Goin' up in Smoke... discreetly

When Rome was burning, Nero was fiddling. Everyone would visualise how Rome looked in those flames touching the sky and perhaps not bothered about Nero. But how does it look like when an historic empire burns?

An herculean task it would have been for a film maker to visualise and capture the scene, for the enormous amounts of money he had to literally burn. But capturing an empire coming to ashes is no more a big deal. Sitting in the cool confines of air- conditioned rooms, you can literally create anything that a human being can imagine and make others believe that it's all real. Welcome to the world of visual effects.

Remember the gigantic structures and the multitudes of people in the "awards winning" film Gladiator? The coliseum, the people and everything around those few men in the middle was all fake but was made to look real, thanks to the computer generated images using "Smoke" and "Flame" versions, a visual effect software created by Discreet.

It's not just the Hollywood that is after this software, but even family dramas and love stories weaved in Mumbai and Chennai have utilised this software to enhance the look of the film. A few to name are Aamir Khan's blockbuster Lagaan and the utter fiasco Hey Ram.

Discreet, the company which created this mind boggling software, launched the latest versions - Smoke 4.2 and Flame 7 - in the city on Friday. According to Pankaj Kedia, Regional Manager, South Asia, Discreet, ``Flame is a real-time online digital effects toolset. With its intuitive 3D action design environment, it delivers feed back instantly required for complex client- assisted production challenges as well as fast and simple broadcast graphics.'' And the new version incorporates a host of new features.

`Smoke' is a single system, a single finish, delivering multiple mastered formats, from high definition to current broadcast standards. It's efficiency goes beyond stand-alone finishing, says Kedia. The latest version comes with a host of new features that the film industry would love to grab.

By R. Ravikanth Reddy

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