Bangalore: Significant contributions — including high-end modelling and animation — for the worldwide Christmas and New Year feature film release "Night at the Museum" have come from dozens of Indian artists and computer specialists at the Mumbai studios of Rhythm&Hues.

The film, as well as another on which the Indian team worked "Superman Returns," figures among the seven short-listed by the U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts for consideration by the Visual Effects Awards nominations committee.

Members will view all seven films and vote on January 17 to whittle down the number to three that will vie for the Oscar in the Visual Effects category on February 25, 2007.

Hindi version

"Night at the Museum" a comedy starring Ben Stiller, was released in the U.S. for the Christmas holidays, and opened its run in India on Friday (December 29) in Hindi version "Museum ke andar, phas gaya Sikandar." It takes place in a museum where a curse lets loose all the stuffed and embalmed animals and historical characters, who then run riot ... till another exhibit, the late American President, Theodore Roosevelt, restores order.

The Mumbai end of the Los Angeles-based Rhythm&Hues — over 150 strong — spent over one year, primarily on the modelling, animation and lighting of over 75 computer-generated and photo-realistic animals for the film.

Complex scenes handled by the Indian end of the studio included several stampede sequences. The published credits of the film, lists by name, Technical Animator Jeetendra Bhagtani and Lighting Technical Director Imran Ahmed. They operate from Mumbai.

"We are honoured that the Academy has decided to recognise our hard work by including two of our works in the list of amazing visual effects movies of 2006," Rhythm&Hues India's Digital Production Manager A.R. Seshaprasad told The Hindu on Sunday.

"The contribution of our Indian artists went beyond excellent compositing and camera tracking work, to include high-end modelling, character animation and 3-D lighting." Rhythm&Hues India has worked on over 20 Hollywood films, including the 2005 Oscar nominated "Chronicles of Narnia." Their upcoming films include "Thy Kingdom" (for Universal), Charlotte's Web (Paramount) and "The Golden Compass" (Newline).

A handful of India-based animation and digital "FX" houses are increasingly taking up mainstream computer graphics imagery (CGI) assignments from Hollywood producers, matching and often collaborating with, specialist animation studios such as Disney, DreamWorks and Pixar.

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