Avatar 2 animators tricked James Cameron into believing some shots were practical

Much of Avatar: The Way of Water’s rub-your-eyes-in-disbelief magic stems from its ability to convincingly blur the practical and the digital – and the animators at Wētā FX did such a good job in that department that director James Cameron was often duped into approving entirely computer-generated shots. 

In an exclusive interview with TechRadar, Daniel Barrett, Senior Animation Supervisor at the New Zealand-based visual effects company, revealed that he and his team were sometimes forced to side-step Cameron’s desire to keep things as practical as possible in order to maintain the realism of certain shots. 

Source: www.techradar.com