Automotive CGI: Unreal Engine for Luxury Car Visualization
Creating photorealistic computer-generated imagery (CGI) for the automotive industry goes beyond technical precision—it’s about breathing life into design and engineering. Much like the anticipation surrounding a car premiere, where every moment builds excitement, the goal of great automotive CGI is to evoke that same sense of awe and wonder.
The Challenge of Automotive CGI: Crafting Visual Hyper-Realism
Photorealistic automotive CGI is a delicate balance of art and science. Achieving the hyper-realism that luxury automotive brands demand requires mastering essential steps. These are the pivotal elements needed to create an image or animation that captures both precision and emotion.
1. Lighting, Reflections, and Material Complexity
Automotive surfaces present an optical puzzle. Whether it’s the gleam of metal, the texture of carbon fiber, or the softness of leather, simulating light's interaction with these materials requires a precise understanding of their physical properties. Each surface reflects and interacts with light uniquely, creating highlights and shadows that must look natural.
Unreal Engine’s use of PBR (Physically Based Rendering) materials ensures these properties are replicated with stunning accuracy, allowing us to create believable simulations of light interaction and bring the vehicle’s design vividly to life.
2. Model Preparation and Optimization
CAD files are designed for engineering precision, not visual storytelling. Our team bridges this gap by converting raw technical data into streamlined, render-ready models that retain every crucial design detail. Through meticulous preparation, we remove inefficiencies, refine geometries, and ensure models perform flawlessly in real-time environments.
With Unreal Engine's advanced optimization tools, we transform intricate CAD designs into visually stunning digital representations. Our approach captures the essence of automotive craftsmanship, delivering visuals that resonate with both precision and artistry.
3. Environmental Storytelling
In automotive CGI, the environment is a crucial storyteller. A rain-soaked urban street can illuminate a sports car's elegance, while rugged mountain trails emphasize an SUV's raw power. We specialize in building cinematic settings that seamlessly blend architectural precision with dynamic landscapes, ensuring each vehicle's unique narrative emerges with clarity and impact.
Rooted deeply in architectural design, we leverage Unreal Engine's advanced real-time rendering to create photorealistic environments that do more than showcase a product—they articulate its essence. Our architectural background gives us a unique lens, allowing us to craft environments with meticulous spatial understanding, technical sophistication, and a profound ability to tell visual stories that make your product not just seen, but truly experienced.
Solution: Crafting Immersive Automotive Visuals with Unreal Engine
Unreal Engine redefines automotive CGI, transforming static renderings into dynamic, interactive narratives. Its real-time rendering capabilities offer immediate previews, enabling fluid adjustments to lighting, camera positioning, and composition. This unprecedented flexibility generates cinematic-quality scenes that set new standards in automotive visualization. More iterations allow for more testing, drafts, previews and a more dynamic creative workflow that we absolutely love at the studio. The best images and outcomes come as a result of this creative process based on trial and error. Thanks to Unreal Engine’s instant rendering capabilities, we can perfect and iterate each shot more times and test various lighting scenarios before it’s signed off.
The Quixel asset library allow us to access physically based rendering (PBR) materials, enabling hyper-realistic environmental reconstructions. Integrated post-production controls streamline our workflow, allowing instant feedback and precision-driven refinements before final rendering. Our team leverages these advanced tools to meticulously craft digital models and environments that reveal automotive design with extraordinary depth and visual fidelity.
Aston Martin Vantage, Vantage GT3, and AMR24 – Racing Through Cinematic Realities
For Aston Martin, we took automotive CGI to new heights, combining dramatic action with hyper-realistic rendering. The video opens with a breathtaking shot of the Earth from space, followed by a green meteor hurtling toward the surface at breakneck speed. As the meteor impacts a race track, a burst of light and smoke reveals the first Aston Martin car, elegantly covering the racing circuit in the golden hour’s warm glow. The sequence continues with additional meteors and cars—Vantage GT3 and AMR24—each car introduced with its own cinematic flair, showcasing speed, precision, and the beauty of the engineering behind these iconic vehicles.
Unreal Engine allowed us to simulate these dynamic elements with intricate detail, creating an experience that captures the essence of Aston Martin’s performance while narrating an epic journey through speed and light.
The Bugatti Tourbillon – A Legacy of Power and Innovation
With the Bugatti Tourbillon, we worked to represent the spirit of one of the most iconic names in automotive performance. The film highlights Bugatti's legacy, from the 1,001 hp Veyron to the 1,500 hp Chiron, and now the Tourbillon—a complete redefinition of the hyper sports car.
Through Unreal Engine’s capabilities, we blended high-speed performance with advanced simulation, capturing the essence of Bugatti’s engineering feat. From its state-of-the-art powertrain to its dynamic presence on screen, each shot is crafted with an emphasis on technical precision, bringing Bugatti’s vision of the future to life with cinematic realism. Unreal Engine enabled us to immerse viewers in a visually rich world where the car's performance is as much a part of the narrative as its design.
Aston Martin DB12 Volante – An Icon Reborn
For the DB12 Volante, we combined precision automotive CGI with breathtaking scenery. The film shifts between two distinct environments: the interior of the car, showcasing detailed close-ups of its luxurious design, and its thrilling high-speed drive along a stunning coastal road.
Through Unreal Engine’s real-time rendering power, we were able to capture every movement of the convertible’s soft top and the fluidity of the vehicle as it races along the cliffside. The rich interplay of light, shadows, and reflections encapsulates both the interior craftsmanship and the car’s exhilarating drive, highlighting the essence of the DB12 Volante’s performance and luxury in ways traditional CGI simply can’t match.
Bentley Batur Convertible – Living in the Light
To bring Bentley’s "Living in the Light" claim to life, we crafted a visually stunning scene set in a desert landscape. The film opens with the soft light of sunrise breaking over the horizon, gradually flooding a super-modern architectural space. The sunlight gently illuminates every detail of the Bentley Batur Convertible, highlighting its curves, materials, and design features with dynamic reflections. The vibrant colors of the desert—rich yellows, oranges, and reds—add to the cinematic feel, bringing a sense of motion and energy to the vehicle’s elegance.
Achieving this level of lighting control in real-world conditions would have been impossible, as no location could offer the perfect blend of desert and modern architecture. With Unreal Engine, we had the freedom to design this immersive environment, enabling us to showcase Bentley’s luxury in an entirely new way.
Conclusion
In each of these projects, Unreal Engine’s power allowed us to transcend the limitations of traditional automotive CGI. We harnessed its capabilities to create not only visually accurate and detailed car models but immersive environments that tell a story. Whether it’s the race track of Aston Martin, the legacy of Bugatti, the dynamic beauty of the DB12 Volante, or the cinematic lighting of the Bentley Batur, Unreal Engine enables us to craft experiences that resonate far beyond the screen.