Even though it has been eight weeks since its release, Rajkumar Hirani's Aamir Khan starrer PK, is still hot off the rocks with collecting over Rs. 273 crores in the domestic box-office. It is also being touted as the highest-grossing Indian film of all time. Apart from the principal cast of Aamir Khan, Anushka Sharma along with a handful of well know supporting actors that have given the film its true essence, what completes the package is the visual effects (VFX) of the film. Riva VFX & Animation, a relatively new post-production house was roped into deliver the visual effects for the film. Headed by Viral Thakkar, creative director & co partner of Riva the film delivered and astounding 700 visual effects shots in 9 months with an arsenal of 100 artists working round the clock to achieve the project. Talking about Viral coming on board team PK, director Rajkumar Hirani says, "Viral and his team at Riva has delivered far beyond my expectation, giving me the confidence to go on when I felt challenged in shooting sequences which were next to impossible or difficult like the train blast sequence and also putting together the opening sequence with the spaceship in a cloud landing." Bollywood Hungama 's Philip Bode, gets Viral to take us behind the 'visual effects' making of PK.
Talking about his experience in working on one of India's biggest film grosser and working with Rajkumar Hirani Viral says, "We are equally delighted to have been part of the making of PK and the opportunity to have worked with Raju sir, which was a pleasure and a one of a kind experience."
With over 700 shots to augment, Viral admits that there were a few challenging moments in executing the visual effects in PK, he says, "For the most of the film, rotoscoping and paint were required on about 550 shots. While in 3D tracking, the biggest challenge was the ear replacement sequence in which the artists had to match the motion of PK's ears precisely, so that it could be replaced with CGI ears they made digitally.
Giving us a gist of their pipeline and tech use, Viral says "Even though the film was shot at 4K resolution, the pipeline was still the same that we followed for all the other films. At Riva, the work pipeline is capable of handling all 2K and 4K projects. We've used Maya, 3DS Max, Nuke and Photoshop to accentuate the 700 visual effects shots for the film, we created volumetric fluids for cloud simulation, environmental smoke and dust for the opening sequence. For the train blast sequence, we generated fire, smoke, explosions etc.
The main idea of the visual effects for the film is to keep it simple and clean, while keeping it realistic not diverting from the storyline, talking about the pre-production and brief exchanged with Rajkumar Hirani Viral says, "We came onboard rather late into the production, with this we did not get enough time for pre-production in the project the way we would. Although, we conducted pre-visualizations, planned and conceptualized key sequences in the film. For instance, the train blast sequence had to be planned completely from a VFX point of view as we were not allowed to take any pyrotechnic (fire) related equipment on to the railway platform.