You could technically say it was one of the earliest proto-concepts of photogrammetry.
The CGI was also animated based on the kinematics of the animatronic (similar to rotoscoping), which is why it moved so well and looked so good.
CGI based on practical effect puppets/animatronics are always far superior to just CGI rendered objects (since they have real-to-life reference modeling to draw from).
It's why even when some films opt for night time shots with minimal lighting or rain it still looks very uncanny (i.e., the recent Planet of the Apes movies).
Technically... it was a bit more involved than that: it was a 3D model based on photoscans of a full-size real life animatornic T-Rex:
https://youtu.be/B4J9TBlFxAg
You could technically say it was one of the earliest proto-concepts of photogrammetry.
The CGI was also animated based on the kinematics of the animatronic (similar to rotoscoping), which is why it moved so well and looked so good.
CGI based on practical effect puppets/animatronics are always far superior to just CGI rendered objects (since they have real-to-life reference modeling to draw from).
It's why even when some films opt for night time shots with minimal lighting or rain it still looks very uncanny (i.e., the recent Planet of the Apes movies).
Dang. I didn’t know that. Thank you for sharing!