Devanshu Tak. Google Shopping | Diwali Shopping with Dadi | Ad Film

3D animation, simulation and VFX on Google Shopping's Diwali film, made at Shapeshifter. The story rides on Dadi guiding the household through festive purchases, so the CG work was tuned to support the comic timing without pulling attention away from performance.

Director Achowe wanted a Diwali Mela that felt magical but still grounded. The team blended CGI with physical design so the scene kept a tactile, handmade quality. Storyboard artist Isha pitched the shop-stacking idea, with the Mela assembling itself like a Broadway stage set. Awnings unfurled, lights flickered on, signs flipped, flags fluttered, all on staggered timing.

Having the CG team on set helped capture the lighting, textures and materials needed to merge live action and CG cleanly. Production design leaned on rustic textures, layered colour and small bits of decor. We avoided over-polished surfaces, kept the timing a little janky on purpose, and let warm string lights, lantern glows and atmospheric fog do the heavy lifting.

The pipeline started with thumbnails, then a 3D animatic for camera and shop-stacking, then a lit previs and techvis built on real camera and lens data. On set we scanned shops with Polycam and Reality Capture and gathered prop and texture reference. Models were built in Blender from the scans, then taken into Houdini for layout, animation and lighting. Boxes, flags and lights were animated procedurally, with hand animation reserved for hero beats. Shading and lighting lived in Houdini, rendering in Redshift. Nuke handled stabilisation and CG plate replacement. Final renders went out as DPX for grade.

The shop-stacking hero shot pushed past 4M polygons with every object moving independently. I built a Houdini interface to toggle object visibility so the scene stayed workable. Ultra-wide lenses meant undistort/redistort passes. Skipping greenscreen let the CG pick up real lighting, reflections and shadow contact, and let the cast actually interact with the set.

Render management was the main fight, the farm went down once on final delivery day, but the tight budget and timeline forced quick calls and kept the work moving.