The HALO Effect: A 3D Product Animation Video for MGI Golf’s Most Advanced Buggy

Authored by Jessica Flindell

Cinematic product videos are one of our strengths, and the MGI Golf Ai Navigator HALO campaign gave us the perfect brief to explore through a fully 3D product animation video. This is a look at how it came together.

The Brief

When MGI Golf came to us with the brief for launching the Ai Navigator HALO, the first question we asked was: what is the right production pipeline for this? 

The answer was 3D animation. It was a clear call.

The HALO golf buggy is the most advanced model in MGI’s Ai Series, a product built around intelligent navigation, precision engineering, and a premium technology positioning. A live studio shoot could capture how it looks. A live studio shoot could capture how it looks. A fully 3D production could show how it works, how it feels, and what it represents.

We workshopped the brief with MGI Golf, and the direction was clear: no voiceover, the narrative guided entirely by music, with each of HALO’s key features given its own visual moment. Dramatic. Luxury. Cinematic. A piece designed to build genuine market anticipation ahead of a December Australian launch.

Starting with the CAD File

Creativa works with 3D in three ways:

1. building 3D models from scratch via product and subject reference shots, often taken in-house
2. working from client-supplied CAD or pre-modelled product files
3. working with laser scanned data, a process we have used on previous projects and are currently applying to an upcoming one.

For the HALO, MGI Golf supplied their CAD files. Before anything else, our team visited MGI Golf directly, taking detailed reference videos and photographs of the physical buggy from every angle, capturing every panel, joint, and component. All of it documented so that when we began working with the CAD data, we knew exactly what we were trying to achieve.

From there, the process is not as simple as importing a file and pressing render. The CAD data has to be optimised for animation, a technically involved step that prepares the geometry to move, deform, and behave correctly on screen. Then it has to be rigged, the digital equivalent of setting up the joints and mechanisms that allow the model to fold, extend, and rotate as the product does in real life. Once that work is done, we present the model to the client for sign-off on look development, confirming that the materials, surfaces, and proportions match the real product before a single camera move is planned. That sign-off is the foundation everything else is built on.

Why 3D Over Live Studio Production

Working in 3D rather than shooting the product in a live studio environment offers advantages that go well beyond aesthetics, and they were all directly relevant to this brief.

The most significant is camera freedom. In a 3D environment, the virtual camera can be positioned anywhere, moved in any direction, and pushed into angles that would be physically impossible or prohibitively expensive on a real set. For a product like the HALO, where the brief required showcasing specific features from multiple precise angles, tthis flexibility meant we could work directly from the script and direct the camera to exactly where the storytelling needed it to be.

The other major advantage is the ability to visually represent features that are invisible to the naked eye. GPS navigation, obstacle detection, follow-me tracking: none of these can be photographed. In 3D, they can be animated, abstracted, and made legible as part of the same visual world as the product. That combination of photorealistic product rendering and graphic feature representation is what gives this kind of video its premium, futuristic quality, and it is something a live shoot simply cannot do.

Beyond this, Creativa’s involvement extended into creative strategy. We worked closely with MGI Golf on scripting, which often informs the wider marketing approach and supports clients’ campaigns holistically. In this case, the visual materials we developed were aligned directly with MGI Golf’s new HALO landing page, so both felt like parts of the same campaign.

Building the Cinematic Environment

With the model optimised, rigged, and signed off, the next job was building the world around it.

The brief called for a dramatic luxury feel: a dark studio environment with gold lighting and on-screen text designed to elevate the atmosphere and reinforce the product’s premium positioning. With heavy inspiration drawn from the automotive and consumer technology industry, where epic cuts, bold typography, and rising music scores define the language of product launches, we designed a visual language that the HALO genuinely earns.

The opening sequence begins in near darkness. Light travels slowly across the compact, folded form of the buggy, building curiosity before the full reveal. The music is quiet here. Then the product unfolds, the score ramps up, and the camera begins its arc, moving into a stylised terrain environment where the feature sequences and overlays play out.

The Motion Graphics as Part of the Design

The motion graphic treatments in the HALO video were not added after the fact. They were designed as part of the visual language from the start.

Working closely with MGI Golf, we developed a visual system to abstractly represent each of the HALO’s technical features. The challenge was translating invisible technology into something a viewer could understand at a glance, without needing a caption or a voice over to explain it. That meant making creative decisions about what each feature felt like, not just what it did. Geo-Protect, for example, became concentric signal waves: a familiar visual language for transmission and reach that communicates the technology’s purpose intuitively. Each feature got the same treatment, a considered creative choice about how to represent function as feeling.

The text treatments followed the same brief: on-brand, punchy, and cohesive with MGI Golf’s wider marketing materials. Each feature label needed to clearly communicate its message, animate dynamically, and feel native to the HALO’s world rather than applied from outside it.

It is the combination of the motion graphics, the 3D visuals, and the text together that makes each sequence land. No single element carries it alone.

The Halo Eye, a separately purchased accessory that attaches to the buggy via a mounting arm, is a good example: in 3D, a component that might read as functional on a real set becomes a centrepiece, isolated, lit, and given a scene entirely its own.

The Outcome

The video closes on the campaign tagline DIVINE INTERVENTION, a deliberate choice to end on positioning rather than product. By that point, the HALO has made its own case.

The final deliverable was a 54-second 16:9 launch video in 1080p, supported by a suite of HD stills and an SRT subtitle file for use across platforms. The campaign launched in time for MGI Golf’s Australian release in December and is live across their website, HALO landing page, and social channels.

It is a strong example of what a fully realised 3D pipeline can deliver when the model, motion and visual system are treated as a single design language.

The Ai Navigator HALO is available now. Head to MGI’s website to see the full range.

Watch the full launch video

Credits

Producer: Monica Ip, Andrew Mazzocato

Director: Sarah Schwab, Monica Ip

Design: Sarah Schwab

Animation: Julian Rodriguez

Sound Design: Monica Ip, Sarah Schwab

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