The upcoming historical fantasy series on Sony Sab, Ali Baba Daastan-e-Kabul, is set to showcase some amazing visual effect moments. Mumbai-based post production house Raj VFX has worked on the teaser video of this show and shared a sneak-peak of what went into the making of the marvelous visuals for the promotion of the period drama.
The VFX house was briefed to create an 18th century cold snowy night in Kabul for the teaser video. For the 30-second promo, they delivered a total of six VFX shots.
“The crack in the moon (shown in the video) which is called ‘Darar-e-kahla’ was another concept that had to be incorporated. We were told it had to be fictional, so we created our own version of snowy Kabul. We did some research of the structures that existed during that era. We got it approved from the channel then went into execution,” VFX producer and director Chirag Bhuva told Animation Xpress.
The Raj VFX team had a meeting with the channel to understand the concept, based on which they researched on the structures of 18th century Kabul and presented the concept art.
“Once the concept art was approved, we did the comping in After Effects. Originally, the crack in the moon was planned to be done in Maya but due to time constraints the crack in the moon was done using, After Effects element in 3D,” he revealed.
A total of three DMP artists, three compositors and four 3D artists worked on the visuals of the upcoming TV series.
Throwing light on the unique challenges while delivering work for a TV series and how it is different from other mediums, Bhuva mentioned, “The big difference between television and other mediums is the timeline. In television everything has to be done in an extremely tight deadline. This creative task had to be done in four days. It’s always a challenging task and needs maximum man hours to get the creative done and all this has to be done without compromising on quality.”
He further revealed that the artists had used Unreal Engine assets to incorporate in the concept art matte.
“We have worked on multiple projects with the Sony Sab promo team for over three years now. It’s very rare you get a client that is so technical and detailed,” Bhuva concluded.
Recently, Sony Sab released Hindu mythology based fiction show titled, Dharm Yoddha Garud airing every Monday to Saturday at 7 pm starting 14 March. This show is touted to be the channel’s most expensive VFX heavy show.
As for Ali Baba Dastaan-e-Kabul, Raj VFX might work on the VFX of the entire show depending on the budget and other considerations. They have also done around 50-minutes of VFX work on recently released Hotstar show Kaun Pravin Tambe?. The studio is currently working on an upcoming Bollywood movie and a Netflix project.