Unlike most dinosaur documentaries, for instance BBC's previous Walking with Dinosaurs (1999), which blended live-action footage with CGI animals, Planet Dinosaur relied solely on computer generated graphics to create its imagery. 21 habitats were created altogether. They primarily used a software called SOFTIMAGE XSI as well as NUKE to build up these environments, combining actual, CGI terrains and digital matte-paintings to fill in the background, since building up an entirely 3D environment would have been next to impossible, given the immense computing power and rendering times that such an undertaking would have required.
The project was realized under 18 months, with about 50 people.
The narrator refers to the tyrannosaurs from the Zuni Basin as "Zunityrannus", which is not an actual dinosaur name. The animal's fossils were still unpublished and unnamed when the series was produced, and the scientists studying the fossils even asked the BBC not to use the name "Zunityrannus". Due to the rules of scientific nomenclature, an animal cannot be given a formal name that has already been used in a non-scientific publication, such as a TV documentary. The BBC denied the request of the scientists, and by doing so they invalidated the "Zunityrannus" name. In 2019, the animal was finally given the formal scientific name Suskityrannus. The name "Zunityrannus" cannot be used by scientists due to its erroneous usage in this series.
Compositing 2.8 million frames took 11 months to finish, by 10 computer artists.
Bleeding effects were simply created by "plastering" real footage of running ink or milk over the digitally painted skin textures of the CGI animals, subsequently modifying it to look like blood.
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