Redchillies.VFX has always been known for its attempt of thinking out of the box and executing innovative and excellent special effects in the Hindi film industry. Recently news got out that they took this innovation to a whole new level and along with Autodesk India presented a special gift to Shah Rukh Khan, which is the world’s first life size 3D printed model in his signature pose.
AnimationXpress.com recently caught up with the ‘brains and brawn’ behind this magnificent creation – Keitan Yadav and Harry Hingorani (from Redchillies.VFX) & Alok Sharma and Prasad Phadke (from Autodesk India) – to understand how, when and why did they think of this idea.
“We wanted to gift something really very special and personal to SRK on his birthday (2 November), something which money can’t buy,” revealed Redchillies.VFX COO/VFX Producer, Keitan Yadav. “We got the idea of the statue when Harry and I were attending a session at Autodesk University, where we witnessed an iPhone cover being printed using the Maya 3D software and modeling done using 3ds Max.”
He further went onto explain how that prompted them to attempt creating smaller miniatures of SRK using the tools of Autodesk to see how they could actually think of something very innovative. “We started testing with 2 inch tall miniatures and once those tests were successful, we reached out to Autodesk and the first bottleneck was to figure out how to reach our goal of creating a life-size statue of SRK.”
The duo of Keitan and Harry met up with Prasad from Autodesk India and bounced off ideas as to how would be the best way to reach the goal. In the first step while Shah Rukh Khan was shooting for Happy New Year, they scanned him using Autodesk’s Maya – the same way that they scan him for his films – by using the point cloud data to use it in Maya and recreate every detail in his body. The main hurdle that the team faced was how the statue would come out when it’s created in a life size model.
Explaining about the overall development and creation of the statue, Redchillies.VFX, CCO/VFX Supervisor, Harry Hingorani added: “Every feature of his face, to shape of his head, hand, legs were scanned to detail on the sets of HNY. There are no statues in this pose, which makes it very unique as well. SRK sent us many pictures for reference and it took us nearly two months for the model to get the accuracy with the rigging and other processes and then another two to three months in development from Autodesk India’s end.”
It was a conscious decision to use Chrome as the colour for the statue as the dynamic duo from Redchillies.VFX thought that being from the glamour industry the statue should shine anywhere that it is placed.
“The most difficult bit was to get the hair right, as we wanted to get the look of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. And now that his dimple is a little longer, we wanted to still give it the older smaller dimple to keep it memorable for him,” expounded Harry on the look used for the statue.
And finally, all this could not have been achieved if Autodesk India would not have helped and also got involved in the creative aspect of this one of a kind creation.
“When approached by Redchillies.VFX, we too were excited by the idea and our association goes back over a decade. We have been major players in the 3D space as well for over 30 years with Auto CAD, Maya 3D and 3Ds Max, so it was only right that we got involved in the creation of this life-size imitation of King Khan,” said Autodesk India, Head – Media & Entertainment, Alok Sharma.
The technology used for the creation is FDM (Fused deposition modeling), which is an additive manufacturing technology commonly used for modeling, prototyping, and production applications. It is one of the techniques used for 3D printing.
FDM works on an “additive” principle by laying down material in layers; a plastic filament or metal wire is unwound from a coil and supplies material to produce a part.
“The statue weighs in at about 40 kilograms and looks majestic. This certainly supports the ‘Make In India’ campaign as well and we have recently kept aside USD 100 million Spark investment funds to raise the level of innovation and have more collaborations in the 3D printing industry by investing in entrepreneurs, start-ups and researchers; who push the boundaries of what is possible. With our newly launched open source 3D platform SPARK, we will ensure it becomes more and more affordable, to enable more people to explore this technology,” ended Alok.
On receiving the statue SRK had some kind words to say for both Keitan and Harry as well as Alok and the team at Autodesk, “It’s the first 3D printed life-size model done by Redchillies.VFX and Autodesk team. It is overwhelming how technology has gone forward. I am grateful to be a part of this amazing technology. This is outstanding and I am dying to show it to my kids. It’s a silver and shiny statue of mine in my classic pose. I want to thank Keitan, Harry, Red Chillies VFX team and Autodesk team who have worked on it. It’s the figure of work I have done for all these years.”
Autodesk has always been involved in all the work that Redchillies.VFX has done, right from when it commenced, and the team will continue using Autodesk’s products in their upcoming film ‘Fan’ as well. Autodesk is also involved in the R&D process for the movie, which is currently under production. So one will just have to wait and watch what’s in store!