Visual Production.
xix3D is 3M’s in-house digital creative studio, the visual backbone behind their renders, films, and global campaign work.
The photoshoot was the bottleneck.
Every new 3M finish used to need a shoot day. The car, the location, the crew, the lighting, the post-production turnaround. By the time a colour was photographed, retouched, and out in the world, the team was already three months into the next launch. Marketing was always one product behind their own R&D.
And the visuals were locked the moment the shutter clicked. A different angle? A different city? A new vehicle on the same colour? Re-shoot. Re-budget. Re-schedule.
3M asked us to take the photoshoot out of the loop entirely, without losing the look that sells the product.
The studio, rebuilt in Unreal Engine.
Their vinyl, their vehicles, their environments, all modelled, lit, and rendered in software. Once a colour is in the system, it can land on any car, in any setting, with any lighting, at any angle, in any aspect ratio, in hours instead of weeks. The relationship spans three disciplines:
- Digital Assets
- Each roll is modelled to match the real product down to the grain of the finish. The hero shots that ship in marketing, on datasheets, and into installer materials worldwide are rendered, not photographed.
- Automotive Viz
- Bespoke digital environments, garage bay, city street, desert, showroom, all on tap. Drop any vehicle in, change the wrap, change the time of day, and the still or the cinematic clip is ready the same week.
- Campaigns
- Stage-grade production for 3M’s biggest moments. When the show date doesn’t move, neither do we.
From the digital studio to the IAA stage.
IAA Mobility in Berlin is the kind of stage where the visuals carry the brand, 3M shared it with names like Audi and Samsung. The traditional path to a stage like that means a fleet of cars, a closed location, a crew, a post-production team, and a long list of things that have to go right.
We delivered every stage visual out of our digital studios, broadcast quality, no shoot days, no logistics chain that could break.
And those same assets didn’t retire after the keynote, they kept earning across 3M’s global marketing collateral long after Berlin packed up.
One pipeline, three places it shows up.
Replacing the photoshoot with software didn’t just take cost out, it changed who can act on a new colour, and how fast. The day a finish is approved is the day marketing has the asset, the shop floor has the kiosk update, and the customer can see it on their car online.
That speed compounds across the whole partnership:
For 3M, every product launch ships with its full visual library on day one. For certified shops, every walk-in customer can see a finish before they pay a deposit. For the customer, the chrome they fall in love with on a product page is the chrome that arrives on their car.
The partnership keeps growing for the same reason it started: in modern automotive manufacturing, digital production isn’t the future, it’s the foundation.
From the studios.
Want production at this scale?
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