Hot on the heels of his NGHTMRE concert visuals, Seattle motion designer/3D artist Ian Frederick drops a 90-second CG ode to nature’s power to “overcome adversity and thrive in even the harshest environments.”

Ian Frederick: “Flora is a short film that tells the story of nature’s resilience and regeneration. The film is a celebration of the beauty and power of the natural world, and aims to inspire hope and positivity through an abstract yet captivating message.

“I was inspired to push the boundaries of what I could do in 3D. Flowers blooming has always been the holy grail of learning Houdini for me and something I wanted to master. My goal was to create everything from scratch inside of Houdini from start to finish (other than compositing).
 

“The film is a celebration of the beauty and power of the natural world, and aims to inspire hope and positivity through an abstract yet captivating message.”

 
“I tried to use as many aspects of the software as possible, including liquid simulations, smoke sims, particle sims, cloth sims, heightfields, RBD destruction and debris sims as well as lots of procedural modeling and animation.

“Although this piece was intended to be abstract and experimental, I wanted to create the feeling of a loose narrative with a beginning, middle and end. I came up with the idea of nature reclaiming a desert wasteland and designed and modeled three distinct environments.

“I wanted them to feel lonely, sad, and dark. To achieve this, I removed all of the color and lit the scenes with high contrast studio lights instead of sunlight to make them feel even more moody and unnatural. Over the course of the film, the studio lighting is gradually replaced with sunlight and cheerful colors. The last three shots return to the desert environments to show they have been fully reclaimed by nature.”

Watch the process video:

 
 

 
Design/Animation: Ian Frederick

Music/Sound Design: Echoic Audio