I wanted to explore the experience of caving alone and the beauty of the natural formations below. The first section is inspired by the Ape Caves in Washington that I had the opportunity to traverse years ago. The bulk of the assets and materials were created procedurally with GAEA supported by the power of nanite displacement and Megalights. I used Cinema 4D to simulate and build the remaining assets including the stalactites, stalagmites, props and volumetrics. Motion capture was done with a Leap motion controller and I used Marvelous Designer for the cloth sims. I filmed everything with a virtual camera using livelink (VCAM) and used Cubase for sound design. Post, grade and edit in AE.
I plan to do a breakdown eventually. Megalights is amazing!
Thanks for watching!
Hope you’re well and having a wonderful week so far
This managed to look both incredible and utterly terrifying. The realism is honestly just stunning but its really the smaller details that made this scene for me. The water drips, dust spots, water reflections - breathtaking. How long did this take you?
I started this back in November so around 1.5 months in total. Once megalights was announced I knew I wanted to build a scene to test it out. Originally it was just going to be a personal test environment but I was encouraged to expand and this was the result. I’d love to share it with the greater community!
Hello @PSunset ! Welcome back to posting with us here on the forums!
This is such a chilling experience. Spelunking is something I never get to do, but comparing this to some videos I watch occasionally feels very spot on. I won’t deny that you jumpscared me a little with the red light and the ominous sudden lighting before the deeper delve, haha. Genuinely gave me goosebumps!
Thank you so much for the kind words. It was a labor of love. I’ve been fascinated by cavers as this style of exploration scares me quite a lot but the natural formations down there are incredible.
Thanks a lot! The splash was actually hand animated, not simulated, in C4D and imported as an alembic into unreal as a geometry cache. I used raytracing to get realistic refractions.
