On a bright and peaceful summer day, a little girl dives into the ocean to transform into a mythical creature.

Genre: Animation
Tools and Tech: Maya/Blender/ZBrush/Substance Painter/ Substance Designer/Houdini/Unity
Role: 3D Artist, VFX Artist, Tech Artist

The Dive is a technical animation that depicts a young girl’s transformation as she dives into the sea, becoming a sea creature. The project was created using Maya Arnold for rendering, Houdini for VDB morphing, and Subsurface Scattering to enhance the realism of the transformation.

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.