The movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes belongs for sure to one of the breakthrough movies in the world of VFX such as Avatar before. While James Cameron had the advantage of studio interiors where he shoot all the scene for Avatar and where the weather had no influence on the recording, the makers of RPA had it more harder. They actually took Camerons effects and used them in the open space. The sensors were attached directly on the actors and all cameras were hidden all around, but not to interact with any other camera. The main character of the chimp Ceasar acts the famous actor Andy Serkis.
You could see him before like the Glum character in Lord of the rings or in Camerons King-Kong. The hardest by playing this character was according to Andy, that he had to know the mimic of chimps but also to put into this mimic something human. The senior VFX supervisor Joe Letter tells that many times it wasnt about projecting Andys acting into a CG model but more about the interpreting. 20th Century Fox decided to let all the VFX on Weta Digital, not to save money but to ensure that the apes in the whole movie will be consistent. The makers finished in one year more tham 1000 scenes and worked more than 80h per week. Despite using Maya (for hair and fur), Mari (textures) and Massive (for batch scenes) they used they own software. You dont have to like the whole saga of Planet of Apes, but definitely this movie is worth to watch it.