CGI and Photography Hybrid Workflows: The Decisions That Matter
Combining rendered elements with photographed plates, or replacing photography with rendering where it is more practical.
Imogen Clarke
The key figures
- Matching requirements
- camera position, focal length, lighting and grain
- HDRI capture
- photographing the environment to light the render with it
- Camera data
- focal length, height and sensor size recorded on set
- Grain
- renders are clean; plates are not
- Color pipeline
- must be consistent across both
Why this is worth getting right
It removes the need to physically have a product, and it makes variants free — at the cost of matching the render to the photographic world convincingly.
Do this, not that
Do
- Capture an HDRI of the location at the time of shooting
- Record camera focal length, height and settings on set
- Match grain and noise from the plate into the render
- Keep one color pipeline across photography and rendering
- Composite with contact shadows so elements sit in the scene
Don’t
- Rendering without reference to the plate's camera
- Clean renders composited into grainy photography
- Different color handling on each side
- Attempting a match without HDRI or camera data
When to bring in help
Our advice Bring in help when products do not physically exist yet, when many variants are needed, or when renders are not matching photographic plates.
Where this comes from
- Academy Software Foundation — OpenColorIO
- Blender Foundation — Camera matching and compositing
- International Color Consortium — Color management
The figures and practices above come from the sources listed.
Working on something like this?
We take on Photography & Product Visuals work for teams who want it done once, properly. Tell us what you are building and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right studio for it. Start a project.
Where to go next
Spotted something wrong? Report an error on this page. We correct on the page and say what changed.
