A still from "Garfield the Movie TM © 2004 Fox"

Award winning L.A based CG and FX major Rhythm & Hues is at it once again. This time around the folks at R&H have brought Comic Strip hero Garfield to life for 'Garfield - The Movie'.

Though creating CG characters and doing FX is business as usual for R&H, an interesting development is the contribution from its Indian facility. The movie is expected to be released this Friday, 5th Nov. in theatres all over Mumbai.

Speaking exclusively to Animation 'xpress, R&H India director of operations Sarawathi Balgam said,"Our Mumbai facility contributed on certain aspects of integrating the digitally generated Garfield with the live action scenes & characters. We have worked extensively on Camera tracking, Matchmoving & Digital image manipulations (Compositing)"

Elaborating about the Indian facility's involvement Saraswathi continued, "Camera tracking is a technique required for seamless integration of Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) with live action. This involves the extraction of the movement of the live action camera (as shot by the filming crew) to be used by the CGI camera (In a CG software)"

"Matchmoving is a technique of digitally extracting the movement of actors with whom the CGI object needs to interact. For eg. when our CGI Garfield jumps into the arms of a live action actor, we need to create a digital version of the actor who is then modeled and rigged to match the real actor. This digital version of the actor would then need to be animated or matchmoved to the live action actor so that the CGI Garfield could move realistically in his arms. We also use the matchmoved actor to cast shadows and help with reflections, etc.. all in the effort to get a more photorealistic integration of the CGI character in the live action environment" she added.

"In several shots Odie which was a real dog, had to interact with Garfield a CGI character. Odie's trainer was guiding Odie to do actions that would help choreograph the scene. The Trainer was also visible on camera & she needed to be removed using various compositing techniques" she further added.

"On Garfield, the Indian facility was entrusted with several increasingly complex shots. In addition to our usual slate of compositing and background preparation tasks that our 2D artists perform, this was the first movie that our team of Matchmovers got to prove themselves. For example we worked on the opening shot of the movie which was single continuous shot that is 3186 frames long (2.2 minutes). We had to not only track the motion of the live action camera, but we also had to matchmove everything that Garfield interacted with such as the clock, the bedcover, and Jon's arms and upper body as he hugs Garfield. Furthermore, as it is the opening shot of the movie where Garfield is first introduced, our Los Angeles supervisors wanted to make sure that the quality of the work was very high and that everything was perfect! On the surface, the concept of matchmoving sounds deceptively simple.. however one has to have not only good 3D knowledge, but they also need to be well versed with knowledge about cameras, lenses, focal lengths, apertures, lens distortions, and the extraction of 3d model data from 2d imagery... The matchmoving of this shot alone took 3 artists working full time a little over 1 month to accomplish!" she said.

"We had great training, support, and encouragement from our parent company and our supervisors were quite happy with the overall results. It has definitely been a very rewarding experience to be able to contribute in our own little way for bringing Garfield to life" concluded Saraswathi.

As the debate on 'Whether India can or not deliver quality international FX' ensues within industry circles, the kind of support as well as confidence that R&H is investing in its Indian facility is a shot in the arm of those who believe India can.

- Anand Gurnani