Case study · LED virtual production

Riyadh Air Safety film.

Fourteen worlds for an LED volume, built in 22 days — for an industry where even a shadow in a cloud means something.

Client: Riyadh Air
Our role: Background environments for the LED volume
Year: 2025
Team: 6 people
Timeline: 22 days
Delivered: 14 scenes · 11520×2304 · HAP

The brief

The world outside the cabin.

Riyadh Air's official safety film was shot on an LED volume: a stage wrapped in LED walls and ceiling panels that show the world around the actors, live, in camera. Every scene needed its own world behind it — Riyadh's skyline, the historic district of Diriyah, the cliffs of the Edge of the World, open sky.

Our job was those worlds. We designed and built the background environments that played on the LED wall. The studio shoot and the final post-production were handled by other teams.

A fully modelled 3D boulevard at dusk, lined with LED façades showing seatbelt icons — Seatbelt scene. A boulevard built entirely in 3D, its façades turned into giant screens for the safety instruction.

The problem

The content didn't exist.

Every scene had to fill a wall at 11520×2304 pixels, delivered in the HAP codec for real-time playback. For most of the locations in Riyadh, there was no footage or imagery anywhere near that resolution — online or in stock libraries.

So every frame had to be made: modelled, photographed, painted or generated. Fourteen of them, by a team of six, in 22 days.

The approach

3D first. Then whatever holds up in camera.

We started every scene in 3D. If a scene hadn't reached the quality we needed within two or three days, we switched routes rather than lose the schedule:

3D, start to finishThe boulevard. For the city itself, we sourced a 3D model of the whole of Riyadh and rebuilt it for camera.
Location photographyOur Diriyah model wasn't holding up. A photographer shot the alleys on location, and we built the scene over those plates.
Stock, extendedWhere existing footage came close, we used it as a base and extended skies and edges to fill the full wall.
AI-generatedThe aerial view over Diriyah, used as a transition, was generated entirely with AI.

A panoramic night view of central Riyadh's towers and lit highways — Riyadh at night, from the rebuilt city model.

Riyadh's skyline rising through a sea of pink clouds — Oxygen-mask scene. The skyline above the clouds — soft light, no shadows.

Diriyah

From a location plate to an emergency exit.

For the emergency-exit scene we took the photographed Diriyah alley and turned the lights down. In 3D we added lanterns hanging on the walls and the guidance lights on the ground, then animated the flicker of the lights for the moment the cabin goes dark.

Drag across the image to compare.

The photographed Diriyah alley, warmly lit

The same alley darkened, with glowing exit guidance lines on the ground

What we learned

Aviation has its own visual rules.

No aircraft split in three. We rendered aircraft shots, but the LED wall was divided into three panels. A plane broken across the seams reads as unsafe — so those scenes were cut.

No dark clouds. At all. Even a small shadow inside a cloud could suggest a storm, and every one was flagged. We ended up building thin, weightless clouds and reworking existing footage until every sky felt calm.

A Riyadh Air aircraft render against a pastel sky

An aircraft render seen from directly below against a pink sky

The Edge of the World cliffs near Riyadh at sunset under a pink and violet sky — Edge of the World, outside Riyadh. A calm, cloud-light sky was a requirement, not a choice.

On set

In camera.

The environments on the volume during the shoot — playing across the curved wall, the ceiling panels and the reflective floor.

The LED stage: a curved wall glowing pink and violet, with a lighting truss hanging in front

Canyon environment on the LED wall, reflected in the stage floor

Sky and clouds on the curved LED wall and ceiling

Riyadh night skyline across the LED wall

A violet sky and the canyon scene on the stage

City and sky environments seen across the full volume

14scenes

22days

6people

11520× 2304 px per scene

HAPreal-time playback codec

The film

Watch the final safety film.

Plays from Riyadh Air's YouTube channel.

Credits

Who did what.

Client: Riyadh Air
LED-volume environments: Nongravital
Techniques: 3D environments, location photography, matte painting, sky extension, compositing, AI-assisted workflows
Studio shoot & post-production: Partner teams

LED shoot coming up?

Your volume needs a world. We build those.

Start a project More on LED-volume work See all work