Exploratory Practice – Group Project

1. Introduction

• Storyline

The protagonist gazes out to sea while a baby turtle slowly crawls along the beach. Waves crash against the shore. Gradually, areas of the ocean begin to turn red, and the tide creeps towards the turtle. The protagonist crouches down and reaches out, triggering a series of flashbacks showing pollution and a world devastated by environmental collapse. When the scene returns, the tide has receded, leaving behind only the turtle’s shell. Debris begins to appear on the shore.

• Core Theme

The project addresses climate and nuclear pollution, aiming to raise awareness of sustainability and social justice issues through metaphor and symbolism.

• My Role

I was responsible for environment modelling, including the beach, shoreline, ocean, and debris.

Final video

VFX Breakdown video –

2. Pre-Production

• Team discussions

Our first team meeting took place in the LCC canteen, where we discussed potential narratives and agreed on the storyline by the end of the afternoon. Meeting in person was productive, allowing us to define our roles and establish an initial pipeline.

• Initial Pipeline decisions: Blender, Houdini, After Effects

As most of the group preferred Blender and Houdini, we adopted Blender for modelling and Houdini for fluid simulations. After Effects was chosen for compositing.

3. Research & Concept

• Research into Sea turtle habitats and scale, pollution imagery, and conceptual vs realistic environment design
  • As I am responsible for the environmental modelling, I researched sea turtles’ habitats to gain a better understanding of their natural environment. I discovered that they inhabit most of the world’s oceans, except for the cold polar seas. They tend to spend their lives in the relatively shallow waters of the continental shelf. I also discovered that the size of sea turtles changes enormously as they grow. Therefore, I recommended to my teammates that our turtle in the scene could be considered a small sea turtle to match the intended atmosphere.

• Reference, Storyboards & Collaboration

I collected photographic references and tourist footage, which informed the design. These are real photos of sea turtles that I found, as well as real footage of their habitat in Japan captured on tourist videos.

After communicating with the team, my teammates created an animatic video. I encouraged them to confirm the production pipeline for each shot and organise it on a Figma board.

4. Production Process

Week 1 – Realistic Beach and Ocean Tests

I modelled an initial realistic shoreline in Blender, sculpted from a plane.

For the ocean, I tested the following solutions and finally chose True Terrain because:

1. Simple textured planes: fast, but lacked realism.
2. Blender’s default ocean modifier: slow and does not produce realistic visual results.
3. Flip Fluids plugin: only produces good results with long-time simulations and requires large disk storage, which is not suitable for the Blender creation process, especially for our project. Flip Fluid is much more efficient and realistic in Unreal, thanks to the powerful rendering system of the Unreal Engine. However, as my teammates are unwilling to use Unreal, I had to find a solution within Blender. Then I found True Terrain, which is a better solution that combines fast generation and realistic results, whether in the creation or rendering stage.
4. True Terrain plugin: real-time generation, efficient and realistic

To be specific:

• An ocean created with a simple plane and texture did not produce good results. It requires staying at a certain angle to make it look like the sea, which is not suitable for this project.
• The default ocean in Blender: It still looks like a plane and is not realistic enough.
• Generated with Flip Fluid: It was time-consuming as it took a lot of RAM and storage, as well as time, to generate the wave with round shapes, rather than a realistic wave with foam. Based on other artists’ published realistic videos generated by this plugin and my own computer tests, a good realistic result with this plugin was estimated to take about a month to render.
• Generated with True Terrain: It generates in real time and renders quickly, producing more realistic results than the other three.

I also experimented with pollution points using Geometry Nodes and particle systems, exporting simulations as Alembic files for efficiency.

Week 2-3: Conceptual redesign based on team feedback

• Regarding the narrative style, we aimed to strike a balance between realism and conceptual symbolism
• Revised Pipeline: real footage shooting at White Cliff + Nuke(camera tracking)
• Redesigned the whole environment and added modelling debris/rubbish

After discussing the idea with our teammates, we decided to create the final video using conceptual symbolism. This engages audiences more with visual storytelling and raises awareness more effectively. Following team feedback, we shifted towards a more symbolic style. My teammate generated AI references for atmospheric stones, which helped redefine the mood. After discussing it with him, I agreed with the atmosphere he wanted. I remodelled the seashore in Blender, created conceptual crystal stones with Geometry Nodes, and added debris, including fish fossils sourced from online references.

Meanwhile, my teammates filmed at the White Cliffs and shared HDRIs, but I found that the weather mismatched our planned atmosphere

I continued to recreate a new seashore with True Terrain and model the crystal stones using Geometry Nodes.

I created a new plane to simulate the ocean water. As we had decided to simulate the fluid with Houdini, I created the water here for preview purposes only. Therefore, I did not use True Terrain to add fluid simulation. Instead, I created a plane with noise and several other textured planes to make it look like foam on the waves in all directions.

Different layers of stone were added to create more details.

After that, I added debris with some online models, including four real fish fossils from a Japanese institution.

Subsequent Weeks – Integration and Iteration

After handing over my Blender files, I kept in touch with teammates to clarify details. Believing the assets were still in progress, I chose not to remesh all models, leaving flexibility for my teammate to animate and combine them with characters in the scene. However, this led to version conflicts and texture errors when the file was opened in the LCC digital space.

This experience made me realise the importance of checking version compatibility and settings before sharing files. Once adjustments were made, the assets were successfully integrated, and textures were refined to align with the desired tone. The final result better matched the character’s vibe after my teammate’s edits.

Reflection

Working on this project strengthened both my technical skills in environmental modelling and my ability to collaborate within a group pipeline.

Our team aimed to address sustainability and social justice through visual storytelling. My initial research into turtle habitats grounded the modelling in realism, but as the project evolved, I adapted towards a more symbolic and conceptual style. This balance between accuracy and abstraction has inspired me to experiment more in my future project.

Technically, I explored several ocean-simulation methods, from Blender’s default tools to Flip Fluids and True Terrain. While Unreal Engine might have offered a more efficient workflow, I supported the group’s decision to remain within Blender and Houdini, prioritising team cohesion. The True Terrain plugin ultimately proved effective in maintaining both efficiency and realism.

Collaboration highlighted the need for flexibility and negotiation. Compatibility issues between Blender versions posed challenges, highlighting the importance of clear communication, clean asset delivery, and version control.

In future projects, I would introduce version control earlier and explore ways to integrate my preferred tools more seamlessly into group workflows.