Visual effects
Visual effects (commonly shortened to Visual F/X or VFX) are the various processes by which imagery is created and/or manipulated outside the context of a live action shoot. Visual effects often involve the integration of live-action footage and computer generated imagery (CGI) in order to create environments which look realistic, but would be dangerous, costly, or simply impossible to capture on film. They have become increasingly common in big-budget films, and have also recently become accessible to the amateur filmmaker with the introduction of affordable animation and compositing software.
The latest Telugu blockbuster by Director Rajamouli, ‘Magadheera’ starring Ram Charan Tej and Kajal Agarwal has over 63 minutes of enthralling VFX work done by Prasad EFX from its Hyderabad and Chennai facilities.
Produced by Allu Aravind’s Geeta Arts, ‘Magadheera’ has over 890 VFX shots that took nearly one year and 10000 man days to complete. The scope of work included animation, 3D tracking, digital matt backgrounds, complicated rope removals and compositing. The arena sequence is a must see, involving some of the most complicated amalgamation of stunts and graphics.
Majority of the shots in the film were shot against blue mattes and composited using computer generated background layers.
Most of the 3D shots done for the film involved 3D tracking. Especially the Arena/Stadium sequence, required lot of pre- viz. Lot of technical details were collected during the shoot which included tracker point distance, camera angles, lenses used, distortions if any etc. All these put together helped the technicians in the studio to get live footage perfectly matched with the CG elements.
Speaking to AnimationXpress.com Prasad EFX DI & VFX Executive Producer Hima Kumar said “The technical contribution of the Director and Cinematographer in the VFX shots was of great help in this mega project. The 3D model for a very complicated arena sequence was done by Adel Adeli, the lighting, crowd animation, and the pipeline was done by Pete Draper while Kamalakannan was the coordinator for this sequence. The excellent team work is reflected in this wonderful sequence which is a highlight of the film”.
The Helicopter sequence was entirely shot using a helicopter dummy which looked almost real but without blades. The rotor blades were modeled and animated in 3D and composited on the live footage. Work was done even on the extremely minute details like the shadows of the blades falling on the helicopter body. The dummy helicopter was moved in the air using industrial cranes and the wires and cranes were removed additionally in the post production. The background plates (arial shots) for the helicopter shots were separately shot using a real helicopter
In this sequence the water force was created in CG to show the hero getting sucked into the water pipe which was taken in a separate layer. The lighting rays were also worked upon to give the right feel. Also all the leaves and fishes were created in CG to give a natural look to the scene.The Aghora‘s Cave establishing shot was entirely CG including the fire inside.
Prasad EFX delivers VFX extravaganza for 'Magadheera'
BY ANIMATIONXPRESS.COM TEAM
The matte’s for the entire Bhairava Kona climax sequence involved blue matte shots, set extensions and effects.
The “Bangaru kodipetta” song had “Live to 3D and 3D to Live” shot in it. The hero freezes from live to a stone character and later energies out of that stone structure live. It involved replacing the live hero and background artists with 3D models, 3D tracking modeling and texturing was a challenging job.
