VFX and Animation

• Trace the historical evolution of visual-effects techniques and articulate the function of each stage in a contemporary VFX pipeline (pre-production, on-set supervision, and post-production).
• Use colour theory and grading workflows to shape mood, continuity, and narrative impact across live-action and CG-augmented shots.
• Capture motion-capture sessions, clean and retarget the data, and combine tracked performances with CG assets or live plates.
• Execute professional rotoscoping and advanced chroma-keying—handling hair, motion blur, and stereo pairs—to generate clean, production-ready mattes.
• Perform 2-D, planar, and 3-D camera tracking (including lens-distortion workflows) to anchor CG or matte-painted elements seamlessly into moving footage.
• Produce kinetic typography, logo animations, and particle-based effects (fire, smoke, rain, explosions) that integrate convincingly within composite shots.
• Combine multi-pass renders, HDR imagery, lighting, and camera moves to create digital set extensions, sky replacements, depth-of-field, and parallax effects.
• Estimate costs, schedule resources, automate workflows with scripts/expressions, iterate through client feedback, and output a polished, production-ready sequence that meets technical and storytelling goals.

• Describe the evolution of VFX, major historical milestones, and the roles of pre-production, production, and post-production stages in a modern VFX pipeline.
• Analyse the psychological impact of colour and perform primary/secondary colour-grading to reinforce mood and continuity across multi-shot sequences.
• Differentiate optical, inertial, and marker-less MoCap systems, record a basic performance, clean the data, and retarget it to a digital character.
• Generate articulate mattes—including hair and stereo pairs—using shape, point-track, and planar-track workflows; export renders for downstream compositing.
• Remove chroma backdrops with advanced keyers (Keylight, IBK) and refine edges with spill suppression, light-wrap, grain-matching, and garbage mattes.
• Create and animate text, logos, and infographic elements using masks, mattes, graph-editor curves, and plug-ins to communicate information visually.
• Perform 2-D point, planar, and 3-D camera tracking; solve lens distortion; and insert CG or matte-painted elements that lock seamlessly to live-action plates.
• Integrate multi-pass renders, HDR footage, lights, and cameras in After Effects/Nuke to create depth-of-field, parallax, sky-replacement, and digital set-extension shots.
• Employ Trapcode, Optical Flares, Particular CC, or equivalent tools to simulate rain, smoke, fire, explosions, and abstract particle trails within composited scenes.
• Estimate resources and costs, organise assets, automate repetitive tasks with scripts/expressions, iterate through client feedback, and output a polished, production-ready sequence that meets technical and storytelling goals.

The academic approach of the course focuses on ‘work-centric’ education. With this hands-on approach, derive knowledge from and while working to make it more wholesome, delightful and useful. The ultimate objective is to empower learners to also engage in socially useful and productive work. It aims at bringing learners closer to their rewarding careers as well as to the development of the community.

• Step 1: Learners are given an overview of the course and its connection to life and work
• Step 2: Learners are exposed to the specific tool(s) used in the course through the various real-life applications of the tool(s).
• Step 3: Learners are acquainted with the careers and the hierarchy of roles they can perform at workplaces after attaining increasing levels of mastery over the tool(s).
• Step 4: Learners are acquainted with the architecture of the tool or tool map so as to appreciate various parts of the tool, their functions, utility and inter-relations.
• Step 5: Learners are exposed to simple application development methodology by using the tool at the beginner’s level.
• Step 6: Learners perform the differential skills related to the use of the tool to improve the given ready-made industry-standard outputs.
• Step 7: Learners are engaged in appreciation of real-life case studies developed by the experts.
• Step 8: Learners are encouraged to proceed from appreciation to imitation of the experts.
• Step 9: After the imitation experience, they are required to improve the expert’s outputs so that they proceed from mere imitation to emulation.
• Step 10: Emulation is taken a level further from working with differential skills towards the visualization and creation of a complete output according to the requirements provided. (Long Assignments)
• Step 11: Understanding the requirements, communicating one’s own thoughts and presenting are important skills required in facing an interview for securing a work order/job. For instilling these skills, learners are presented with various subject-specific technical as well as HR-oriented questions and encouraged to answer them.
• Step 12: Finally, they develop the integral skills involving optimal methods and best practices to produce useful outputs right from scratch, publish them in their ePortfolio and thereby proceed from emulation to self-expression, from self-expression to self-confidence and from self-confidence to self-reliance and self-esteem!