Automotive Animation Services: 3D Car and Vehicle Films That Move Like the Real Thing

Automotive animation is photoreal 3D film of a car or another vehicle in motion, made from CAD data, a 3D model or reference photos instead of a film shoot. It covers driving and tracking shots, reveals, CGI car commercials, feature and technical animation, and films of vehicles that do not exist yet.

Cars, SUVs, sports and race cars, EVs, trucks and trailers, RVs and campers, buses, motorcycles and off-road vehicles, plus trains, trams and metro cars. Aircraft and boats have their own pages: aircraft rendering and yacht rendering.

We animate the car with its real wheelbase, track and suspension travel and check each shot for wheel speed, steering angle, body roll and dive, tyre contact, brake lamps, a stable camera move and motion blur. You see the motion in a low-resolution preview before the final render.

Yes. We rebuild production and classic cars from photos, drawings and brochures. With photos and key dimensions in millimetres the model is accurate, and you approve it as a grey model before animation; without dimensions the proportions can drift, so we flag that before we start.

Yes. We rebuild a circuit, a corner, a mountain road or a city street from photos, maps and reference footage, with the right surface, kerbs, banking and surroundings, and you approve the location in stills before the car moves through it.

Yes. We work in Blender, Maya, Houdini, Cinema 4D and 3ds Max, so we can take your vehicle models and scenes as they are, add animation, lighting and camera work and render them. For studios and agencies we can also work remotely inside your own pipeline.

If a scene uses stock 3D models, such as a car, props or track assets, we attach a list of their licences. We can also model the hero vehicle ourselves from your CAD or photos, so no stock car is needed.

On request we hand over the editable project files together with the model, and we deliver render passes for your compositor. The transfer of rights to the model and to the finished film is set in the contract.

Yes. Many automotive films start with a single proof-of-concept shot. We approve it in three steps, stills, a motion preview and the final shot, and keep the same model, rig and lighting for the next shots of the series.

A 30-second CGI film usually takes 2–4 weeks from a full brief, and a film of up to a minute takes 4–6 weeks. Urgent projects can run about twice as fast for roughly 40% more.

Two rounds of revisions on the draft and one on the final are included. Because the car, location and motion are approved in stills and a preview first, most changes happen before the expensive final render.

CGI fits when the car does not exist yet, is a one-off, cannot travel to the location, or the shot is impossible or unsafe to film: X-ray views, a track at dawn, every colour in one take. A film crew fits when the real car is ready and you need real people. We can also cut your footage and our CGI into one film.

Yes, when speed or budget matter more than exact geometry in every frame. We make AI video from a reference clip and photos of your car and check every shot against the real model. See AI video production.

Yes. We make automotive films under your agency’s name, so you present them to your client as your own; we work under NDA and do not show the project without your permission.

Yes. Still images are on car rendering services, and real-time colour and trim configurators on 3D product configurators; one vehicle model can feed renders, films and a configurator.

It depends on the length and number of shots, whether we build the vehicle from scratch or start from your model, the location and the effects. Send the brief and your files and we reply with a fixed quote; typical ranges are in our 3D product animation cost guide.