The Mind

The Mind 

The Mind is a procedural asset and material library created with various software tools. The goal is to create a short animation using our own assets and materials. The animation will take you through different worlds and landscapes outside this reality.

This project was created by Ethan Nava and Lorenza Heredia. We created the concept, digital assets, materials, worldbuilding, sound design, storyboard, and final animation montage.

Using different software tools, such as Houdini, Blender, Unreal Engine, Ableton Live, After Effects, Premier Pro and Photoshop allowed two artists with different backgrounds and interests to combine their skills and create something together. We defined and followed a procedural workflow that helped us create this project.

This is a making off of the project:

The Story and Narrative

The concept of The Mind came from our desire to create something that we thought was only possible in our imagination, but we brought it to life by taking that concept and designing the assets and materials.

By using our own digital assets and library materials, we created a narrative between small worlds where each asset has its own personal environment. This created a narrative that revolves around each landscape and what lives in it, and through the camera movements and sound design, becomes an immersive experience.

Sound Design 

For the sound design we worked with Patrico Pous, a fantastic musician and producer who composed, played and created the music for the animation. He brought the music to life. We wanted the music for each scene to be a common thread throughout the video.

For the sound design, we recorded our own foley, which he later edited to create spaces and atmospheres and give the objects their own personality.

Concept Art and WorldBuilding

To create the assets, we first created a concept and sketches of how they should look and function. Based on these sketches, we then created the digital assets. Once the assets were ready, we created the storyboard for our animation.

The Mind Asset Library

The idea behind the animation was to show the scalability and utility we could give to the assets and materials. To achieve this, we worked with procedural workflows and used tools that helped us create and design more efficiently. The library is divided into two sections: the assets and the materials.

The assets are created as digital assets in Houdini VFX, where we created eight different types: Leonos, Perlos, Keras, Donaz, Lazuli, Fungi, Tubis, and the Islands. For each digital asset, we programmed different sliders and parameters that allowed us to give each asset a specific shape and aesthetic. Since the digital assets are procedural objects, we are able to create a number of different assets, each with its own variation.

The materials were created in Blender using Cycles and in Unreal Engine. In addition to the assets, the materials were constructed with geometry nodes that allowed us to create them procedurally and follow the same basics, that is, create a material and get as many versions of it as we wanted. We put together thirty different materials that fell into three different categories: abstract, fresnel and glasses.

Donaz Asset / Abstract and Fresnel Materials

Leonos Asset / Abstract and Glass Materials

Perlos Asset / Abstract and Glass Materials

Keras Asset / Abstract and Fresnel Materials

Tubis Asset / Abstract Meterial

Lazuli Asset / Glass Meterial

Island Asset / Random Materials from the Library

Extra Scenes