Earlier this year we conducted our third worldwide industry survey to help determine the current state of the field and how the current economy has impacted businesses. Our last survey was conducted in 2006. The survey this year was taken by almost 3,000 respondents and provided some very insightful information about where things are headed.
Those of you who subscribe to 3D World magazine will have seen our preliminary analysis in issue #120 (September 2009). In that report the findings pointed to a field that was not as badly affected as many had thought. Since that article we have received additional information that we will present here along with our forecast for the next 2-3 years.
By all accounts our industry has undergone a radical change in the last 12 months that has seen a dramatic drop in sales, layoffs and a number of companies who have closed their doors. Certainly none of this is good, but based on the early results of our survey, only about 20% of our industry was hit the hardest. This is not to say the worldwide recession has not impacted every facet of the industry, however the vast majority are continuing to do business and in some cases were even growing their businesses.
Most companies were impacted by reduced sales in the October 2008 to May 2009 time frame, however there was a second wave who were not affected until early to mid summer 2009. This second wave was comprised mostly of larger boutique companies and architectural firms who had long term projects still in the pipeline or receivables that were still coming in from projects completed in late 2008 and early 2009. Once those dried up, they too were hit with forced cutbacks and a reduction in sales.
As this year's survey closed in June 2009, we only just started to gather data on this second wave before the survey closed. To help shed light on how this impacted our results we launched a smaller economic indicator survey that specifically examined gross sales, volume of work and volume of RFPs (Requests for Proposals). While early results were not very positive, August saw the first signs of recovery with most companies indicating growth in all three areas.
The remainder of this report will focus on a few select results from the over 100 questions posed in the two surveys. Although our survey data can be segmented by country and company type, unless otherwise noted the data presented here represents answers provided by respondents from all over the world and all types of companies ranging from Architectural firms to visualization companies and manufacturers. The vast majority of the data came from in-house visualization departments at architectural firms and visualization companies and freelancers.
Figure 1: How often are people working with visualization?
Compared to our last survey in 2006 there was a 12% increase in the number of people who started using visualization on a daily basis. This points to the growth our field saw in the last 3 years in the demand and requirement for visualization in many facets of the architectural field.
Figure 2 - What types of projects are being visualized?
The types of projects being visualized did not change a lot since 2006, but I thought it was interesting to showcase the range of fields where architectural visualization are being created. As expected commercial and residential accounted for the vast majority of work being created.
Figure 3 - Traditional vs. Digital
I created this graphic for a presentation I recently did for the ASAI (American Society of Architectural Illustrators,) as they are comprised of about 50% traditional illustrators. I thought I would include it here as it points quite heavily to the continued demand for these types of artists. From 2006 to 2009 we saw some of the largest growth our industry has seen. To see only a 5% decrease in the amount of traditional work during this boom is telling that its demand is not likely to decrease a lot in the coming years.
Figure 4 - Where are clients based?
Figure 4 is a very telling indicator of a widespread problem in our industry. In an increasingly global economy it becomes very important to diversify the location of your client base if you wish to survive recessions or the changing face of our industry. Fifty five percent of respondents indicated their clients were based in the same city or country. The companies that are doing the best right now are the ones who had the foresight to diversity both their client locations as well as the types of work they are doing for those clients. When you are too heavily invested in local clients, your are much more susceptible to very large swings in revenue when individual clients change their spending habits and/or when there is a local change in economy. Just as you would diversify your investment portfolios, so should you your client base.
Figure 5 - Architectural Still Image Variable Fees
Figures 5 and 6 show the average fees being charged around the world for still images and animations. To my knowledge this is the first time in our industry that this type of data has ever been collected. As you can see from the graph above the majority of companies charge $2,000 USD or less for a single image. Asian countries are often criticized for offering their services for below market averages, but to be fair South America, Eastern Europe and Asia are all on an even playing ground. For better or worse this shows how globalization has affected our industry as it has many others in the past.
Figure 6 - Architectural Animation Variable Fees
The results for average animation fees were very similar to the still images and showed that most companies charge less than $10,000 for an animation. Interestingly Australia came in higher than most. I have been anecdotally told this is likely due to the lack of companies that can deliver them and the lesser demand for animations in Australia.
Figure 7 - Interesting Software Usage Changes
While the survey this year and in 2006 allowed respondents to choose from a wide range of modeling and rendering software, I've extracted some of the more interesting changes in the last three years. There was a 15% increase in the number of 3ds Max users, which could be explained by the discontinuation of Autodesk VIZ, but at 83% usage, shows it's by far the most used software in the architectural visualization field. Revit usage grew by 10%, but is still a lot lower than I would expect based on the marketing that Autodesk pours into Revit each year. While I am pretty confident that Revit will eventually replace CAD as CAD replaced the drafting board, these numbers do seem to point to a slower than expected adoption rate. The rendering engine usage shows some of the most dramatic changes. When third party rendering engines first hit the market V-Ray, Brazil and Final Render all stood a reasonably good chance of becoming the market leader, but Chaos Group's early decision to offer a free version of their software helped cement them as the market leader. Brazil was gaining traction early on, but they decided to focus their energies on the entertainment market and all but stopped marketing to the architectural industry. They have since been acquired by Caustic graphics. As you can see from Figure 7 V-Ray jumped 24% in usage in our industry, while Brazil and Final Render each saw a 5% decrease. mental images also gained some ground with an 8% increase. I expect mental images to increase a lot more in the next 3 years as budgets for third party engines decrease coupled with the drastic improvement in the 3ds Max implementation of mental ray in terms of ease of use and rendering speed.
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