Making of Magadheera visual effects

Copyright M/s Geetha Arts & Adel Adili - 14 march 2008

Erected Set – King’s seating area & waterfall mountain

Erected set – People gallery & Entrance tower

In India, most 3d computer graphics are happening in 8-bit colour depth, which is much inferior to the colour depth of film negative. That’s why, when we composite live & CG, the CG looks separate from the live “plate”. The only way to do a perfect composite is to follow the same colour-bit depth of the film negative. It needs an experienced, dedicated team to do so. As the VFX producer of the film my job is to find suitable studio/freelancer to deliver utmost quality at proper budget on time. So, we brought in Mr.Pete Draper of UK as our Pipeline Technical Director. Pete had worked with me in Ghajini ( Hindi). His knowledge in Pipeline setup, Renderfarm setup, 3D Particle flows are impeccable. He had also penned many 3D technical books. With the right mix of theoretical & practical knowledge, Pete landed at Hyderabad during the Stadium shooting, which was happening under EFX Prasad’s supervision.

I was in Iran during the schedule, finalising the CG stadium and City with Adel. The major portion of the film was shot in Anamorphic but to minimise the distortion, super 35 camera gate & lenses were used for the stadium episode. The Post-Production of the stadium was given to Prasad EFX, Chennai, a well-known facility. Headed by Mr.Hima Kumar, it has rich experience and had the right people to do the final composite. The producer gave me enough encouragement ( and budget ) to set-up our own Renderfarm in Chennai. The Pipeline, Pete set up, for the post is the “heart” of the process. EFX was lucky to’ve got him as TD. They won’t go back to 8-bit comp ever.

The post process was in several stages, after the scan. 3d-tracking, (or blocking for steady shots), export/import the tracked camera in the 3d-software, setup the light to match the live plate, render the back-ground plates, composite it and deliver. The live stadium had only 7 steps, in which live people were positioned in 6 steps. The remaining 12 steps are CG extension. Adel has done the 3d CG people to fill the CG steps and their actions, in a library of 3000 frames

live plate

CG stadium Extension

CG Extension with 3d people

So a typical composite will have live layer, Stadium layer, 3d people layer, sky layer, flags layer, digital soldiers layer & birds layer. ( All in several 16-bit file passes.) Pete has designed the Birds (particles) in two flows, one “flow” kept on “flying” around the stadium and the other flow takes off from a position dome and lands on a target dome. Director had used the birds in several shots effectively. Also the huge balloons over the live set denote where the CG structure to be positioned later in post and served as a reference for the 3d lighting.

It all went like clock work. On finishing stages of the stadium composite, I ventured to Iran again to work with Adel for the 3d city shots. The city-shots created entirely in CG. The shots where the two horses enter the city gates and the one fly-thru, which travels along the city and ends on top of the Lion’s wings are treat to watch. When we started the city-shot renders, it has taken several hours to render one frame. But Adel re-corrected the geometry and applied several path breaking ideas, so, even on 24th July, just a week before the film release, we were able to do corrections, render and submit. Adel designed the 3d horses with hero & villain and Pete designed the 3d people flocking behind the horses. Perfect team work.

Copyright M/s Geetha Arts & Adel Adili

Copyright M/s Geetha Arts, Adel Adili & Pete Draper

Copyright M/s Geetha Arts

Copyright M/s Geetha Arts, Adel Adili, Pete Draper