Anifest '09: Behind the scenes of India's Vfx studios

VFX, or visual effects, has become the latest buzzword in the post-production industry with studios, big and small, vying for lucrative jobs in Bollywood and Hollywood. In an industry that's almost a decade old, it is a lesser known fact that a significant chunk of the visual effects for recent international films like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I Am Legend and Surf's Up had been executed by Indian studios.

Anifest ’09: Behind the scenes of India’s Vfx studios

This and more was discussed at the recently held Anifest India, India's largest animation festival. Addressing an eager audience of animation and vfx professionals, Krishnakant Mishra, Creative Director, Sony Imageworks India, shared the latest technical know how, including a state-of-the-art 2D to 3D stereoscopy converter and the technology used to imitate live-action into animation, real time.

Mishra's studio has worked on, among others, on the animation film Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs and the 3D stereoscopic G-Force. Explaining the process of converting a 2D live action film into a 3D stereoscopic, Mishra said, "In case of G-Force, we shot the whole film with one camera and the stereoscopy was digitally created. What we do is we shoot the left eye image and then create the right eye with an offset of 2.5mm, which is the distance between the human eyes. By doing so, we not only make the movie a very interesting watch but also save on money."

Talking about Rotomation, which enables a 3D model to be animated exactly the way the actor moves, Mishra said, "We used this technology extensively in I Am Legend, for making the animated zombies seem like real humans." He also shared Imageworks' propriety 3D solutions like Imagemotion and Katana.

Concluding his technical presentation, Mishra opined, "The major challenge for the vfx industry today is dealing with the ever-growing complexity (of filmmaking)."

Image Credit: TASI - Santosh Sawant and Isteyaq Qadri