Thales Grand Paris | The future of transport in 3D
3D motion design film for Thales and the Grand Paris Express. Visualisation of signalling and supervision systems for Europe's largest transport project.
The Grand Paris Express is Europe's largest transport infrastructure project: 200 km of new automated metro lines, 68 stations, a 36 billion euro investment. Thales, the global leader in railway signalling systems, supplies the critical technologies that will run this network — CBTC (Communication-Based Train Control), centralised supervision systems, infrastructure cybersecurity.
The brief: produce a 3D film that makes the invisible visible — the Thales technology systems operating beneath the surface. No concrete and tunnels. The intelligent layer that keeps the trains running.
The Nexia team designed a two-level 3D universe. The physical level: tunnels, stations, trains. The data level: information flows, signals, control systems. Both coexist on screen through a transparency visual treatment — physical infrastructure in realistic render, Thales systems as holographic overlay.
The virtual camera performs continuous tracking shots through the network, moving from station to station, diving into tunnels, rising towards the centralised command centre. This uninterrupted movement symbolises the fluidity of the Grand Paris Express network.
CBTC systems are visualised as light waves propagating along the tracks, communicating between trains and infrastructure. The supervision centre is represented as a nerve centre where all data converges — a cinematic vision of Thales technology.
A technical 3D film that transforms abstract systems into visual narrative. Thales engineers recognise the technical precision, decision-makers understand the scale of the technological contribution, the general public discovers what lies behind the automated metro.
Thales deployed the film at presentations to the project owner (Societe du Grand Paris), at professional transport exhibitions, and across institutional communication channels. The film became a reference tool for explaining Thales' role in the Grand Paris Express.
How this kind of project is run.
Every project led by Nexia Studio follows the same production method, adapted to the deliverable at hand. We start with a rigorous brief phase, generally structured by ZIA, our AI creative project lead who formalises expectations, constraints, budget and timeline. This step determines the success of the entire project.
Then comes exploration : this is where generative AI shows its real value. Our art directors use Midjourney, Flux, Seedance, Kling and Runway to produce dozens of visual tracks in a few hours, where a traditional process would be limited to three or four explored directions. The exploration volume helps eliminate false good ideas quickly and concentrate creative energy on directions worth pursuing.
The human art direction phase then takes over. Selection, refinement, arbitration, typography, composition : this is where taste makes the difference. AI explores, the art director decides. Without this human step, the result would be indistinguishable from any other AI agency.
Finally, production : development, animation, compositing, post-production, asset preparation. This is the longest, most technical phase. Depending on the project nature, it can mobilise the Web, Motion or Graphic discipline, sometimes all three. The most frequently mobilised services include art direction, AI production, brand film, visual identity, WebGL 3D and virtual humans.
Nexia Studio is a distributed team based in Paris, Nice, Aix-en-Provence and Sophia Antipolis. This setup lets us assemble the right talent for each project without heavy structure. To start a similar project, contact the studio or kick off a brief with ZIA. Human response guaranteed within 24 working hours.