What does a CGI beauty campaign cost, and what drives the price?

There is no standard price for a CGI beauty campaign, but published market prices give a useful frame: from a few hundred dollars for a simple product render to tens of thousands for a photoreal product film, and from about 50,000 dollars for a cinematic 60-second spot. A campaign with hero stills, a short film and liquid or texture shots sits in the upper half of those ranges. What moves the price is mostly the product’s materials, any simulation, the number of shots and formats, revision rounds and how the images will be used.

What do published price lists say?

They give wide ranges, mostly aimed at e-commerce, and they are a starting point rather than a quote.

Here is what three studios have recently published, all in US dollars:

Deliverable	Published range	Source
Basic product render on a white background	$100 to $300 per image	Transparent House
High-end or luxury product render	$400 to $1,500 per image	Transparent House
High-end visualization	$2,000 and up per image or animation	Coast Team Studio
Short product clip, 30 to 60 seconds	$2,000 to $5,000	Transparent House
Photorealistic product animation	$7,000 to $25,000	Welpix
Product animation with advanced effects	$20,000 to $80,000	Welpix
60-second cinematic film	$50,000 to $250,000 and up	Welpix

Read these with care. They come from studios selling their own services, they mix catalog work with campaign work, and they say little about rights or revisions. They are still the best public reference available.

Why does campaign work cost more than e-commerce renders?

Because e-commerce is volume and campaigns are one-offs.

A catalog render reuses one lighting setup across hundreds of products on a plain background. The studio’s price per image drops as the count goes up. A campaign is the opposite: one product, or a small range, shown in a look that has to be invented, approved by several people, and finished at a level that holds up on a billboard or a cinema screen. Most of the cost sits in work that happens once: building and checking the model, developing the materials, designing the set, and getting everyone to agree on it.

What drives the price of a beauty campaign?

Seven things do most of the work. If you know where your project sits on each, you can predict roughly where a quote will land.

1. The product model. Clean CAD files and print-ready label artwork save days. Without them, the studio rebuilds the bottle, cap and label from photos and samples.
2. Materials. Glass, liquid, polished metal and gemstones need more careful lighting and longer render times. Transparent House names glass, chrome and gemstones as cost drivers. Our article on perfume bottles in CGI explains why.
3. Simulation. Splashes, pours, drips and cream swirls are simulated, not drawn. Each change means running the simulation again, and the cached data can take tens of gigabytes per shot, according to Artivoxa.
4. Shot count and formats. One 3D asset can feed stills, film and social, but every new camera angle, set or 9:16 composition is new work and new render time.
5. Length and finish of the film. More seconds means more frames to animate, render and grade. Welpix lists animation length and photoreal quality among its main cost factors.
6. Revisions and approvals. More rounds mean more hours. Welpix states this plainly, and Artivoxa advises studios to plan a base contingency of 20 to 30 percent of total production time, rising to 35 to 40 percent for very complex simulation setups. A late change after final render is the most expensive kind.
7. Timeline and usage. Rush work costs more. Paid media, out-of-home, broad territories and long terms also raise the stakes and often the fee, just as they do in photography.

Who you hire matters too. A freelancer, a general render house and a studio that specializes in luxury and beauty all face the same drivers. What differs is how much art direction, look development and project management is included in the number.

What could an indicative budget look like?

The tiers below are indicative. We derived them from the published ranges in the table, not from any single studio’s price list. Real quotes vary by country, studio and scope.

Scope	Indicative range (USD)	What usually pushes it up
Three to five hero stills, one product, clean set	about $2,000 to $10,000	Glass and metal, print or out-of-home resolution
Stills plus a 15 to 30 second product film, no simulation	adds about $7,000 to $25,000	Camera moves, number of shots, sound and grade
Film with liquid, texture or splash simulation	about $20,000 to $80,000	Number of simulated shots, late changes
60-second cinematic hero film	$50,000 and up	Sets, effects, length, number of versions

If your quote is far below the bottom of these ranges for campaign work, ask what is missing. If it is far above, ask which driver is behind it. A good studio can answer both questions line by line.

How do you get a reliable quote?

Give the studio the same information you would want if you were pricing the job yourself. A clear brief removes the guesswork that otherwise turns into a safety margin on the quote. Our guide on what to put in a brief for a CGI studio has the full checklist. At minimum, send:

• Product files: CAD or technical drawings, label artwork, finish specifications, and a physical sample if one exists
• A shot list with formats and aspect ratios
• Where the work will run, for how long and in which countries
• Your deadline and any embargo date
• Who approves, and how many people will give feedback

Then ask for a quote split into lines: modeling, look development, simulation, animation, rendering, compositing, revisions included, and file handover. Ask what happens to the 3D model after the project, because reuse is where a second campaign gets cheaper.

When is CGI not the cheaper option?

When the job is small and simple, or when people are the subject.

One existing product, one image, a photographer you already work with: a photo shoot is often quicker and cheaper. The same goes for campaigns built on skin, hair and real faces, where convincing CGI humans are expensive and often still easy to spot. CGI pays off with launches before the product exists, many variants, impossible moments with liquid or light, and reuse across many formats. It also copes better with late packaging changes: Not Important Studio has written that a redesigned label is swapped in the 3D file and rendered again, which takes far less effort than a reshoot. Our comparison of CGI and photography for beauty campaigns goes through that choice in more detail.