Autodesk Customer Success Story Vedarth Animation Studio Pvt. Ltd.

COMPANY

Vedarth Animation Studio Pvt. Ltd. IndiaLOCATIONMumbai, India

SOFTWAREAUTODESK® 3DS MAX®

AUTODESK® MAYA®

AUTODESK® MUDBOX®

“It isn’t a viable proposition for everyone to get into the business of producing these shows as the market is potentially limited, as there are only about 1000 planetariums in the world. Creating any specific show is time-consuming and expensive, with production costs ranging between USD 500,000 to USD 750,000. And the dome film content being educational, is not as popular as a Hollywood or Bollywood film where you can make your money back,”

— Abhijit ShetyeManaging DirectorVedarth Animation Studio

ETCHING STORIES ON THE SKY

Vedarth Animation developing world-class dome films for the Digital Dome Planetariums

Image courtesy: Vedarth Animation Studio India

Vedarth Animation Studio Pvt. Ltd. is an Animation Production House based in Mumbai. It is the sister concern of Infovision Technologies Pvt. Ltd., a Private Company established on December 17, 1999. Infovision provides digital planetarium and science exhibit projects and represents Evans & Sutherland (E&S) USA in India. E&S are the world leaders in developing hardware and software for digital planetariums..

The company used to, and, to some extent, still continues to import the planetarium films from E&S, USA. However, four years ago, Infovision decided to produce its own content in India. And thus, Vedarth Animation Studio Pvt. Ltd. was born, in 2012.

Vedarth Animation Studio has produced four full dome films so far for Astral Inc-USA who is distributors of Full Dome Films across the world. The first film that the company worked on is Raising Alexandria – a film on the lost city of Alexandria in Egypt. The second film is The Biography of the Universe, which is currently running at the Nehru Planetarium. The third completed film is The Cosmic Life, which will be shown at the Nehru Planetarium next. And, the fourth is The Lifestyles of the Star, a 16-minute cartoon dome film for children.

Among the four, The Biography of the Universe,

the story of how universe came to be and where we are now, is the most famous. The film was recently selected to be screened at the Jena Full Dome Festival in Germany, one of the major international film festivals for dome films. After the tremendous response, the film is set to run in all the planetariums in India.

The Cosmos

Vedarth Animation Studio was created with a vision to bring in more audience to dome film shows. Because of the variety and quality of content that the company has been producing, the planetarium industry in India has begun its transition. The number of visitors for dome films has increased remarkably from an average of 25,000 – 30,000 to around 1,50,000 per month.

One of the major challenges that most of the dome film producers, including Vedarth Animation, face is the financial viability of the projects. It’s quite difficult to produce these films unless they get a huge funding from government, private companies or individuals. Vedarth Animation has had a lucky start because of Infovision’s involvement in planetariums, believes Abhijit Shetye, the Managing Director of Vedarth Animation Studio. There are other players in the market, but none with a complete set up like Vedarth.

Autodesk Customer Success Story Vedarth Animation Studio Pvt. Ltd.

Creating any specific show (for planetariums) is time-consuming and expensive, with production costs ranging between USD 500,000 to USD 750,000.

“It isn’t a viable proposition for everyone to get into the business of producing these shows as the market is potentially limited, as there are only about 1000 planetariums in the world. Creating any specific show is time-consuming and expensive, with production costs ranging between USD 500,000 to USD 750,000. And the dome film content being educational, is not as popular as a Hollywood or Bollywood film where you can make your money back,” informs Shetye.

The Creation of Microworlds

The film production for the dome screen is starkly different from that done for the flat screen. It takes almost 12-18 months to complete one dome film of 20-25 minutes. Artists at Vedarth Animation Studio work on 2-3 projects at a time so as to produce multiple films in a year. The team at Vedarth Animation Studio has been trained by professionals like Mr. Robin Sip of Mirage3D and Mr. Matthew Mascheri of Dome3D and has an extensive production experience on the full dome and stereophonic 3D productions. Vedarth Animation team is also getting the technical support from E&S and Astral Inc of USA when the new techniques are introduced.

For a dome film, the story is usually provided to the studio by the planetarium. Once it has a story, the studio develops the script or screenplay for it. Since a planetarium show is generally not more than 28-30 minutes long, the story is divided into 20-30 themed scenes. Then, the visuals are planned for every scene and based on the story flow and the narration is recorded. The rendering takes a lot of time in a dome-film than in a normal animation film because a dome-film contains 30 frames per second.

Once the shooting and modeling are done, the animatic (an animated storyboard) is created for every scene. Though 70-75% of the work is animated, it does have some live action content that needs to be shot on green screen. For example, in The Biography of the Universe, Galileo is not a 3D character but is played by an actor. For a flat screen, the viewing angle is singular, so only a one camera is used. In a full

dome film, it has to be a 360-degree visual, so the team resorts to a fish-eye camera or a five-camera setup to encompass all 360 degrees.

“With a flat screen, your viewing angle is limited. Here, it is 360-degree. For example, if you want to show The Gateway of India, imagine you are standing in front of it. You should be able to watch it from all angles. We have to create that illusion for the full dome by considering the location, scale, and distances between the objects,” states Abhijit Shetye. Furthermore, there is a different degree tilt in different domes – some domes are horizontal, some are 12-degree or 13-degree. So that needs to be taken into account as well, otherwise the final output won’t be correct.

Any scene is first rendered for 1K resolution. Vedarth Animation Studio has its very own small portable planetarium with an 8m diameter dome to play the same and check whether all the texture, movements, and effects are in place. However, to play the film on a dome, it is necessary to have a clear image. So, once the scene is approved, the final rendering, compositing and editing are done to create output for the big dome screen. Earlier, the minimum resolution for a frame used to be 4K. But, most of the new equipment and dome planetariums now support 8K (6.6K X 6.6K) resolution.

The Stellar Evolution

Due to their wide acceptance and exceptional performance, Vedarth Animation relies heavily on Autodesk’s software packages like 3DS Max, Maya, and Mudbox, which also support VRay – the company’s mode of choice for rendering. “We have chosen Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya and Mudbox over other software available in the market as they are the industry standard and give us perfect output as per our production needs. Also, there is a readily available pool of artists trained on Autodesk solutions,” adds Abhijit. Though most of the work is done on 3ds Max, the team at Vedharth prefers Maya for liquid simulations, like oceans. In Raising Alexandria, a lot of underwater scenes were created using Maya.

In the Stars

For now, Vedarth Animation Studio is not focusing too much on making money. The company has even shared its films free of cost with planetariums.

Abhijit says, “This is only the beginning. We knew we wouldn’t be making money off this venture for the first 5-6 years, at least. But, we’re confident that we are headed in the right direction. The new generation is attracted to digital immersive media and they crave new experiences and information. Internationally, most IMAX theaters have already been replaced with digital theaters. We are positive that the digital phenomenon will continue to rise in popularity in the coming years.”

The company has some great work lined up:

• The Mystery of Missing Seasons – A film where two aliens pick up a smart guy from Earth to find out why seasons don’t occur on their planet. It will be largely a character-animation film.

• The Moon– A film about how the moon was formed and what makes it so important to Earth. This is a 30-minute 8K-resolution full dome film. This film will also talk about the current and future Indian Space programs. Vedarth has also released the 360-degree VR (virtual Reality) Poster and a VR trailer of this show recently.

• We Are Going to Mars - A 20-minute film.

• New Horizon – A film about the space shuttle of the same name, which was sent into space 9 years ago and has only, recently reached Pluto.

An environmental science film on Water to be shown in a mobile planetarium in schools to 5th-10th standard students.

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“With a flat screen, your viewing angle is limited. Here, it is 360-degree. For example, if you want to show The Gateway of India, imagine you are standing in front of it. You should be able to watch it from all angles. We have to create that illusion for the full dome by considering the location, scale, and distances between the objects,”

— Abhijit ShetyeManaging DirectorVedarth Animation Studio

Image courtesy: Vedarth Animation Studio India

Image courtesy: Vedarth Animation Studio India