Morph Animation

One of the biggest challenges in creating The Dive was crafting the morphing process as the girl dives into the water and transforms into an axolotl. While we initially drew inspiration from existing animation films like Luca, which often speed up the transformation to simplify the process, we chose to develop a more intricate solution. To achieve this, we studied insect metamorphosis and hand-animated both the girl and axolotl models.

These models were then converted into VDB files, and the morphing was done in Houdini. The results were exported as Alembic caches for rendering in Maya Arnold, where we further enhanced the transformation by animating the subsurface scattering material, resulting in a smoother and more visually appealing effect.