Quote - I guess it's not surprising, more than half of the food and product ads we see on TV now are fully CGI.

Even before CG, product shots didn't always show the real thing. My sister worked for a photographer in the '80s and told me that when they did ice-cream product shoots they never used actual ice-cream because it melted too fast under the lights. Instead they used fancy stuff made with mashed potato or something. CG makes a lot more sense than jumping through those sort of hoops.

I think more and more people are aware of how much advertizing uses CG, I do architectural visuals and some product development visuals for a living and I've noticed how much more 'educated' (in terms of what is possible) and demanding my clients are becoming. It's a good thing. Now if their budgets were growing as fast as their expectations...