So, I went back to the team saying, if we nail it, it’s going to look incredible on screen. It was quite challenging because it’s integral to the story, ties up a lot of things and, more importantly, no one would have seen something like ever in Indian cinema in terms of its scale, drama and action. I can’t reveal too many details on what we worked on, but when SS Rajamouli shared his vision of how a sequence leading up to the climax is going to be, we championed that sequence. What was your biggest challenge while working on Baahubali 2?Īs the principal studio for the film’s VFX, we got a chance to work on some of the most complex set pieces within the film.
Pete, two years ago, you spoke extensively about how challenging it was to create the waterfall in Baahubali 1. Excerpts from an interview with Pete Draper : The company had better tools this time, thanks to the technology support from AMD which provided them with workstations, graphics cards, high-end simulation boxes and rendering-support, all of which are said to have helped immensely in creating photo-realistic imagery that’ll be seen in Baahubali 2. Considering that this Hyderabad-based studio is one among 30-odd studios across the world working on the film, it kind of puts things into perspective about the level of detailing and finesse that each of the studios has tried to achieve to create the world of Baahubali. According to Pete, the entire data generated for the film from Makuta alone is close to 110-115 terabytes. (L-R, in foreground) Srinivas Mohan, Pete Draper and SS RajamouliĪt its peak, during the making of Baahubali 2, the team swelled up to 100 artists who were working on various simulations, models, digital matte paintings, animations and set extensions related to the film. “The VFX artists prefer it this way because they can see the colours clearly without any light pollution distracting them,” he explains. For the record, it was Makuta who worked on created the stunning waterfall sequence in Baahubali 1 and they worked extensively, along with VFX supervisors Srinivas Mohan ( Baahubali: The Beginning) and Kamalakannan ( Baahubali: The Conclusion), over the past five years.Īhead of Baahubali 2’s release, when we sat down with Pete for a conversation about what has changed in terms of VFX for the film, we couldn’t help but notice the entire floor of the Makuta’s studio in Hyderabad was plunged into darkness, except for light emitting from the computer screens.
The company won the National Award for Best Visual Effects for its work in Eega (Makkhi) and as the principal studio behind the visual effects in the two parts of Baahubali, they have clearly outdone themselves. Pete Draper, along with co-founder of Makuta VFX Adel Adili, has been working with SS Rajamouli right from the days of Magadheera, which released back in 2009 and in these past eight years, Makuta has played a key role in turning Rajamouli’s recent films like Eega and Baahubali: The Beginning into a visual spectacle.