MUMBAI: FX School launched a pro-level course on how to match CG with a live action background seamlessly and photo-realistically.

FX School is the very first institute in India to offer such a high level of education and training in this field. This course has been launched with the aim of enabling artists who are familiar with Maya to up-skill themselves to expert level Mental Ray renderers.

The full course is a mix of theory and practical’s. It is a five-week part time course and has a project based approach to blending a photorealistic CG output using Mental Ray with a live action plate. It commences from 16 November. The course will cover topics like, How to successfully take out passes? What passes does one need to create that perfect image? How to crack the Maya 2009 render global window? The main focus of the course will be to get "students" to think behind the software instead of taking the easy "plug and play" route.

FX School director Abhyudaya Morarka said, "There is a desperate need to shed some light on Mental Ray and thus enable studios to achieve better results more efficiently. In fact, our hope is that this pro level course will provide a quantum leap type improvement in studios’ ability to handle their work."

FX School senior faculty member Bibek Basu said. "There is a need for artists to be more technically fine tuned, and that is where we want to step in to provide some light. Our hope is to address highly specific topics to help the growth of more technically oriented artists so that they can slowly start on the path to making custom shaders and fine tune production problems."