An animated response

Meet the team from Coimbatore that created the teaser of Ranadheeran, based on Kochadaiiyaan

July 28, 2014 06:34 pm | Updated 07:56 pm IST - COIMBATORE

A grab from Ranadheeran

A grab from Ranadheeran

When Sivaprasad Velayudhan of Coimbatore-based Realworks Studios uploaded a video on YouTube on July 21, he did not expect the kind of reaction it received. In about a week, it garnered nearly 1.30 lakh hits and 300-odd comments. The popularity is not without reason.

Sivaprasad used the 3.52-minute trailer of Ranadheeran (>youtube.com/watch?v=Ni3rkBYHulU ), modelled on Kochadaiiyaan , to prove what is possible using open source software. And praise has come from all quarters, including from Soundarya Rajnikanth, who directed Kochadaiiyaan . She tweeted: “Impressive work using open source pipeline! Should meet soon Sivaprasad velayudhan, realworks studios!”

The idea for the trailer, says Sivaprasad, came when team members were listening to snatches of music for their ‘walkthrough’ videos. They chanced upon Greendjohn’s ‘Heal Me’ from Loophole . The rousing music got them thinking about a video just as dramatic.

“We wanted it to feature characters that people connect with. Hence, Rajinikanth,” says Sivaprasad, director of operations, Realworks.

There was also another reason for it. Only when they used known people as reference would they receive right feedback. “Else, they would have just told us we did a good job. People know how Rajnikanth looks and walks, how Deepika Padukone and Shobana look…it helps,” says Sivaprasad.

The project got a name — ‘Ranadheeran’ — and it took the 20-member Realworks team 756 man hours of work, 10 weeks of project time and 22,500 minutes of rendering 4,500 image frames.

The best part? They used open source software that they customised to their needs. The team says the time and money they used up is a fraction of “industry standard budget and time”.

They used regular workstations, and hand-made animation to achieve almost the same, and in certain cases, a better effect.

No actors were involved; instead, they went by references from the Internet. All this happened in the locality of Chinnavedampatti, near Ganapathy, far away from the city’s buzz.

“From 2009, we have been working in the field of architectural visualisation,” says Sivaprasad.

The team has received a lot of calls from fans of the Superstar and the film industry, from here and abroad.

Do they plan to make this a full-fledged movie? “No. This was just a project to showcase possibilities of free and open source software. Our company runs entirely on this. This is our idea of saying thanks to all those who created the software.”

The Real Deal

Real open source software gives users a source code and allows them to modify software to suit their needs. Among the software the Realworks team used are Blender, a 3D application; Gimp, an image application comparable to Adobe Photoshop; and Audacity, a sound editing and recording software.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.