Rhythm & Hues returned to the Night at the Museum franchise to generate the fantastic CG effects of Battle of the Smithsonian. The Visual Effects Supervisor, Raymond Chen, found the scale of the project daunting.
Not only are the new characters staggering in number, but each required a different specialty for Chen’s team to pull off properly. Whether it’s the hair on a photo-real squirrel or the light and luster of a moving, talking marble statue, Chen had to simultaneously deal with characters and events in completely different scales, from miniature cowboys to a gigantic, writhing octopus. That’s in addition to compositing matte paintings and creating CG set-extensions.
Unlike most films which involve a single character in hundreds of shots, Night at the Museum had dozens of characters in hundreds of shots.
