How Much Does 3D Animation Cost in Malaysia?

motion, animation, cgi, post production, 3D animation, 2D animation, simulation

Every studio gets asked this, and every price list published in answer to it is either quoting the floor or flattening a wide range into a comfortable-sounding number. The reason is simple: runtime barely predicts cost. Two 20-second videos can differ several times over depending on how many assets need building, whether anything has to move like fabric or liquid rather than a rigid box, and how many rounds of feedback the brief needs. What we can say is the shape of it: a two-video commercial campaign with custom modelling, rigging and a full motion graphics layer is a five-figure project. Rather than a table of numbers that won’t survive your actual brief, here’s a real one. 

Case study: Aimer 爱慕儿, Nai Pi Series 
Client: Aimer 爱慕, children’s underwear line 
Agency: Blackwolf, Shanghai 
Deliverable: Two 20-second commercials, 3D product animation with motion graphics Aimer supplied product photography, a few existing 3D renders, and packaging artwork. 

Everything else we built: 3D modelling · rigging · lighting · animation · rendering · post-production · kinetic typography in After Effects · sound design and music Two models, every colourway. The two main garment models served as the base for the full colour range through texture changes rather than separate builds. That scoping decision kept the project proportionate to two videos instead of scaling like six products. Soft goods are the hard part. A bottle can be modelled once and turned on a plinth. Children’s underwear has to fold and drape convincingly or the whole spot reads as fake, which puts it closer to character-animation workload than product visualisation. Three rounds, three stages. Style-frames, 3D models, final video: our standard structure, priced in rather than charged as extras. 

What moves a quote :not seconds. These: How many assets need building, and how many can share a base model through texture variation. Whether anything moves like fabric, liquid, hair or skin. That’s rigging and simulation, usually the biggest single swing in a quote. How photoreal it needs to be. Stylised forgives; photoreal gets examined down to individual reflections. What you can supply: photography, CAD files, packaging artwork. Every asset provided is one we don’t build. Whether pre-production is included. Some clients arrive with concept and storyboard settled, others need it developed. How many review rounds the approval chain really needs. The timeline. Three weeks and two months are not the same quote for identical scope. 

How much does AI actually help these days? 
Genuinely, and more than we expected, but only in specific places. It helps most before anything gets built. Concept art and mood directions in hours instead of days. Rough storyboards to test pacing before an artist commits to clean boards. Motion reference for studying timing and weight before a shot gets blocked by hand. Across pre-production and finishing work (upscaling, background plates, roto and masking assistance) we’re seeing roughly 20-30% less time spent, and on projects where those stages carry real weight, that comes off the quote. It doesn’t help where it matters most. In a 3D scene, “move it 10cm left and warm up the key light” is a five-minute change, because the scene is built from parts we control individually. In a generative pipeline, that same note means a whole new generation, arriving with a new set of unintended differences elsewhere in the frame, not just the change you asked for. 

On a brief like Aimer’s, with three rounds of review at three separate stages, that unpredictability costs more than it saves. So: AI shortens the front end and the finishing. The modelling, rigging and animation carrying your brand stays with our artists, because that’s the part that has to survive your notes. Getting a real number Send us the deliverable and where it runs, what assets you have, how many variants you need, whether you’ve got concept and storyboard, your deadline, and who signs off. That’s what shaped the Aimer quote, and it’s what lets us give you a number that holds rather than one that grows.