Ra.One: India's Iron Man
A sneak peek of India's biggest superhero/VFX movie.
Bollywood has its own superhero with an arsenal of VFX. Courtesy of redchillies.vfx.
Ra.One is the maiden feature by Bollywood superstar and producer Shah Rukh Khan (nicknamed SRK and King Khan) from his entertainment production company, redchillies.vfx. He began his career with the TV serial Fauzi and became an overnight heartthrob. His last film, My Name is Khan, was an international hit. SRK now wants to conquer the hearts of children, not by adorning a special suit -- the costliest worn to date by any hero onscreen in India -- but by providing a superhero to children. The intention is to shake up viewers across the world utilizing some of the latest CG advancements. Mamta Narang interviews Jeff Kleiser (who served as lead visual effects supervisor) along with the heads of redchillies.vfx: Harry Hingorani (production director and vfx supervisor) and Keitan Yadav (COO and vfx producer). Ra.One is slated to be released in October coinciding with the Diwali festival.
According to Keitan Yadav: this is the most expensive and one of a kind VFX movie done in India to date. The VFX budget is enormous like the budget of a big Bollywood blockbuster.
Sixty % of work in Ra.One is visual effects. There are 37 sequences and a majority of them are difficult and time consumingThe most challenging sequence is the suit of SRK, which is a combination of visual effects plus reality.
have spent a good deal of time developing the pipelines for the cubic transformations in the film. There are actually six or seven different algorithms required to facilitate all the on-screen action, and the development and testing of these pipelines has been the most challenging aspect of the show for me.
The scope and complexity of shots posed a new challenge.
According to the team, the uniqueness of Ra One is a Superhero is being offered to children, which has never been done in Indian cinema before and this global team.
Harry Hingorani (production director and vfx supervisor) talks about the softwares used:: Houdini, Maya and 3ds Max. For composting, Nuke, Shake and Fusion. We have setup a few plug-ins to export the 800 suit Matchmation shots from Maya to Houdini to render everything procedurally, hence making the whole procedure automatic. In regards to compositing, we have used the same procedure using Nuke scripts.