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Technology used in the movie ‘ENDHIRAN’

ENDHIRAN is a Sci-Fi emotional movie which involves the use of advanced Science of Animatronics and Visual FX, shortly termed as VFX.

The visual effects showcase to the world audience from India. The movierequired an unobtrusive VFX of over 2000 shots that add up to around60 scenes in the film. An Indian Technocrat named V.Srinivas handledthe entire film Visual Effects as a VFX Supervisor. Frankie Chung andEddy Wong from the Hollywood were the additional supervisors for theVFX.

A lot of techniques were used in this movie to reach internationalstandards. Three of them are:

1. Pre – Production with Detailed Pre – Visualization

2. Animatronics

3. Light Stage Face Scanning Technology.

Studios & Teams from the Hollywood were used to implement thesetechnologies in the movie.

Figure 1 Pre Production Stage. Animated movie scene of the film.

Pre-Production with Details Pre-Visualization is the designingphase of the project where the story time-line was discussed and properdesigns of integrating the appropriate technology were done and thedesigns were implemented into physical forms.

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This was one of the most important parts of the visual effects workinvolved in the movie. Sanath.P.C from Firefly Studios supervised on thepre-production of the scenes. About 40 scenes were pre-visualized in thepre-production stage and were done in animation before going in for theactual shoot. The pre-production of these scenes alone took 6 – 7months.

Figure 2 Animatronic Robot Puppet Used in the movie.

Animatronics is the use of Mechatronic Objects with motion sensors

which can be made to move with the help of remotely operated devices. The motion sensor will capture the movement of the person whoimpersonates the object and will make its movements accordingly. Thiswas the technology that was earlier used by Stephen Spielberg in hisAward Winning Movie ‘Jurassic Park’

This animatronics was used in about 22 scenes in the total of the movie.All the resources and technology available were used for the sameincluding, puppets, mannequins and special make-up. Two main Robotpuppets were designed and built exclusively for this project. About 40mannequins of the Robot Rajinikanth were got from Legacy EffectsStudio for the scenes involving number of robots.

The VFX Team used a unique technology such as the Doom Light Stage Scanning for the detail high resolution CGI Face. Also the IndianArtists have developed a new proprietary skin shader plugin with the help of

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Jupiter Jazz, the developers of shake. The shader is open source and the codefor it is available at https://code.google.com/p/jupiterskin

Some of the major jinx in the visual treatment was the motion control shotswhich had multiplication of the Robot Character. This involved a lot of planning

before going for the shots and getting it 100% done with less money spent.Having the frame information on the top and bottom in the super 35 format,Indian artists devised a camera rig to get perfection with manual controlwithout the action motion control rigs, which would have consumed lot of time,money and human effort if it were used for the complete project.

Motion graphics and head up displays in the film have been minor parts whichwere taken care in detail to reveal the story and give the science fiction textureto the visuals. The story establishes the robot character to distinguish from thescientist which was donned by the same person. This involved a lot headremovals and dual character interactions live with the animatronic blended

character movement. This was done by meticulous planning in execution of short with seamless blending and compositing.

The seamless blending of key frame animation, motion capture, animatronics,multi robots, real model/texture scan of character had given the right photo-real blend to story. VFX have been seamless and consistent with right colortiming from the DI team lead by Mr. Ken, Reliance Media Works.

Figure 3 Cimax Sequence. Snake Formation. Categorical Blending of Animatronics &Graphics.

The most interesting and challenging sequence in the movie is the ClimaxSequence. The Climax sequence involves 100s of robots grouping into a clusterwith their electromagnetic powers and forming different shapes and forms of

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characters such as a giant snake and giant human. Each of the robots had aseparate biped and each of them had to be animated to for the formation of thefinal form and characters to be smooth, such as the formation of the head of the giant snake.

Yes. For the audience to experience the thrill of science for a few hours, a crewof highly qualified technocrats and highly imaginative directors had to put intheir heart and soul for 3 years and spend 6 months of sleepless nights.

This is the technical perspective of the $41,675,740 project to entertain thepeople across the world with an enchanting name ‘ENDHIRAN’

THE END