Lux Mediae Noctis

"It's happening right now". 

The planet is facing an inevitable environmental and humanitarian crisis as the "climate clock" ticks down. The trailer starts in a dead forest, destroyed by fires, with a grandfather clock marking the time we have left. As midnight strikes, the clock hands spin backward, and the environment is restored to its former splendour, with a majestic swarm of butterflies representing the human potential to limit the damages of the crisis. This doesn’t have to be the end.

The Final Product

Poster & Brochure

The Team

An Escape Studios short film written, directed and produced by Henry Claud N'Guetta and Enrico Vaccari.

Core

Henry Claud N’Guetta - Director, Producer, 2D Artist

Enrico Vaccari - Director, Producer, 3D Artist, Rigger

Gino Demurtas - 3D Lead

Jadine Downes - 3D Artist

Adewale Ogunbekun - 3D Artist

James Bennett - 3D Artist

Matthew O’Reilly - 2D Lead

Kayleigh Boshoff - 2D Artist

Andy Ramlika - 2D Artist

Matdawna Jn Philipp - Rigger

Zoe Walker - Animator

Special Thanks

Sagar Rathod (3D Tutor) - Clement Gharini (2D Tutor) - Simon Browne (3D Support) - Carlos Poon (3D Support) - Daniel Shutt (3D Support) - Michael Davies (3D Support) - Klaudija Cermak (2D Support) - Jane Williams (Illustrator) - Oliver Chenery (Credits) - Ilaria Colavito (3D Support) - Alberto Scotti (3D Support) - Cheryl Chan (Studio Assistant) - Brandon Welch (Studio Assistant) - Federico Cristofani (Music Producer) - Angelo Racz (Composer) - Advance VO (Voicover)    

The Goal

Our aim was to create a trailer for a potential documentary about nature that has the climate crisis at its core, the greatest challenge humanity will ever have to face. Sadly, this crucial topic is still not discussed enough and absolutely requires raising awareness among the population on a widespread level because we are all directly involved.

The Climate Clock tells us how quickly we are approaching the 1.5°C of global warming, given the current trends, hence the idea of having a pendulum clock as the main protagonist of the film. 

Pre Production

Inspiration

Our two main sources of inspiration were, on the one hand, "Slumberland" (2022), along with the Tuscan countryside and hills and, on the other hand, "All Quiet on the Western Front" (2022), because we believe they represent the stark contrast between life and death that we wanted to convey. As for the pendulum clock, we drew inspiration from Stranger Things (2016-Present).

Storyboard

After an initial phase of work planning and allocating tasks to team members based on their inclinations and strengths, we moved on to creating a fairly detailed storyboard for our trailer, to set the storyline, camera angles and colour palettes. The concept underwent several revisions and changes. For instance, due to a lack of manpower and time constraints, we were forced to remove what is labeled as shot 0020 in the picture below.

The adjustments to the storyboard, as well as all the sudden changes we had to make after receiving feedback from our tutors and industry professionalsI, demonstrate our flexibility, resilience, and ability to respond to 'adverse' situations by modifying the schedule and reallocating the different tasks accordingly.

Shooting

We conducted extensive research to find the most suitable location for our purposes. We initially went to Epping Forest but soon realized it wasn't the right place. Nonetheless, we gathered numerous references of trees and natural elements such as leaves and moss to obtain accurate scans and high-resolution textures.

We eventually decided to shoot at the "Flying Garden" in Richmond Park as that's one of the few places where we were allowed to use a drone. 

Unfortunately, we ended up using just a small portion of the original live action footage (foreground tree) as it turned out easier for us to rebuild most of the environment in 3D. 

Hero Assets

For this project, we had two hero assets to model: the pendulum clock and the Blue Morpho (the chosen species for the butterfly). Below, you can find the workflow we followed for both, from gathering the references to the texturing stage.

For the clock, we didn't encounter significant obstacles, except for a small issue with the displacement maps that we managed to resolve quite easily. Texturing it was quite demanding because we had to create two different versions, one weathered and one clean. 

The butterfly required special attention as well, particularly regarding the wing shader. One side of the wings is brown and opaque, while the other side is blue, iridescent, and reflective. This double-faced feature was successfully carried out in Arnold using an aiMixShader combining two different materials. 

We ended up with a high poly model for the closeup shot and a low poly model with colour variations for the crowd. 

Rigging

The rigging system for the clock was done in Python to allow for more control over the clock hands (deceleration) whereas the butterfly rig was done by creating an actual skeleton and by skinning it to the model. 

Animation 

In the film, the hero butterfly appears repeatedly. The goal was to create a realistic animation and find the right motion path for it.

Environment

Scene Generation

After carefully examining the drone footage and assessing the scene's proportions, we successfully identified a concentrated cluster of tracking points and managed get a rough ground mesh out of them.

In 3DEqualizer, we devised a strategy to create a plane that not only accurately tracked the camera movement but also replicated the intricate contours of the actual terrain with great precision.

In Houdini, we ran simulations to generate variations in height corresponding to the real topography of the ground, as well as produced masks for the purpose of texturing and scattering the assets.

Workflow

In our workflow, we used Maya to manually place the main trees first, while in Houdini, we utilized procedural scripts to ensure avoidance of collisions with grass and other objects.

The first scene was created entirely in Houdini and rendered using Mantra. However, the second scene presented us with a series of challenges that required a more iterative approach. Initially, there were difficulties in transferring the scene from Houdini to Maya. As a workaround, we utilized Bifrost, a versatile tool, to generate scatters using similar scripts. We came back to Houdini but experienced loads of rendering issues which we didn't manage to solve. As a last resort, we were forced to bring everything into Unreal and render from there. 

Consistency

We tried to keep the lighting as consistent as possible across all softwares. We predominantly relied on a primary high dynamic range image (HDRI) in conjunction with a distant light source, tailored to the specific rendering engine employed. This approach ensured the continuity of lighting across the various software platforms, enabling us to uphold visual cohesiveness throughout the project.

Troubleshooting & Rendering

Unreal turned crucial in achieving efficient render times.

In this stage, we recreated the scene by manually placing the trees once again, while leveraging the "foliage" functionality within Unreal to scatter the remaining elements. This approach allowed for a streamlined workflow, optimizing the overall efficiency of the rendering process.

Butterfly Crowd

The crowd simulation was created in Houdini using scattered instances of the low-poly version of the butterfly in different colours.

Compositing

Our film consists in a big symmetrical sequence with no cuts, therefore we had to make sure everything was looking consistent throughout. To make our life easier, we split the sequence into three shots: shot 0010 (dead forest), shot 0020 (transition), shot 0030 (overgrown forest).

Shot 0010 - Dead Forest

In the first shot, the major challenges were creating a believable multi-layered fog system which could properly interact with ground fires and smoke, as well as incorporating a matte painting.

Shot 0020 - Transition

In the second shot, we had to make sure that the transition between the two graded clock and environment was smooth and seamless. 

Shot 0030 - Overgrown Forest

The final shot was truly challenging due to the large number of elements that needed to be combined together. Compositing this shot was further complicated by the lack of real elements (except for the foreground tree) and the absence of crucial passes such as the environment-masked butterfly ID. We had to find creative solutions to overcome these issues.

Final Thoughts

This project undoubtedly put us all to the test in different ways. We came across various obstacles, especially during the creation of the environment, which affected our motivation a bit. We had to scale down the project several times based on the feedback we received and make numerous changes, some of them quite drastic, within tight timelines. However, we always managed to get up again and demonstrated our flexibility and resilience. It was an experience that helped us grow both intellectually and professionally.