But that's just the first third of Button. The rest of the movie and the remainder of the character's curious life required the skills of several other vfx vendors, including:

• Asylum (supervised by Nathan McGuinness) handled the tugboat adventure that travels from the Mississippi, up the eastern sea-board to the mid Atlantic and across to Murmansk, Russia.

• Hydraulx (supervised by Erik Liles and Greg Strause) delivered 79 shots, including CG falling snow and breathe enhancement (Murmansk and other Russian locations); 2.5D Murmansk matte painting enhancement; 2D Paris matte painting enhancement (the accident scene); CG head replacements for Daisy (dance rehearsal and performance scenes); and CG Old Baby Button (replace animatronic/puppet).

• Lola VFX (supervised by Edson Williams) was responsible for the "youthening" effects on Button and Daisy (Cate Blanchett).

• Matte World Digital (supervised by Craig Barron) did an assortment of matte paintings.

Digital water, boats and environments were a perfect fit for Asylum. With the advancement in 3D technology and techniques, combined with the ongoing development of a pipeline for water, McGuinness (Oscar nominated for Master and Commander) was confident that Asylum had the knowledge and experience to deliver exactly the look Fincher was expecting.

Digital water, boats and environments were a perfect fit for Asylum, with its advanced work in 3D technology and techniques, combined with its ongoing development of a pipeline for water. Courtesy of Asylum. 

"The challenge for [us] was that the tugboat was shot on a greenscreen stage and its journey had to be seamlessly integrated into full digital environments that traversed rivers, and oceans environments," McGuinness explains. "This photoreal digital journey took place through morning, daytime, dusk and night, and there was fog and snow to complete the full gamut of environmental diversity."

One of the more spectacular moments in the movie was the tugboat battle with a submarine: the submarine was full CG and this sequence accounted for more two thirds of the (189) shots that Asylum was commissioned to design. Additionally, some of the tugboat shots that were filmed on a gimbal were replaced with full CG renderings of the tugboat to allow for creative dexterity in the battle.

McGuinness and his team were cognizant that when designing full CG environments and indeed full CG shots that there must be a photographic aesthetic and continuity must be preserved as if filming this as a live-action sequence.

As part of the project methodology for the battle, the decision was made to approach the animation design as one big shot for the entire scene. The CG team built a persistent world and animated the tug and submarine maneuvering at believable speeds to arrive at the final collision location. This approach assured that Fincher could see exactly what would have been there had the scene been shot for real out in the ocean.

For accuracy and simulation purposes everything was moved in "tug space" by setting the tug as the center of the world. Often details such as tires and bumpers or the hull itself had to be matchmoved to give the water team objects to splash against for proper interaction.

A spectacular moment in the movie was the tugboat battle with a submarine. Asylum designed the full CG environments as if the scene had been shot for real on the ocean. Courtesy of Asylum.

To deliver complete photorealism to these watery environments, development of digital water assets for the film involved a group of Asylum CG technicians and artists led by VFX/CG Supervisor Jason Schugardt. Meticulously integrating these elements seamlessly into each shot was a team of compositors headed up by Senior Compositor Mark Renton.

Each sequence had a unique water type whether it was the muddy Mississippi, choppy open ocean, chilly Murmansk Harbor or eerily calm waters of the Atlantic during the tugboat battle. The water team generated surfaces custom to each shot using proprietary code and in-house software for the RealFlow and lighting teams based on their specific needs. The RealFlow team would then simulate boat splashes on a low resolution proxy mesh that would then line up to the high resolution mesh lighters rendered in the final scenes.

Additionally, in the Tugboat battle sequence, Asylum had to create a burning ship with floating debris and dead sailors. The water was supposed to be a "dead calm" but even the smallest variation in ocean surface height made it obvious when objects weren't floating on the surface. A system was created that not only kept floating objects matched to the height and angle of the water but also moved them along the surface as the tide ebbed and flowed generating its own ripple and displacement.