New Delhi Filmmakers in India are excited about new game engines that allow them to combine live action and computer-generated moving pictures to create movies and TV shows. While visual effects and computer-generated imagery are not particularly new, the domestic film industry has long been grappling with cost concerns, which have been a major cause of poor quality computer-generated imagery (CGI) in films.
Game engines are software frameworks designed to allow video game developers to code and plan games. They take care of visual elements like lighting and character movements. Similar features can and have been used in the production of movies and TV shows in the past as well.
Now, however, experts said that these tools, such as the Unreal Engine 5 from US-based Epic Games and Unity Technologies from Unity 2021, not only make the technology cheaper to use but also cut down on production time, thereby increasing costs even further. decreases. Some even allow anyone to get a creator license for free.
For example, in the March 2022 film RRR, the filmmakers used Unreal Engine 5 to recreate the action sequences of wildfire and underwater.
Similarly, in a scene from the Telugu film Radhe Shyam, actor Prabhas exits a phone booth on the rainy streets of London and approaches a cab. However, instead of taking the entire crew to London, the filmmakers placed the London backdrop on an LED wall, a giant screen consisting of short segments, and shot the scene in a studio in India in just three days.
Radhe Shyam’s cinematographer Manoj Paramhans said that the scene could not be shot in London at that time due to winter. So, while most of the film was shot in London, part of it was done in India. They shot Prabhas entering a booth in a studio in front of an LED wall and put the footage into the Unreal Engine, which provided the final output.
The merging of real and virtual elements is called a virtual production pipeline, which includes software tools such as previews that allow filmmakers to shoot, edit, and export film sequences before actual shooting begins. Such software allows a technique called in-camera visual effects (ICVFX), where special effects are captured in-camera rather than in the post-production process. The camera LED captures both the virtual elements of the wall and the physical elements of the shot, merging them automatically. This became especially useful during pandemics when crews could not move freely around cities, states or countries.
According to the March 2022 EY-FICCI report, revenue from VFX in India is expected to grow from $38 billion in 2021 to $58.7 billion in 2022 and $93.1 billion in 2024. Experts said the use of software-driven VFX is also expected to increase. Ahead. The report attributed this to the adoption of virtual production in films, rising VFX budgets for content and offshore global projects in India.
Paramhans explained that platforms like the Unreal Engine existed 20 years ago, but it was the introduction of real-time visualization that changed things now. In addition, filmmakers also take advantage of gaming features such as ray tracing offered by hardware makers such as Nvidia, which allows lighting in virtual worlds to behave more realistically.
He added that VFX-based scenes which earlier took 12 days to watch and complete, are now being completed in three days using real-time rendering. “The problem with filmmakers is time versus money. In filmmaking, time is very important, because the equipment, the people, everything is expensive.”
Chaitanya Chinchalikar, vice president of film school Whistling Woods International, agreed. However, he added that the low cost does not mean that every shot uses virtual production.