I was responsible for a range of art production, look development, programming and pipeline work for this piece.

Some things I developed included:

• Visual effects like sonic waves, geothermal vent exhaust, and light rays for the eddy.
• Fish including the barracuda, oarfish, and a whale skeleton.
• Large sea plastics and procedurally generated microplastic models with geometry nodes.
• A rigged and animated mining machine monster.
• Scripts for exporting from Blender to Threejs.
• Renders for communicating with the client.
• Camera paths linked between multiple perspectives.
• Processed DEM Data into usable heightmaps for Blender.
• Shaders and procedural animations designed to be recreated in Javascript.
• Shaders and procedural animations in Threejs based off of Blender source from look development.

I worked closely with engineer Ben Purdy to ensure easy movement between Blender and Threejs. The piece exists in previsualization as a Blender Rendering (for both relief and underwater views) and as an interactive experience in the web.

I did look development in Blender and approached the shaders in a way that was easily reproduceable in Threejs. This not only helped with internal iteration time but also simplified communication with our client.

Styleframes describing the underwater view rendered in Blender

undercurrent_relief_06162021-.mp4

Styleframes describing the relief view rendered in Blender