious about this or have any specific concerns/needs, don't hesitate to drop epic a line like Taz said.