Deconstructing the VFX of PK

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, Read More">with this we did not get enough time forRead More

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.

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.”

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, Read More">the biggest challenge was the ear replacement sequence in which the artistsRead More

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, Read More">NukeRead More

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.

“Given that the film took about 5 years to make, the team at Riva faced a bit of challenges in executing some of the astonishing VFX seen, talking about the feat Viral says, Read More">“While working in the visual effects for this film the most challenging scene apart from the ear replacement and train blast sequenceRead More

"Given that the film took about 5 years to make, the team at Riva faced a bit of challenges in executing some of the astonishing VFX seen, talking about the feat Viral says, "While working in the visual effects for this film the most challenging scene apart from the ear replacement and train blast sequence was the opening sequence with the spaceship and the cloud as this was the most important sequence in the film. A lot of time was spent on research and planning of the visual effect used before incorporating a final shot with the happy cloud. We made different versions of the spaceship, and also changed the timing of certain sequences from night to early morning sunrise."