3D scanning and 3D printing technology used in the Vikram movie scenes
Have you heard about the tragedy that people used a prop gun in the movie and caused an accidental death in the shooting? Yes, Producer and actor Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun that killed one crew member and injured another on the set of the movie “Rust” in New Mexico very recently. In this blog, we want to explain an actual case study about the latest Pan India film, Vikram -2022 movie and how 3D printing technology can prevent such incidents by 3D printing the non-functional gun for the movie scenes.
Actor Kamal Haasan is known for his interest in bringing new technology into the Movie industry. The Tamil movie “Vikram -1986” was the first movie to use a computer to record songs in Kollywood, and in fact, it was the first movie to show even the computer on the screen to the audience.
As another example, Alavandhan 2001 was the first film in India to use a motion control rig to capture the movement of pictures. Also, this was the first film in India to use animation sequences, and the list goes on. We are not discussing here all those lists of movies how kamal Haasan influenced technology in his films.
Vikram -2022 is one of the multi-language Pan Indian action thriller films has hit the screens on June 3rd across India in Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi and Kannada. We Precise3DM have used advanced technology such as 3D scanning, reverse engineering and 3D printing technology to make the Prop guns in Vikram movie scenes.
As per the storyline of Vikram movie, kamal Hasan used to handle different types of guns in the film. It was hard for the movie crew to manufacture or procure different types of original guns, so they contacted Precise3DM to explore the possibility of duplicating the original one with the dummy guns.
We have used Structured light 3D scanning technology SolutioniX C500 to 3D scan the original gun so we could make a digital replica of the same. 3D scan data was later used as a reference in Geomagic Design X to reverse engineer into the format that we could 3D print.
Actual Gun
3D Scan Data
3D printed Gun
Vikram movie scenes with non-functional prop gun
Subsequently, we used the Figure 4 Industrial 3D Printer to print the digital replica of the gun. Figure 4 standalone is an industrial 3D printer typically used in the engineering and healthcare industry for direct end-use production of plastic, rubber and biocompatible parts without injection moulds.
But we used figure 4 standalone 3D printer for movie application as the production house wanted an excellent surface finish and texture of the gun as per the original one. We 3D scanned and printed it in a short time, and the output came out very well, as expected by the production house. As you can witness in the movie, it is being used in most of the Vikram movie action scenes by many movie casts.
This is not the first time that 3D printing objects have been used in movie scenes. As we advance, I am very sure that the movie industry will widely witness the benefits of 3D printing technology. Actor Kamal Hasan’s film once again proved to be exceptional in bringing the latest technologies into movies.
We Precise3DM wish Vikram movie and crew members all the best for the movie’s great success ahead in the country.
Contact Precie3DM to test such sample benchmarks if you would like to set up a Figure 4 3d printer or 3D scanner in-house for your engineering and medical applications.
By Singaraj Maharajan
