Can someone please let me know how to find a Blender python developer (or is it coder or scripter) to create an addon?
I’m after an addon with a UI for importing assets into Blender, with a few other options. (from a pre prepared asset folder structure…I have an asset pack I’ve put together)
Much like the “vegetation” or “car” addon from blender Market, but a lot simpler. (I’ve already contacted them…developer is too busy) they mentioned to check “fiver”
Also, How much do developers charge per hour or is it per script?
kind of I guess, maybe I should wait for that to be implemented and then customise my assets pack to work with that.
I just got a quote from a guy on fiverr for this addon, he claims he can do it and does know his stuff, but is $300 US too much for an addon that appends files from a folder structure, with a few extras, the main one being the option to merge multiple instance of a material together. eg eg MAT , eg MAT.001 eg MAT.002 all merged to eg MAT.
The quote started $600, my heart sank when I heard that.
To answer the last part of your post…I’d like to be able to add assets from my asset pack into blender with categories, thumbnail previews you can select then press add, also with the options of choosing world origin or cursor, something like that.
honestly $600 sounds cheap for custom freelance programming, probably cheaper for you to learn how to do it yourself? might have the side effect of giving you some perspective into the value of the things you’re asking for.
fair enough, i’ve never been down this path before…I freelanced for many years (3d stuff), and know its not cheap…I most definitely gave it a try, I’ve spent the last week, trying to get my head around python, and can do very simple stuff, which is fun, but it gets to a point where my head starts to spin…i need a lot more time…I think i’ll hold off for a bit, and see if i can nut it out…my addon isn’t anything special.
Not doubting the value of programmers, just wanted some insight.
I mean I can’t say what kind of quality you would get for $300, but that is very cheap. Your concept may be simple but building a good UI still takes a bit of time… Without lots of details I couldn’t quote you, but I’m pretty sure I would be asking over $1k unless it was ridiculously simple
If we just take the median US programmer salary of $86500/year and divide that by the average labor hours per person per year of 1750 you end up with a hourly salary of about $50 which is a good number to start with. For freelancers, you can usually double this to $100. A quote of $600 says “I can do it in 6 hours”. Your best chances to push the price down is to be a likable customer and explain what you want in as much detail as possible upfront. Programmers need the problem laid out in front of them. If they’ll end up having to ask you for the details all the time it’s going to take longer, or worse, you get something you didn’t want. They’ll also likely want to charge more because customers who don’t know what they want are really frustrating to work with. They want their work to consist of fixing your problem, not asking you what your problem is.
Yeah, its hard to quote something if your not sure what it is, it could be 3 buttons to add a cube, sphere, plane…surely you cant quote 1K for that…well I guess you could, but its unlikely.
On the other hand an addon like (trying to think of a complex addon) kit ops maybe, from what I’ve seen it pretty full on…making that would be a crap ton of time effort and money. Horses for courses as they say.
My addon is pretty simple for a developer (appending stuff with thumbnail preview and a few other bits), not for me who has no idea about python
correction, you are guessing that your addon is pretty simple. without actually knowing how to make it yourself you’re just making wild guesses. as long as you assume it’s really simple you’re going to be sticker-shocked (unless you happened to guess right). If you’re going to make assumptions, why not assume it’s a lot of work so you’re pleasantly surprised when the quotes come in?
for clarity- I don’t have a horse in this race, but having spent a good part of my career doing contract programming work I’ve seen this scenario play out so many times it’s like a glitch in the matrix. it’s fine and completely understandable to have a budget, but you should keep it under wraps while fishing for quotes. If you notice all of your quotes are coming back “unreasonably high” the reality is that you have unreasonable expectations and should adjust accordingly. Because if you try hard enough you will eventually find someone who will do the work for your budget and you’ll only end up disappointed (and probably paying again for someone to fix it or remake it).
These are all good points. If you can’t do the work yourself then you don’t really have a benchmark for how much is involved in doing.
Best bet is to provide as much information as possible and get some quotes in. That will give you a decent idea of how much work people who actually can do the work think is involved. Never mention what your budget is when getting quotes.
Not giving enough information or the specs being unclear will lead to higher quotes.
On places like fiver, you can probably get someone to quote an insanely low price to fit whatever your budget is. But there is a pretty high risk that you won’t end up with what you wanted and have to spend more money.
Then you would not know how simple it is. The quotes you got are as low as it can get as far as I can tell. Bear in mind that you might get charged 10x for applying a Wordpress theme for your web site. Unfortunately software development is not cheap in general.
I couldn’t agree more!, I have someone working it out for me at the moment…dont want to go into detail, but its good for both of us.
I am giving a lot of detailed information, knowing what I would like / need…but sometimes its hard to explain stuff not knowing certain terminology etc…i explain everything in lay mans terms based on my knowledge of Blender and 3D in general with screen grabs, and hope it makes sense…so far so good.
Write it yourself, measure how many hours it takes to write, then multiply that by 40. Then multiply it by 3 because you don’t have a clear spec and there would have to be a lot of back and forth. You now have the floor for your price.
ambi, there is no way I could do it, just being flat out honest, it would take me years…It doesn’t really matter now, as its been done and its amazing!
