Skyfall

Paul Hellard writing for cgsociety.org:

Neill reveals that Cinesite has their own inhouse photographer and they had access to two komodos at the London Zoo. They were able to get right up close to the komodos, as there was a special room where the artists could set up lights and get some really close-up high resolution texture images of the skin of the komodo for reference. Eyes, teeth, flaky skin and mouth. Using this truly reference material, Cinesite’s character animation team modeled the creature in Maya and textured it using Mudbox and Mari, before compositing it into the live-action plate using Nuke. “One of the komodos was ‘friendlier’ because it was hand-reared and the keeper was in the room with it,” adds Neill. “That dragon was great for textures, but there was another one, younger and feistier. We used that one to study the movement with three synched video cameras, as it jumped around catching mice and anything else it wanted.”