CGI or live-action: how to choose?
Both approaches have their strengths. Here's how we help brands decide based on the product, the budget and the campaign timeline.
The question comes up in almost every brief: should the product be photographed in studio, or fully rebuilt in 3D? There's no universal right answer — only the one best suited to the context.
CGI shines when the product doesn't physically exist yet, when it needs to appear in dozens of color variants, or when the imagined scene would be impossible or too costly to shoot for real.
Live-action keeps the edge on materials that are hard to simulate — naturally moving fabric, skin, liquid in motion — and on very tight deadlines where 3D wouldn't have time to mature.
In practice, most of our productions combine both: a real packshot to anchor texture and light, then CGI extensions or variations to multiply formats without a full reshoot.
The right move is to ask the question at brief stage, not after the shoot: the budget allocated to 3D and the budget allocated to set are managed very differently.
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