Unreal Engine for Fine Art in a gallery space - Royalty

I am an artist working with fine arts in a gallery/Kunsthalle setting. At the moment I am doing some VR-pieces using Unreal Engine 4 and wonder if there are any fees I need to pay prior to selling an artwork? I don’t earn anything from exhibiting the works, so only a purchase of an artwork would contribute to my own revenue in this case. For fine art it is uncommon to sell more than 3 units of the same art work, although there is not really a standard for VR-art yet.

Additionally, if I am to sell an artwork for $5000 in total, the gallery takes 50%, and including a hardware set-up would also contribute to the expense of my production. Will I pay 5% on the project as a whole or should I subtract the hardware cost, gallery fees etc? I believe it somewhat compares to a company paying you their 5% off the wholesale price when they ship it to a vendor or the final shelf price in-store.

I am sorry if this question is irrelevant for most applications of the engine but it is a lovely tool and I hope to see more art developed for VR as it opens up so many new possibilities.

Are you talking about interactive, real-time rendered art?

In this case, yes for real-time rendered - as my works make use of the physics within the engine and that does not really yield the same outcome every time, but for this exhibition right now it is not really interactive - although it would be interesting to know whether that would make a difference for royalty issues too.

So these are unique, one-off pieces of art that are made based on your own creative expression (rather than commission) but sold to a single customer after they are made?

Yes, these pieces are unique but might be produced in three copies each and are not commissions so there is no verified buyer of the works in advance, and I am currently not paid to exhibit either. A single work will on its own be many times more expensive than a copy of a game, but there will be a maximum of three copies in total so the potential client base i small. If there is a very different approach to producing one original or a total of three copies that would be helpful to know.

Could you reach out to the Legal Dept email address on this page, referencing this AnswerHub post?

Of course, thank you for your time and the assistance in clarifying the questions.

Hi NandiNobell,

One of your questions pertains to art sold in small unit amounts with hardware and gallery fees.

In these cases under the terms of the UE4 EULA a 5% gross royalty is due on the software portion of the product. The easiest way to calculate revenue from the software portion is to subtract the cost of the hardware from the revenue generated by the project. What remains is the revenue from software portion.

Please let us now if we can be of further assistance. We are here to help.

Best,
-j