For the extensive jungle action sequence, ILM came up with a new drag-and-drop technique for virtual vegetation generation. 

For the extensive jungle action sequence, ILM came up with a new drag-and-drop technique for virtual vegetation generation. "You build your assets (plants, trees, etc.) and then drag -and -drop into a 3D scene," Helman explains. "And then we populate the whole thing and then sim those assets and obviously we painted and lit them and that goes into the scene as well." This is another instance of leveraging technology from the videogame industry.

Helman additionally oversaw the second unit filming of the waterfall sequences in Argentina (where he was born) and Brazil. "We dropped those plates into the cliff environment, but everything was put together by the Digi-matte department in 3D," he adds.

As for the supernatural temple climax, that required a great deal of CG. "The anti-chamber inside had to be done in CG because part of it had to be destroyed and couldn't be part of a practical set," Helman suggests. "Fifty percent of it is live-action with rotoscoping and CG. Inside the temple heart was a complete match with production design. That environment is a breakaway with a new tool we created called 'Fracture.' That allows you to break any hard surface model [more realistically], including the walls, in very specific ways because this is work that generally gets done by particle TDs, but because of the way they break, there's lots of penetration, lots of functions that have to be solved by creature TDs. So the whole environment was shared between the two departments.

The supernatural temple climax required a great deal of CG. The environment inside the temple heart is a breakaway with a new tool ILM created called Fracture. 

"Then that reveals another environment, which was the interior of the ship. And that had to be done CG because there was nothing practical there for that. But that sequence is kind of weird because it plays inside Spalko's head [played by Cate Blanchett] and what we're seeing is outside of her. Steven just went with…'When we cross, this is going to be a [wild] trip inside her head, so don't worry about it right now.' We did shoot Cate on a stage and she did a great job of acting out things that were not there. We brought in one skeleton just for her to interact with."

Meanwhile, the immense exterior of the temple breaking apart and water coming in at the end ("The Ten Commandments moment," as Spielberg called it) was also pretty demanding. "It was a combination of 3D environment from the Digi-matte point of view and all this particle work that had to be done from particle TDs and creature TDs and all the paint and Digi-matte environment as well as miniatures," Helman adds. "As with the most of the miniature work, it was photographed and then re-projected onto geometry."