Studio, agency or freelancer?

Where these projects actually fail

Not on the modelling. Not on the code. On the seam between them.

A 3D website needs four things that are usually four different people: somebody who decides what it should look like, somebody who models, somebody who makes it run in a browser at an acceptable weight, and somebody who builds the rest of the site around it.

When those are separate hires, the failure is predictable and it always arrives at the same moment. The models come back beautiful and far too heavy, because the person who made them was never given a budget in megabytes and would not have known what to do with one. Now somebody has to rebuild them, and that somebody is either being paid twice or is quietly cutting quality to hit a deadline.

That is the risk you are actually managing. Not talent. Whether the person deciding how it looks knows what it will cost to load.

The freelancer, and the specific trap

Everything the generic articles say about freelancers is true and we won’t repeat it. One point is specific to 3D and it matters.

There are excellent freelance 3D artists and excellent freelance web developers. There are very few people who are genuinely both, and the ones who are get booked by the studios in this list. If you hire one of each, you have just created the seam described above, and you are now the person managing it. Count that time before you compare the price.

When it does work: you have the models already, prepared for the web, and you need somebody to put them into a page. That is a real job with a clear edge, and hiring a studio for it is paying for coordination you don’t need.

The agency, and what you are buying

An agency gives you capacity, process and cover. If the developer leaves, another one starts. For a large organisation with a site that cannot go down, that is worth what it costs.

The specific thing to check when 3D is in scope: ask whether the 3D is done in-house or subcontracted. A lot of full-service agencies subcontract it, and there is nothing dishonest about that. But it puts the seam back, with an extra layer on top, and you are now paying a margin on a hand-off you cannot see.

Look at their own listed capabilities. It tells you a lot. One well-regarded London agency publishes its service split on Clutch as 40% branding, 40% web design, 10% AR/VR and 10% development. That is an honest declaration by a strong agency that 3D is a tenth of what they do.

The studio, and why the middle exists

The category has settled into the vocabulary now. A studio sits between the two by design: small, senior, and the person you speak to is the person doing the work. Published guidance puts studio engagements in the $8,000 to $40,000 range and recommends them when a project needs decisions rather than only execution.

For 3D specifically, the argument is the seam again. In a studio of two or three people, the person deciding how it looks and the person making it run are the same people, or at least sit in the same conversation. The performance budget is not a constraint handed down after the fact. It is part of the design decision, which is when it is cheap.

The evidence on specialising is worth knowing while you compare. Specialist firms command a 30 to 50% premium over generalists for equivalent work, and retain clients at 78% against 54%. Read that in both directions: it tells you the specialist will cost more per hour, and it tells you what the market thinks that is worth.

The questions that sort this out in one call

Ask all five of whoever you are talking to. The answers separate people quickly and none of them require you to understand the technology.

• Who models, and who makes it run in the browser? Are they the same person, or in the same room? If the answer involves a partner you have not met, you have found the seam.
• What weight are you targeting, and when do you decide it? "We’ll sort the performance out at the end" means the models get built without a budget and cut afterwards.
• What is the oldest device you will test on? Anyone who has shipped this work has a specific answer. Anyone who says "all modern browsers" has not been asked before.
• Show me a live one on my phone, not a video. A recording tells you nothing about how it performs. This is the single most informative twenty seconds of the whole process.
• Who owns the source files afterwards, and in what format? If the answer is vague, you are renting your own product.

What the generic articles get right

Two things, and they survive contact with 3D.

The first: ask whether the person presenting the project is the person who will do it. In a large agency the answer is often no, and that is not a scandal, it is how a structure with fifteen open projects works. But ask before you sign, and ask for the answer in writing, with names.

The second: whoever you pick, timelines run from when the content is finalised, not from signature. Published 3D timelines cluster at 3 to 8 weeks for a homepage piece, 8 to 16 for something more involved, and 16 to 28 for a complex build. Every one of those assumes somebody on your side is answering questions. A week waiting on an approval is a week of project, and it is the variable that delays most.

When it isn’t us

We are a studio, so it is only fair to say where you should call somebody else.

If you want a well-built site with no 3D in it, we will say so. That is not what we are for, and there are people who will do it better and cheaper.

If your project is a platform with logged-in users, internal processes and your own teams working inside it every day, you need contractual cover and staff who can be replaced. We are not that.

If your models exist and are already prepared for the web and you need somebody to place them in a page in two weeks, a good freelancer will beat us on both price and speed.

And if you are looking for the lowest number in the market, we don’t compete there and won’t pretend otherwise.