Baahubali 2 – The New Standard-Bearer for VFX in India?

The Baahubali VFX is phenomenal. These visual effects are one of the primary reasons for the movie’s astounding success worldwide.

If you haven’t watched the film yet, here’s the trailer to give you a little idea of the hype and massive global success. Who did VFX for Bahubali? The visual effects team played a crucial role in bringing the grandeur and epic scenes to life, contributing significantly to the movie's success.

How did Bahubali’s Magical VFX Come To Be?

Now that you’ve got a little taste, you can see that the movie packed stunning visuals and eye-watering effects. Curious about the magic behind those effects? Let’s take a deeper look and find out who did VFX for Bahubali and how it all came to be.

As the quint reports, RC Kamalakannan took the reigns as the film’s VFX supervisor in October 2015, and managed to extract all that VFX goodness that you see in the movie in the limited time-frame of less than six months that he was given to work with when first brought on board. With such a small window to operate in for a big project, Kamalakannan had his hands full.

After all, as the article suggests, the film contains approximately 2,500 VFX shots, which required close to 13,500 tasks to be screen-worthy. He delegated and spread the workaround to achieve his deadline and deliver quality work. Nearly 35 VFX studios were onboard to handle various parts of Baahubali 2.

Delegation of work across VFX studios

Why spread the work around rather than assign a single studio or Baahubali 2 VFX company to handle it?

Quotes Kamalakannan: “When you give entire scenes to VFX studios, they won’t say no; however, one must remember that each studio specialises in something. They’ll take plenty of time for R&D (research and development) if given other work, and the final output might not be top quality. I decided I wouldn’t give any studio R&D time to work on the tasks. A shot can have multiple tasks. So, we chose studios based on what task they specialise in. They were only given that if someone was good at cloud or liquid simulations. This process helped us get the best out of each VFX studio and saved us time and money.”

Before we go any further, here’s a short video just to give you an idea on the type of VFX work that was put into this film.

https://youtu.be/9cVjcuZNVIM

Interesting tidbits from the makers

AnimationXpress has more quotes from Kamalakannan and provides a fascinating peek into the kind of peek into his and his team's work.

He provided insight into the project management software and timelines: “VFX shot division was given to stunt choreographer Lee Whitaker as early as possible. On the post front, Cerebro, the project management software, and the others were decided upon. Since Germany has good security and fast response features, all post-related data storage was decided to be there. The pipeline was laid, and the workflow was in place by the time we started the shoot.

He also spoke about the film's type of effects and the team structure in charge: “I decided to use Miniature Practical FX, and that too with a previously unknown studio in Denmark. I had the whole team’s cooperation. Before filming major sequences, there used to be a full team meeting that had to be attended by all the ADs, ACs, art, stunt, and VFX teams. If I felt it required sharper images in certain shots, I asked the DoP to change the shutter angle without hesitation. Sir, the director often decided on the VFX prop with Sabu Cyril. Overall, it was a systematic work environment in the line producer’s control.”

Talking about the magnitude and scope of the work put in by the Baahubali 2 VFX team, he says, “It is teamwork. My VFX producer, comp supervisors, line producers and I were constantly travelling to meet all those working directly on the Bahubali VFX shots. The pivotal artist had the data needed for all 2000 odd shots in Cerebro. The ‘inputs’ were majorly Arri files, with CC files from DI shared via Cerebro. The match-move for ALL shots were outsourced to two studios, with one of them handling 70 to 80 per cent of the work. Lidar data was provided to make match moves seamless. Roto and prep work were handled by separate contractors, and the assets, textured and rigged from other studios, were also in Cerebro. The production had a 10 system render-farm installed, so, initial render tests could be submitted by ANY studio via virtual private networks (VPN). We-render, from Pune, was roped in to offer render farm services. All the studios could use We-render, free of their contract-cost. These liberal decisions from producers facilitated timely delivery.”

Now that you have an idea of the sheer effort that went in to making a project as massive as this come to life, here is one last video. This detailed clip carries interviews with producer Shobu Yarlagadda, director Rajamouli, VFX artist John Griffith, and Kamalakannan himself answers any lingering questions you may have about how the films gorgeous visuals came to be.

‘Wow’ is the word. Isn’t it inspiring to see such great work executed so beautifully? Do you want to follow in RC Kamalakannan’s footsteps and help create the subsequent visual effects masterpiece from India? If yes, check out all the professional VFX courses we offer here at Seamedu and begin your journey towards achieving this dream today.

Featured Image Source: youtube.com