Could you talk about the challenges faced while doing the VFX?
One of the major challenges we faced was creating the battle sequences out of nothing. Especially hundreds and thousands of soldiers, that had to be done on a fairly large scale CGI. We had to animate a lot of stuff and then fit them in the real shots which comprised of the actors.

Was the film shot on actual locations?
The film was indeed shot on actual locations. Restorations have been done when shooting was in progress in a number of places. When they had to depict the Amer Fort, exteriors of the actual Amer Fort was shot, thus many of the Forts shown are real forts. But many of them are in ruins currently and there are civilisations all around them. When we see the aerial view, there is the whole of modern Jaipur city all around the Amer Fort. But during the Mughal era, obviously this was not the case. Our team of modellers and texture artistes did a lot of CGI (Computer-Generated Images) restoration work for these forts using high-resolution digital images and textures. We mapped the structures to blend in seamlessly with the existing fort or palace. Initially we never realised that the work would be so huge. For example: the Amer Fort was built some centuries ago, but after that there has been a lot of work done on it first by the subsequent families, then by the British and then by the Archeological department. The challenge for us was thus to restore it exactly to the time during which the said story of Akbar was based, that is, in the 16th century.

Before setting on the project did you go through a research process?
Apart from the deep research done by Ashutosh Gowariker, there was a team from IIT Kanpur that shot images at the actual sites and studied and researched the same. The team advised VCL on which buildings could be retained and in what shape and which had to be removed. After four months of research and pre-production, eight months were dedicated for intensive VFX production for the movie. At the peak of production work, about 100 people were working at a time.

Were you present in the shooting process?
We (VCL) were there for each and every shot. We were together location-hunting for the battles, armies, palaces and forts. Hence, we could decide on which wall could be removed and what effect had to be given where.

Did you use green screens as is generally done?
No . We did not use any green screens since Ashutosh wanted real locations. So, there was a middle way sorted, where shootings were carried out in real locations while we did all the touch-ups with rotoscope. In fact a lot of duplication was done by cutting the frame by hand instead of using chroma key since it has some limitations. It took a lot of time to do the cutouts manually with frame-by-frame roto, but it gave an amazing result. Large tracts of ground had to be cleared of all modern-day traces, most apparent being tyre-marks of vehicles. Dust was added digitally to enhance the feeling of scale to the battle sequences and then the ground was strewn with bodies and vultures in the sky all done in CGI to show the devastation after a heavy battle.

How was the overall working experience?
Working on Jodhaa Akbar was a very satisfying experience. It was good to have enough time to experiment, since it was not a film for which a very quick job was required. In such scenarios we have to put our entire focus on a single project.

You did not get award for your work in Taare Zameen Par.
You see the special effects in TZP were not obvious whereas in Om Shanti Om it was clearly seen when Deepika danced around with yesteryear stars like Sunil Dutt, Rajesh Khanna and Jeetendra. Do you know in the landmark scene in Rang De Basanti both the plane (MIG) and the airport was created on CG?