Hasta La Motion!

The 18th edition of FICCI Frames saw some of the most insightful sessions that were a tribute to the year 2016 and covered the trends of 2017. Of these, was the making of The Jungle Book by MPC Bengaluru, a studio which contributed to a major portion of the making of the fully CG generated live-action feature.

MPC Bengaluru created a pipeline in 2009 to connect them to the other MPC branches around the world – London (headquarters), Vancouver, Los Angeles, Montreal and many more. A team of around 400 artists from MPC Bengaluru worked on the making of the Academy Award-winning film, beginning from pre-production to the final delivery.

The team worked on not only animation and VFX, but also on the creation of a number of assets including the animal and bird species, foliage, rocks, boulders and entire environments and backgrounds. A group of 10 artists visited places in north and south India to get references of the landscapes, sunrise and sunset. They also took 360-degree shots of trees, plants, boulders and rocks amounting to 30 TB data to get photogrammetry textures. To combine the pictures and create a CG effect, Autodesk’s Recap was used.

MPC Bengaluru, asset site supervisor, Lincoln Fernandes said that the film sets were large and high-resolution images made them heavy. Due to this, they kept certain elements like mud and grass in presets. The asset creation team had to create all assets from the ground level – skeleton, body and size of fur coat. They had to understand the anatomy of each animal to give them perfect movements while they are walking or in action, and while saying dialogues. To get these references, they had to depend on images and videos on the internet. Assets, HOD, Prashant Nair explained that the director did not want any exaggeration in terms of movements of animals and facial muscles while speaking. The animals seemed larger than life only because they were from Mowgli’s point of view.

Voice artists recorded the dialogues and the animators heard the clips multiple times to get the correct emotion to animate the facial expressions and the muscular systems of the animals. They could not break the anatomy of animals just to depict an emotion. It had to be done subtly, yet in a way that the audience felt it, because it was, as the team call it, “a movie about emotions”. A lot of research and development went into the study to make it look real.

The movie was shot in stereo, with two cameras. For work on post-production, the challenge was to capture the motion of the real camera on virtual camera. Roto Anim was used for casting shadows in the post work.

Tremendous amount of research and work also went into lighting, shadows and composting work. Shadows had to be created. CG replacement of the actor who played Mowgli had to be created. Certain parts of Mowgli’s body were CG generated in some of the sequences. Vines, rocks, and blending of the elements in naturally occurring phenomenon required minute detailing and hours long of work. Mood lighting was used extensively as the film had a deep connection to emotions.

A team of 34 compositors worked on “deep compositing”. The average render time for one frame was 19 hours. One sequence took about 40 hours of rendering. But everything was so well planned that time required for research and post-production did not fall short, and 100 per cent was given for every shot.

All sites of MPC working on The Jungle Book from various parts of the world were connected with Multisite Pipeline. The software Alice was used for crowd simulation. Papi was used for transformation of objects and subjects. Furtility was used for fur, hair and grass simulation. Kali was their destruction algorithm which destroyed property based on its matter. Besides that, they had an asset management system which was completely data driven. For micro services, Amanda was used. Shot Grid and Pronto were the production management software while Python and C++ were the core languages. Houdini, Katana, Maya, Nuke and RenderMan were some of the other software. Lastly, Google proved useful for cloud rendering.

The goal of the team that worked on The Jungle Book at MPC Bengaluru has always been: “the larger we get, the more work we do”. The team never forgets that they are artists, which motivates them to deliver every shot with equal precision. The team explained how all the artists working on this film worldwide delved into its heart and soul. Only then, did this path-breaking film came to life.

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