Weird science
3D WORLD DIVES INTO THE WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF GENERATIVE OR PROCEDURAL ANIMATION, FRACTALS AND OTHER COMPLEX CG CREATIONS
We explore the fascinating world of generative art and other complex visualisations with a host of experts in the field
Spend just a short amount of time in the online 3D art community and you are bound to stumble across the world of generative or procedural animation. This particular corner of the community embraces abstract imagery and often applies coded, randomised or handmade animation to it, creating eye-catching pieces that convey a theme, sell a product, demonstrate technological capabilities, or simply look cool. Many of the techniques used to create such imagery exist at the crossroads between art and computer science. Just what is it about this mind-boggling imagery that proves so compelling to 3D artists and so oddly mesmerising to the viewer? 3D World has gathered a host of experts in the field to answer that question, as well as discussing the style’s practical use in VFX and how the budding artist can create their own complex and appealing visualisations.
WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?
Mark Hodgkins, global head of FX at Framestore, has been embracing the stranger side of 3D art in high-end VFX throughout his 20-year career. “We’re hardwired to find natural structures pleasing and fractals or computer generative art often mimics forms or patterns found in nature,” he says, discussing the appeal of such complex visualisations. “Fractals and generative animation allow us to create something very abstract and highly detailed that would be difficult to produce by hand,” he continues. “The nature of the tools means it can still have a natural feeling, and the points of similarity and difference create something that people haven’t seen before, that gets them thinking.”
Generative design is a huge component of processes such as product design, engineering and architecture, where computers are used to find the most optimal design, shape and structure within provided parameters. “It is often used to create custom structures for everyday objects such as aerials, brackets and fans. The objects look organic, as if formed by nature, but often perform better, use less material and are stronger,” adds Hodgkins.
For Stockholm-based motion graphics artist and art director Andreas Wannerstedt, it’s all about the nearlimitless possibilities that come with 3D art. “Most of my work is based on the idea of flawless synchronisations between different objects and shapes, which wouldn’t be possible to recreate in the real world,” he explains. “I always try to anchor my work in reality and take inspiration from nature. However, thanks to the digital medium, I’m able to break all kinds of boundaries. Going against the laws of physics, defying gravity and reality, the possibilities are potentially endless.”
Shy.studio is an independent motion graphics studio focusing on the intersection of artistic exploration and bespoke design. Misha Shyukin, a visual artist at the studio, is drawn to the ability to replicate natural phenomena in CGI, taking things like photorealistic lighting, textures, or physically accurate simulations and placing them into a completely new context. “It is very satisfying seeing something that looks real but is not behaving in a way you would expect it to,” he tells 3D World.
Manuel Casasola Merkle and Moritz Schwind are the founders of advanced CG tutorial hub Entagma. The two Munich-based art and technical directors create tutorials on procedural and generative design largely using, although not exclusively, Houdini, Blender and Unreal Engine. The pair believe that a crucial element in the appeal of a design lies in its visual interest to the viewer. “One surefire way to add visual interest to projects is to add complexity,” the pair explain, “it’s an old trick that has been employed long before the advent of CGI.” They use ILM’S ‘greebles’ as a perfect example, a name given to the tiny details that made miniatures used for Star Wars and its sequels feel like real, functioning elements of their world.
Most of the ‘greebles’ were simply random model kit pieces repurposed to bolster Star Wars’ lived-in aesthetic.
“Procedural and generative design offers a way to add intricate detail without having to manually create it,” they continue, “thus procedural design is very effective in a team of any size when it comes to increasing the level of detail of your project – be it a commercial, a movie or a computer game. Especially in world creation, we’re seeing a fast adoption of generative techniques.”
ENDLESS POSSIBILITY
Andreas Wannerstedt began experimenting with 3D art around 2007, after becoming frustrated with the limitations of 2D animation, which he’d been working with since 1999. After seeing Alex Roman’s impressive CG short film The Third & The Seventh, Wannerstedt became hooked on the possibilities of 3D and started experimenting with lighting, materials, architectural visualisations and photorealistic renders. “That has affected my style for sure, even though I tend to go towards a slightly more abstract look nowadays with a focus on colour palettes and materials,” he reflects.
Wannerstedt learned how to create 3D art by working on a lot of personal projects and constantly trying to build on his skills. “Like for many digital artists, this started out as a hobby and turned into a full-time job,” he adds. “All my practical skills are self-taught and it’s really my passion for digital art, in combination with a lot of practice and patience, that has taken me to where I am now.”
‘Oddly satisfying’ is the term most commonly attributed to Wannerstedt’s looped 3D animations, which explore the relationship between shape and space. “It’s a sophisticated and whimsical portal into the perfect world of physics, movement, and predictability. Inspired by ASMR, as well as real-world mechanics and motion patterns from our everyday lives,” he says. “I want to transport my viewers into a meditative state, and to trigger that inexplicable feeling of odd satisfaction we all know.”
When inspiration strikes, Wannerstedt is quick to put it down on paper, making rough sketches in his notebook. Once he has something he thinks can work he jumps into Cinema 4D, usually starting with basic composition and simple shapes so that he can focus on whether or not the animation works. He adds: “I prefer to animate things by hand using keyframes, instead of using simulations where the computer calculates the movements. That makes everything much easier to art direct since I’m in full
“THE POINTS OF SIMILARITY AND DIFFERENCE CREATE SOMETHING THAT PEOPLE HAVEN’T SEEN BEFORE”
MARK HODGKINS, GLOBAL HEAD OF FX, FRAMESTORE
control of the motion. Control is a must since all of my animations require perfect timings in order to work.”
Once he is satisfied with the animation, Wannerstedt proceeds with visual development, refining the models and introducing lighting, before it becomes all about the details. “As a one-man army, I have to spend a lot of time in all the different stages of a scene to make sure everything feels right. Concept, design, modelling, animation, lighting, texturing, rendering, etc. You really need a good knowledge of all these areas in order to make something that stands out,” he explains.
“Practice makes perfect, and that goes for everything in life. Don’t expect to master anything overnight, it’s all about patience,” says Wannerstedt. “When it comes to this particular style, I think it’s all about the details. The animations don’t have to be long, three to five seconds is usually enough for a loop, so focus on the movement and really pay attention to the keyframes and curves.”
THE FUTURE OF FX
Fractals, generative design and procedural forms of 3D animation have played a huge role in VFX and computer graphics since the earliest days of the industry, often being the first thing visualised on a computer screen. “When I first started we tried to do as much as possible procedurally, especially on the shading side of assets as it was more efficient than painting textures for everything,” explains Mark Hodgkins. “As the demand for higher visual fidelity and realism rose, we shifted to detailed handpainted texture maps on assets. This is still the case today, with large assets running into hundreds of UDIM texture tiles – having some procedural help here is important.”
The amount of VFX work has increased exponentially over Hodgkins’ time in the industry, along with the volume, complexity and expected quality of CG assets or shots. Teams like Hodgkins’ FX team at Framestore rely on procedural ways of building, surfacing, layout and animating assets to minimise the time they spend handcrafting such things. “We take advantage of these tools to create visually complex and natural-looking assets with only a relatively modest amount of artistic input. When you’re required to create full CG environments and all the details and minutia these require, it becomes very important. The ability to tweak or iterate the design is also
“FOCUS ON THE MOVEMENT AND REALLY PAY ATTENTION TO THE KEYFRAMES AND CURVES”
ANDREAS WANNERSTEDT, MOTION GRAPHICS ARTIST
key in VFX, because if it’s handbuilt this will take longer to adjust,” Hodgkins explains.
He continues: “A great example would be coral for a large reef environment – this is the perfect application of generative concepts to model the coral structure and even integrate them together and into the environment in a natural way. A setup designed to generate a coral form could produce endless variations very easily by changing input parameters to adjust its final look – something unachievable if you were building the whole asset by hand. This would work for both the model and the textures or shading of the assets.”
The FX team at Framestore primarily use Houdini, a software built around the procedural paradigm, with more and more VFX departments adopting a similar workflow. “Within applications like Houdini you try to keep as procedural as possible; this way changes can be made quickly and nothing is wasted,” adds Hodgkins.
It can also be very easy to implement many of the techniques used to create generative concepts into a VFX pipeline. Occasionally a procedural design or fractal is the hero effect and Hodgkins has worked on numerous projects where a fractal, or fractal look, has been a key component of the shot. This includes Mandelbrot visualisations in Annihilation and Doctor Strange, Planet Ego formations in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2, and the Quantum Realm sequence in Ant-man.
More recently Framestore’s FX team worked on Project Power for Netflix, which incorporated shots of ice crystals forming, a kind of fractal generated by growing 3D curves. “Other key areas where this is widely used include surfacing of assets and the use of software like Substance Designer to help get a good start on materials for assets,” adds Hodgkins.
ARTISTIC EXPERIMENTATION
Shy.studio opened in April 2020 amidst a COVID-19 lockdown after founders Misha Shyukin and Hannes Hummel had worked together on several projects throughout 2019. “I was planning the transition from freelance artist to studio for quite a while and it seemed like a good time to do so,” Shyukin tells 3D World.
When not working on commercial projects the studio works to constantly develop and redefine their visual style through experimental, self-initiated research projects. “Whether it is trying to learn a new set of tools or redefining existing workflows and techniques, we gradually work through a specific topic and publish little bits of the project as we go along,” says Hummel. For example, the studio published aspects of their recent project Artificial Bloom whilst they were hard at work on it, receiving instant feedback that propelled them to continue work and explore the topic further.
The experimental aspect of Shy.studio’s work is incorporated into their commercial projects. This open process benefits both parties, allowing the studio to provide impressive visual solutions for their clients and continue expanding their own artistic or technical capabilities. “Often our experimental self-initiated projects tend to attract new commercial clients who just happen to see it on various social media platforms,” adds Shyukin. “In a way, we are trying to dictate the direction of work we would like to do. When a potential client sees our Artificial Bloom series, we might get approached for a commercial project utilising a similar aesthetic.” With this said, Shy.studio are accustomed to working to a guideline or brief, something that cannot be avoided when working with larger and more well-established clients.
As is the case with many small studios, Shy.studio primarily works with Cinema 4D and Houdini, with Redshift or Octane for rendering. They are also dipping their toes into the potential of Unreal Engine. “I’m spending a lot of time reading the Houdini Documentation,” Shyukin admits. “The artistic part seems to go much smoother for me, but I also really enjoy diving into the more technical aspects of projects and trying to figure out how to solve specific problems, which often looks like making particles float in a very specific formation and morph into an object.”
With his background as a lecturer for VR design, Hummel is fascinated by real-time rendering workflows. “The ability to not only create computer-generated imagery but also interact with it is something I want to explore more in the near future. Game engines are
constantly evolving and especially the new raytracing possibilities enable us to do so much more than waiting for a final render,” he adds.
Shyukin has some simple advice for 3D artists looking to immerse themselves in the world of complex animations. “Just start making stuff,” he says, “share it with friends or upload to the internet, it’s a great time to get into 3D, there’s so much amazing learning material available.”
PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES
The brainchild of Manuel Casasola Merkle and Moritz Schwind, Entagma creates advanced tutorials for procedural design, primarily using Houdini. The pair created it as an outlet to share the techniques they’ve been nerding out over and using in production on their own projects. Entagma’s library of tutorials, example scenes and tech notes focus on the boundaries between design and advanced CGI.
“Clients expect an ever-increasing production value and more complex designs,” the pair explain. “That’s where generative techniques were first employed in our work – to add production value to commercial projects without overstraining the resources of our team. In more recent years however, as we successfully moved away from commercial production, we found ourselves being able to experiment with procedural techniques more freely, leading us to creations which wouldn’t exist within the constraints of a commercial production.”
The pair are now in a position to take any tool or algorithm they find intriguing and push it to see the visual outcome and how it could be modified to produce something even more unexpected. With that said, many of their approaches are still firmly grounded in production techniques honed over their years in advertising, with shading, lighting and rendering being among the most obvious. “Your algorithm can be fantastic, but if you are not able to turn it into an impressive image, most of its impact is lost,” they add.
Procedural design employs techniques from a vast array of fields, including computer science, engineering, fluid hydrodynamics or even astronomy. “What they all have in common is that these techniques can be expressed as algorithms – recipes that a computer can follow to arrive at an outcome,” the pair explain. “It is our task as procedural designers to research, find or invent those algorithms and then translate them into a given application’s language to be able to use them to create artworks.”
Although some of the techniques used in procedural animation may seem unorthodox from an artistic point of view, they’re not so unconventional from a computer science standpoint. “In that sense we’re relying on a bit of math, a bit of scripting and a whole lot of cobbling together scripts and hacking a tool until it does what we envisioned,” says the pair.
These approaches can help artists to create forms and movement that just wouldn’t be possible with other techniques. “Slowly crawling sand dunes, fungus-like growing sculptures or what looks like solidified fire simply can’t be efficiently created in any other way,” the pair continue. “Procedural design opens up a whole new universe of shapes, behaviours and techniques.”
“More broadly,” they continue, “procedural design allows us to design systems which in turn create artwork, thus enabling the exploration of design spaces instead of working on the final result directly. This ability to explore vast spaces instead of singular spots makes procedural design so immensely powerful.”
“PROCEDURAL DESIGN OPENS UP A WHOLE NEW UNIVERSE OF SHAPES, BEHAVIOURS AND TECHNIQUES”
MANUEL CASASOLA MERKLE AND MORITZ SCHWIND, FOUNDERS OF ENTAGMA