The climax

The climax sequence was the most challenging shot for the vfx team as Srinivas points out that there are no real characters in the scene. "Using CGI has its own draw backs," says Srinivas. The main challenge was in balancing the fine line between imagination and realism. The scene was for the audiences to accept.

To get a detailed 3D model of Rajinikanth's character Chitti, Srinivas used an innovative new technology called the Doom Light Stage invented by scientist Paul Debevec at the University of California at Berkeley. This invention captures the actor's face from every possible lighting direction. From the captured data, specialized algorithms create realistic virtual renditions of the actor in the illumination of any location or set, reproducing colour, texture, shine, shading and translucency of the actor's skin. The innovation has been used in Spiderman, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Avatar and the fourth being Robot.

The equipment consists of a dome with around 80 to 90 lights around it. Rajinikanth was made to sit in this dome while his face got scanned from all possible light angles. Since the robot Chitti had a silicon mask of Rajinikanth on its face an extra coating was required to be added on Rajinikanth' face. For the Lightstage team, this was a new experience since fine tuning while scanning was complicated. Different scans with and without make up were taken. The final output churned out a high detailed rendition of his face; one wouldn't be able to tell if it was CGI. This sequence in its own took an unbelievable two years to accomplish.