Full CGI Vehicle Replacement

Replacing a practical vehicle with a CGI counterpart in live-action footage is a meticulous and highly rewarding process that demands seamless integration between the digital and physical worlds. The project was incredibly interesting because it required forensic attention to the environment; every nuance of the practical lighting, from the harsh specular highlights of the sun to the subtle color reflections bouncing off the surrounding buildings, had to be perfectly mapped onto the 3D model.

The primary challenge, however, lay in ground interaction and camera tracking. Erasing the original car meant painting out its shadow and rebuilding the background behind it, while simultaneously ensuring the new CGI vehicle cast its own accurate shadows, matched the organic camera shake, and interacted believably with physical elements like kicked-up dust and road debris. Ultimately, the painstaking work of rotoscoping, match-moving, and multi-pass compositing culminated in a thrilling final shot where the digital vehicle felt entirely grounded and indistinguishable from reality.