Director Len Wiseman returned to the studio for this project, having worked with Ntropic founder/creative director Nathan Robinson and his team on the original Underworld release back in 2003.
Robinson and fellow visual effects supervisor Andrew Sinagra led the Ntropic team. "The dark, gritty look of the picture is a visual style that we are very comfortable with," says Sinagra.
The majority of sequences completed by the team featured a combination of CG and 2D effects. Wiseman traveled to Ntropic's San Francisco office to work closely with the visual effects artists on key sequences. In one of the film's final sequences, for example, artists deconstructed footage of a helicopter crash and rebuilt the scene as an all-digital, photoreal shot. Ntropic used a combination of Quantel Henry, Alisa Maya and Discreet Fire, Inferno, Flame and Smoke on the project.
"The Ntropic team really embraced my vision," says Wiseman. "We have a similar aesthetic and working in their facility interactively made the process a real collaboration."