CONCEPT

As a celebration of the transition from education into the industry, I wanted to embody my feelings of excitement towards the possibilities of the future.  Thus was born the concept of illustrating the journey of a pupil through a cosmic oculus.

PROCESS + R&D

Camera / Light Setup

I wanted the viewer to feel as if they had a front-row seat to a real space journey.  To emphasize this, I parented the camera to some lights that would illuminate elements as the approached.

Rigid Body Setup

In order to allow the pieces of glass shards to first drift together before being shattered again, I used two separate rigid body simulations.  In the first, I used forces to slowly push apart the fractured eye shape. 

After baking to keyframes and reversing the order, I created a second system to be abruptly pierced by a blunted cone parented to the camera.  Visibility for each system was keyframed in the render, but for illustrative purposes, both are left visible here.  

Procedural Workflow

To create a fantastical space-like environment, I used noise nodes to displace the surface of the tube in which the scene took place.  To emphasize its ethereal, non-solid look, I changed the displacement using drivers based on the frames of the animation. 

For the opening scene, a single cube (shown in orange) was controlled using modifiers.  The motion of the resulting array was entirely dictated by the cube's spatial relationship to an empty controller that was referenced in a simple deform modifier.