Setting out to “capture the beauty and mystery of the bioluminescent ocean”, digital artist Artur Gadzhiev took more than a year to create this full-CG experiment defined by intricate fluid and cloth simulations.

Artur Gadzhiev: “The technical production of this film posed a variety of challenges – from creating realistic fluid simulations to managing the rendering of high-fidelity, photorealistic visuals.

“The fluid simulations were one of the most difficult aspects. They needed to look physically plausible and realistic, but also be efficient enough to render in a reasonable amount of time. To accomplish this, I used Houdini’s fluid simulation system and controlled the look, feel, and behavior of the water by adjusting the surface tension, and other parameters.
 

“The fluid simulations were one of the most difficult aspects. They needed to look physically plausible and realistic, but also be efficient enough to render in a reasonable amount of time.”

 
“The cloth simulations were also particularly challenging, as they required an immense amount of setup and fine-tuning. I used the Houdini Vellum solver to create the simulations. This required me to adjust a wide range of parameters such as gravity, stiffness, dampening, and drag, in order to achieve the desired behavior.

“I also had to take into account the cloth’s interactions with other objects in the scene, such as the character and the environment – carefully considering the interplay between different parameters in order to achieve the desired result.

“For the dancer, I selected the desired animations from the Rokoko Motion Library and used KineFX to transfer the rig to my 3D character model. This process allowed for the application of the dance animation to the 3D character, resulting in a more realistic and believable performance.”
 
 

 
Director: Artur Gadzhiev
Animator/editor: Artur Gadzhiev

Music/sound design: Iday