Our Team has been part of CG & Games Industry for more than 15 years and that provides us with a unique insight into workflows & technologies of both the domains and how they can used with each other. Over the course of time we have tested & prototyped using Game Engines for CG Production.
Based on quite a lot of similarities of both the domains using advantage of one with other is a natural choice. We have been using Real-Time Game Engine to take a CG show from Asset to final render stage. There are a lot of advantages of doing so,
Since we are based on real-time rendering making changes and seeing near complete output of that small change is quite easy and fast. Thus reviewing & iterating is quite fast and easy.
Although it can be argued that rendering quality of game engines is still not at par with rendered like Arnold but considering the amount of time it takes to render a frame game engines are much faster and for a studio with a limited budgets game engines are natural ally.
Collectively when you look at faster workflow, smaller render times, almost no post-production requirements makes budgets more within affordable range of smaller studios.
We have been using game engines for rendering for sometime now and see the benefits it bring to CG pipeline. Based on what we foresee using this technology would become a standard for small scale studios and being one of the early adopters it gives us an edge over others.