Baahubali: The VFX Secret That Carved Legends

Watching Baahubali for n-th time gives a different perspective of the whole film. While characters in the films look like legends, each scene is a legendary in itself for the kind of exemplary visuals that have given a hair rising feeling. Each frame of Baahubali has not just 3-4 characters on the screen, but behind the screen there are several 100s of Visual Effects of artists working from the office cabins while another bunch of technicians worked with Rajamouli on the sets. Let's unleash these secrets.

From the gigantic waterfalls where Sivudu grows up to the terrains where Avantika and her tribe stays, every single environment is digitally extended while the footage consists of partly erected sets. Every war scene, the magnanimous Mahishmathi kingdom, fights, killings are all a creation of compute generated graphics. More interestingly, some of the characters like Devasena and Bijjaladeva also needed huge support of VFX. Hyderabad based studios including Makuta VFX, Firefly and Prasad EFX played a key part in simulating the much needed CG life for Baahubali.

For example, we have Nasser's crooked hand, Devasena's white hair and scary facial look that are created in visual effects only. For many characters, white hair was enchanted digitally in post production including to that of Sivagami. Rajamouli has used nearly 3,000 people in some shots, but they are doubled to 50,000 via visual effects. Chopping the head of Bhadra is a graphically simulated scene, while Kattappa is added through visual effects in his background.

War sequences are not just about removing wires and frames, here CG artists need to add swords, blood spill, limb chopping, bleeding, wounds, chariot blades, flying arrows, penetrating spears and much more. Every war scene has to be digitally matched with a virtual artwork to get the right feel in the final output. Some scenes like the snow avalanche sequence required more hard work. Also the Devara song where Tamanna's flying white robes are an visual effects creation. Many soldiers from both Mahistmathi and Kalakeya's side are generated digitally, animated and added to the final footage.

Combined with all these effects, Rajamouli's Baahubali got that magnum opus status, never heard kind of applause and generating tremendous box office revenue.