The instinct on a product launch is to price the hero film. The smarter question is: what will all the assets cost? Once you ask it that way, CGI's biggest advantage shows up — a single 3D build can carry an entire campaign, and that changes the math.
Build once, render forever
Modelling and lighting a product is the expensive part. After that, re-rendering it is comparatively cheap: any angle, any colourway, any background, any format — without a reshoot, a re-ship or a studio rebooking. The asset that felt costly on the hero film quietly becomes the cheapest way to make everything else.
What one model can feed
The launch film. Vertical social cutdowns. Static OOH and print keys. Retail and e-commerce imagery. A web configurator. Regional variants and colourways. Each of those, shot traditionally, is its own production; from one CG build, they're renders off a shared source.
The reusability math
Compare total cost across every deliverable, not the price of the first film. A traditional approach re-incurs cost for each new angle, variant and format; a CG approach front-loads one build and amortises it across dozens of outputs. For multi-channel, multi-variant launches, that's usually where CGI stops being an expense and starts being a saving.
The catch
It only pays off if you plan for it. Build the model to campaign spec from the start — clean topology, accurate materials, flexibility for colourways — so you're not rebuilding when the OOH or configurator brief lands. Reusability is a decision you make on day one.
The bottom line
Don't price the hero film; price the campaign. A single well-built 3D model, planned for reuse, can carry your launch across every channel — and usually pays for itself several times before the campaign is done.