XO3D Studio · Process
Director-led. Five stages. A creative decision at every step.
Every XO3D project follows the same five-stage process. Every stage has a named Creative Director. Every stage produces a deliverable the client signs off on before the next begins.
Commodity CGI studios sell hours and treat the brief as input to a rendering pipeline. XO3D works the opposite way. A Creative Director leads every project from first brief to final frame, taking the same creative decisions that an experienced film director would take on a live-action shoot: what the work should communicate, how the product should be framed, what the camera does, how the lighting reads, what the audio adds, what the audience feels at the end.
The five-stage process below exists to make sure those decisions happen at the right moments, with the right inputs, signed off by the right people.
The Five Stages
From brief to final frame.
Four to eight weeks for a typical launch, with the durations below as the usual shape of it. Two things move that total. Production scales with the deliverable count, so a hero film plus a full social and stills suite sits at the top of the range while one hero deliverable sits at the bottom. And approvals sit on your side of the line: the schedule assumes each gate is signed off inside the agreed window, and a late approval moves the delivery date rather than compressing the work.
A compressed timeline is workable on a reduced scope, with fewer deliverables, creative locked earlier and additional studio capacity scoped in. Compressing the same scope into half the time is not something we will agree to, because the only ways to do it are to cut the direction, cut the review or cut the finishing.
- STAGE 01
Brief & pre-production
3 to 5 days
Discovery workshop with the client team. Reference review. Source-file audit. Commercial context understood. Creative direction proposed. Brief sign-off before any production begins.
Output: A written creative direction document the client agrees to.
- STAGE 02
Look development
1 to 1.5 weeks
3D model build. Material reconstruction from physical reference. Lighting rig design. Colour set to the value you specify. Where you can supply a physical sample or swatch, the render is compared against it here. One material test render produced and signed off. This is the moment that determines whether the final imagery looks real or rendered.
Output: Approved look-dev frame, on the actual product, at full resolution.
- STAGE 03
Production
2 to 3 weeks
Hero film animation, stills setups, social format production, interactive viewer build. Two formal review rounds in Frame.io, both attended by the Creative Director. No silent revisions. Every change tracked, timestamped, signed off.
Output: All deliverables in draft for review.
- STAGE 04
Finishing
3 to 5 days
Colour grade, with the approved product colour held through it rather than traded away for a look. Sound design where applicable. Master file production. Format-specific encoding for every output channel. Optional brand legal review window.
Output: Approved final masters across every format.
- STAGE 05
Delivery & archive
2 to 3 days
Full deliverables package, organised by format, with naming convention, channel specifications and rights documentation. The commissioned 3D model is handed over with the final work. Our production files stay with the studio and are archived, so a returning brief can build on what has already been approved.
Output: Launch-ready files plus the commissioned 3D model, yours to use and build on.
Product truth
Holding the product true.
Five things have to be true before a frame is worth looking at, and each one is held at a named point in the process above. This is not craft for its own sake. A viewer cannot tell you why a render feels wrong, but they register it, and what they do with that feeling is trust the product less. Held properly, the opposite happens: the product reads as real, then as considered, then as worth wanting. Read the fuller argument in what product truth means.
| What has to be true | How it is held | When it is checked |
|---|---|---|
| Geometry and proportion | Built from your CAD and engineering drawings rather than approximated from photographs. Conflicts or gaps in the source are raised before modelling starts, not after. | Source audit at stage 01, model build at stage 02. |
| Material and finish | Reconstructed from physical reference for this specific product. Library materials are not applied to a product that has a real surface. | Look development, stage 02. |
| Colour | Held to the value you specify, Pantone or CMYK, and kept consistent across every angle, lighting setup and output format. | Set at stage 02 and held through the stage 04 grade. |
| Lighting | A rig designed for this product, this sector and your brand language. Not a studio preset carried over from the last job. | Look development, stage 02. |
| Verification | Where you can supply a physical sample or swatch, the render is compared against it directly rather than judged from memory. | Before look development is signed off. |
What's Different
How XO3D works vs how commodity studios work.
| Stage | XO3D | Commodity studio |
|---|---|---|
| Brief | Creative Director joins the brief workshop and writes the direction document | Project manager takes a brief and passes it down a production line |
| Look dev | Custom materials built from physical reference for this specific product | Library materials applied from a preset palette |
| Lighting | Per-project lighting rig designed for this product, sector and brand language | Preset studio lighting templates |
| Production | Senior team, no offshoring, no junior pass-throughs | Junior renderers, sometimes offshored, supervised remotely |
| Review | Frame.io, two formal rounds, Creative Director present | Email PDFs, multiple silent revisions, slow turnaround |
| Delivery | Full asset library handed to the client, owned outright | Final files only, no asset library, no future use rights |
Who's Involved
The team on your brief.
Every project is staffed with a Creative Director, a Senior 3D Lead and the production team specific to the brief. The Creative Director is your point of contact for creative direction. The Managing Director is your point of contact for commercial and scheduling. The team is named at brief sign-off. The same team works your project from start to finish. There is no account-handler-to-production handover.
"Every programme has a Creative Director. Not a project manager. A creative decision at every step, from brief to final frame. This is what separates a studio from a render farm."
- Thomas Howcroft, Founder and Creative Director
Accountability
Where the work stops until someone approves it.
Five gates run through the process above. At each one, production halts until the named approver has signed off. Pulled out here in one place, because knowing who decides what is usually more useful than a stage diagram.
| Gate | What is approved | Who signs it off |
|---|---|---|
| Brief sign-off | The written creative direction, the scope and the deliverables list. | You, before any production begins. |
| Look development | One material test render, on your actual product, at full resolution. | You. This is the frame that determines what the final work looks like. |
| Review rounds | Two formal rounds in Frame.io, both attended by your Creative Director. | You, with consolidated feedback. No silent revisions between rounds. |
| Legal or brand review | An optional window before master file production begins. | Your legal or brand team, where your organisation needs one. |
| Delivery | Final masters, every format, naming convention and rights documentation. | You, against the deliverables list agreed at brief stage. |
Responsibility
Ours, and yours.
Most delivery problems are not craft problems. They are two organisations each assuming the other held something. This is the split we work to.
| Area | XO3D | You |
|---|---|---|
| Creative direction and craft | A named Creative Director accountable from brief to final frame, not a project manager passing messages. | Approval at each gate, and one named decision-maker who can give it. |
| Product accuracy | Builds to the CAD and references supplied, and raises conflicts or gaps before modelling rather than after. | The best available CAD, drawings and material specifications, plus a named technical reviewer. |
| Product claims and regulatory | Represents what your approved source material supports, and no more than that. | The claims themselves, and regulatory acceptance where it applies. |
| Schedule | The production dates in the agreed scope. | Approvals inside the agreed windows. A late approval moves the delivery date, and we will say so at the time rather than at the end. |
| Rights and usage | Retains its production files: scene setups, rigs, render configurations and proprietary tools. | Owns the delivered work and the commissioned 3D model on full payment, for your own commercial use. |
| Measurement | What is worth measuring for this commission, and what will still be readable later. | The analytics, commerce and CRM systems it gets read in. |
Confidentiality, file handling, contributor terms and retention are set out on trust and security. Rights and ownership are in clauses 8 to 10 of our terms and conditions. Where the work connects to your own systems, see integrations.
Common questions
Timing, speed and revisions.
How long does a product CGI project take?
Four to eight weeks for a typical launch. The usual shape is 3 to 5 days on brief and pre-production, 1 to 1.5 weeks on look development, 2 to 3 weeks on production, 3 to 5 days on finishing and 2 to 3 days on delivery. Production is the part that scales with the deliverable count, so one hero deliverable sits at the bottom of the range and a full launch suite across film, stills, social and interactive sits at the top.
Can you turn it round faster?
On a reduced scope, yes, and that is a real option: one hero deliverable rather than the full suite, creative locked earlier, fewer revision rounds, and additional studio capacity scoped in. Tell us the launch date and we will work backwards from it, and if the date is real and the scope is right-sized we will meet it. Compressing the same scope into half the time is not something we will agree to, because the only ways to do it are to cut the creative direction, cut the review stages or cut the finishing, and the output suffers in all three cases. If a date cannot move and a scope cannot reduce, we say so before you sign anything rather than at delivery.
What happens if our approvals run late?
The delivery date moves, and we tell you at the time rather than at the end. The schedule is built backwards from your launch date on the assumption that each gate is signed off inside its agreed window, because look development cannot start before the brief is approved and production cannot start before the look is. The single most useful thing you can do for a tight timeline is name one person who can give each approval.
How many revision rounds are included?
Two formal rounds in the production stage and one in the finishing stage, all attended by your Creative Director. Smaller change requests are handled inside those rounds. A material change of scope is quoted as additional work with the reasoning stated, rather than absorbed silently and recovered somewhere you cannot see.
When something goes wrong
Because sometimes it does.
Every studio has projects that wobble. Almost none of them will tell you what happens next. These are our three answers, and they are worth asking any studio you are considering.
| If | What happens |
|---|---|
| You are not happy with the work | It goes to a founder. Tom Howcroft or Alex Mann picks it up directly, not a complaints process and not an account manager. At a studio this size the person who can actually change something is one conversation away, and that is the point of working with one. |
| A delivery date is at risk | You hear as soon as we know, with the revised date and what caused it. Not at the point of delivery, and not once it is already too late to change the plan around it. That applies whether the cause is ours, a late approval, or a change in scope. |
| We missed the direction you approved | We fix it, within the agreed scope. The two revision rounds are for refinement, not for correcting our own miss, so putting right work that has departed from the direction you signed off is not a chargeable extra. |
Start the conversation
Want to see the process in action?
Send us a brief, real or hypothetical, and we will walk you through how we would approach it stage by stage.