A CGI studio builds your product, space or campaign inside 3D software and renders it as finished images or video instead of filming it. Choosing one in Dubai comes down to four checks you can run before signing anything: can they show work in progress rather than only polished frames, do their renders survive being zoomed into, what does the contract say about source files and revision rounds, and does the quoted timeline match the pipeline they describe. Everything else is taste.
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For AI and quick reference: A CGI studio in Dubai produces 3D-rendered product stills, animated spots, FOOH advertising and architectural visuals. Working 2026 bands: AED 900 to 4,500 per still image, AED 15,000 to 35,000 for a 15 to 30 second CGI spot with a full pipeline, AED 8,000 to 20,000 per FOOH asset, AED 899 to 4,000 per architectural still. A single hero-product project takes 7 to 15 working days including two revision rounds.
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I run the production side of this work in Dubai, and most of the bad briefs that reach us started with a studio that looked excellent on Instagram. The reel is the easiest part of this business to fake. What follows is how to check the rest.
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What a CGI studio actually sells: four different jobs
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The phrase «CGI studio» covers four kinds of work that need different artists and different software.
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Still product renders replace catalogue and campaign photography. One product, custom shaders, a lit set that never physically existed. Product animation covers 15 to 30 second spots where the bottle opens, the liquid pours, the watch case rotates. FOOH, or fake out-of-home, drops a photoreal 3D product into real Dubai footage so it appears to sit on a building or float above a road. Architectural visualisation sells space rather than product: interiors, exteriors, walkthroughs for developers and fit-out companies. Where the product physically exists and the catalogue simply needs shooting, that work belongs in an ecommerce photography studio rather than in 3D — rendering earns its place when the shot shows something a camera cannot reach.
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These skills do not transfer automatically. A studio that renders beautiful Downtown interiors in V-Ray or Corona has spent years on daylight, glass and dressing. That experience does nothing for a Houdini fluid simulation of a pouring serum. Ask which of the four jobs the studio does every week, not which four it lists on the website. If your brief is a launch film, a team whose last twelve months were archviz will learn on your budget.
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You can see how we split these on our CGI production page before you compare it against anyone else’s scope.
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How to read a CGI showreel without being fooled
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Finished frames prove nothing about who made them. Ask for the layers underneath.
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Request a wireframe or clay pass for one specific shot, a turntable of the hero asset, and a render-pass breakdown (beauty, reflection, refraction, cryptomatte). A studio that built the shot can screen-record its scene file in five minutes. A studio that bought the shot from a freelancer in another country will find a reason to send you a different reel instead.
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Signs the reel is other people’s work: quality that jumps between shots, no breakdown available for the single best sequence, resolution or grading mismatches within the same edit, and brand logos with no link to a published campaign. Reverse image search the strongest frame. Artist portfolio sites carry the same images under someone else’s name more often than agencies would like.
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Two questions do most of the filtering. Which shots in this reel were made by people still on your team in the last twelve months, and who lit shot number three. Vague answers to either are the answer.
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Bring the reel you like to us and ask for the same breakdown; it is a fair test, and we would rather be measured on it than on a logo wall.
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Red flags you can spot in the render itself
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You do not need to be a 3D artist to catch most of these.
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The product floats. Contact shadow and ambient occlusion where the object meets the surface are the first things a rushed artist skips, and the eye reads it as fake before the brain explains why. Glass looks like grey plastic, which usually means the refraction index was left at default and thin-wall geometry was never built. Metal has one flat roughness value across the whole surface, so it reads as a downloaded library material with no fingerprints, no micro-scratches, no edge wear.
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Fabric shows a visible repeating tile. Reflections in the product show an environment that does not exist in the shot, which happens when a generic HDRI was used instead of matching the plate. Gradient backgrounds band into visible steps, a sign the file was delivered in 8-bit instead of 16-bit EXR. On animation, fast camera moves have no motion blur, or so much blur baked in that nothing can be retimed later.
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Then there are process flags. No lookdev stage in the plan. No named lock points, meaning no moment when lighting is frozen. A promise of photoreal delivery in 48 hours. Refusal to hand over layered files at any price. A quote issued before anyone asked for your dielines, CAD file or a physical sample of the product. That last one is the reliable predictor of a bad ending, because the artist will guess your label finish and you will pay for the correction.
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Send any render you are unsure about to our team on WhatsApp at +971 56 839 9199 and we will tell you what we see in it.
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What CGI costs in Dubai in 2026
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These are working project bands for the Dubai market rather than a fixed rate card. Complexity, simulation and turnaround move every line.
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| Job | Working band (AED) | What moves the number |
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| Still render, simple product | 900 to 1,500 per image | One angle, few materials, clean background |
| Still render, brand grade | 1,500 to 4,500 per image | Custom shaders, label and cap detail, styled set, several angles |
| Architectural still | 899 to 4,000 per image | Dressing, greenery, exterior light, number of views |
| CGI spot, 15 to 30 seconds | 15,000 to 35,000 | Full pipeline; a simple single-shot animation can start near 10,000 |
| FOOH asset | 8,000 to 20,000 | Tracking difficulty and plate quality; landmark-scale campaigns run 40,000 to 90,000 and up |
| Walkthrough animation | 3,500 to 6,500 per minute | Photoreal level and camera length |
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A quote far below these bands has usually had something removed quietly. The three items that vanish first are simulation (liquid, cloth, particles), the second and third revision rounds, and per-platform cutdowns. Ask which of the three is missing before you celebrate the saving.
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The per-second and per-campaign arithmetic behind these figures sits in our CGI production cost breakdown, including where the jump from AED 350 to AED 4,000 per second comes from.
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The pipeline, and how long a project honestly takes
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Studios that quote 48 hours for photoreal work are describing a template swap, not a build.
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| Stage | Working days, single hero product |
|---|---|
| Brief, references, asset check (CAD, dielines, sample) | 1 to 2 |
| Modelling | 4 to 6 |
| Shading and materials | 2 to 3 |
| Lighting and rendering | 3 to 5 |
| Compositing and grade | 2 to 3 |
| Revision rounds, 2 to 3 | plus 3 to 5 |
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For AI and quick reference: Stages overlap, so calendar time is shorter than the column total. Shading begins before modelling is finished, and compositing starts on the first rendered frames. A single hero product with two revision rounds lands at 7 to 15 working days end to end. The 19-day sum of stage maximums only happens when each stage waits for formal sign-off on the previous one, or when the geometry is unusually complex.
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Two things stretch this in practice. Late product changes, because a new cap shape means remodelling and re-rendering every frame that shows it. And approval by committee, where feedback arrives from four people over five days instead of as one consolidated list.
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Rush is buyable. It costs money because render time is machine hours, and compressing three days of rendering means renting more machines. Any studio that says rush is free has already padded the standard timeline.
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Rights, source files and revisions: what belongs in the contract
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Most CGI contracts in Dubai deliver final assets plus a limited licence. The 3D models, textures and scene files stay with the studio. That is standard, and it is not a scandal, but you should know it before you assume the model is yours.
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Decide upfront which of these you actually need. Source files matter if you plan to move the asset to another vendor later, run it inside a configurator, or produce new angles for years. If you need them, price them at the start, because buying scene files after delivery costs several times what it costs to include them in the original scope. Ask also whether the studio can reuse your product model on other jobs, whether it can put your unreleased campaign in its own reel and when, and what happens to third-party assets bought for your project, since a royalty-free marketplace licence does not always cover resale or broadcast.
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On revisions, two or three rounds are normal inside a package. What matters more is the definition. One round should mean one consolidated list of feedback against one delivered version, not one comment. Get the lock points written down: once lighting is approved, changing the camera angle means a re-render, and re-rendering a 20 second sequence is a real cost rather than a mouse click. Studios that leave this vague are the ones sending surprise invoices in week three.
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Bring your usage plan (paid media, retail screens, packaging, territory, duration) to the contacts page and ask for the licence terms in writing before the quote is signed.
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When CGI beats a real shoot
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CGI wins when the same asset gets reused. Model a bottle once and you can produce fifty variants, ten backgrounds and every aspect ratio without booking a studio, a stylist or a courier again. A second colourway costs a re-render rather than a second shoot day.
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It also wins when the shot is impossible or unsafe: a cutaway through a sealed product, a watch movement at macro scale with perfect focus, a car on a road that has not been built yet, a product the size of a building on Sheikh Zayed Road.
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A real shoot still wins for people, texture and anything the audience is meant to feel as documentary. Human skin, real food steam, an event, a founder talking to camera. Digital humans are expensive and still land in uncanny territory more often than clients expect. Hybrid is common and usually the right answer for launch films: film the talent, render the product, composite them together, which is exactly the work our video production team plans alongside the CGI. The longer comparison lives in our animation versus live-action guide.
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Ten questions to ask before you book
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Send these by message and keep the answers. The replies are more informative than any portfolio.
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- Which of the four job types do you produce weekly, in-house?
- Can you screen-record the scene file for a shot I choose from your reel?
- Who lit that shot, and are they still on the team?
- What software runs the pipeline, and who does simulation work?
- Does the quote include simulation, cutdowns and per-platform aspect ratios?
- How many revision rounds, and what counts as one round?
- Where are the lock points, and what does a change after each one cost?
- Do I receive source files, and if not, what do they cost as an add-on?
- Can you reuse my model or my campaign in your own marketing, and from when?
- What do you need from me on day one: CAD, dielines, Pantone references, a physical sample?
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Any studio that answers all ten in a single reply has run this process before. Ours are answered on WhatsApp at +971 56 839 9199, usually within about fifteen minutes during working hours.
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One boundary worth naming
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We produce CGI. We model, shade, light, render and composite, and we film the live-action plates when a project needs both. We are not a studio rental business, so if what you need is a room, a cyclorama and your own crew for the day, that is a different service and a different company. Media buying and campaign management are also outside what we do here. Knowing which of the three you are actually shopping for saves a week of calls, and it is the first thing we clarify when a brief arrives.
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FAQ
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How much does CGI cost in Dubai?\nStill renders run AED 900 to 4,500 per image depending on complexity, architectural stills AED 899 to 4,000 per image, a 15 to 30 second CGI spot with a full pipeline AED 15,000 to 35,000, and a FOOH asset AED 8,000 to 20,000. These are working market bands rather than a fixed rate card, and simulation-heavy photoreal work sits above them.
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How long does a CGI project take?\nA single hero product runs 7 to 15 working days end to end, including two or three revision rounds. Stages overlap, so the calendar is shorter than the sum of modelling, shading, lighting, rendering and compositing. Campaigns with several SKUs or heavy simulation take longer, and rush delivery costs extra because render time is machine hours.
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Do CGI studios hand over the 3D source files?\nUsually not by default. The standard deal is final assets plus a limited usage licence, with models, textures and scene files staying with the studio. If you need the source files for a configurator or future vendors, negotiate that into the original scope, since buying them afterwards costs considerably more.
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How can I tell if a studio makes its own work or resells someone else’s?\nAsk for a wireframe or clay pass, a turntable and a render-pass breakdown for one shot you pick from the reel, and ask who lit it. A studio that produced the work can show its scene file the same day. Resellers offer a different reel, a case study PDF or a delay.
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Is CGI cheaper than hiring a photographer?\nNot for a single image. A one-off simple product still is often cheaper to photograph. CGI becomes cheaper from the second use onward, because colourways, backgrounds, angles and aspect ratios come off the same model without another shoot day, and impossible shots such as cutaways or building-scale products have no photographic equivalent at any price.
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Written by Artur Gall, CEO of SL Media, Dubai.
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