I think if you handed this image to a VFX artist and said “make this,” they could do it. They probably could have done it back in 2015, too.

But the team making this image didn’t have it in advance. They just had some ideas they wanted to try out.

The story of how it was made is not just the story of the techniques they used, but also how they applied and adjusted those techniques to try things and see how it looked.

This image was “made” in that people built the stuff that was photographed, but it was also kind of “discovered” in that they tried a bunch of things until they discovered what they liked.

That’s possible in VFX too, but the process is different and too many iterations can quickly erase any cost advantage. This is one reason animated movies are disciplined about locking the script early in production. You can’t cost-effectively improv your way through an animated movie the way a director and actors can with a camera and a set.