yattytheman. - Monument Valley 3

Monument Valley 3: The Lighthouse

Moth Studio invited me to help with compositing for Monument Valley's short film in celebration of their latest release in the MV franchise.

I was responsible for compositing in certain shots, helping gel together the wonderful 3D animation and set pieces that the artists made.

There isn't much behind the scenes, but I'll describe the work that I've done with Gifs to represent scenes.

Some shots were very comp-heavy, relying on splicing of layers and clever tricks to make the illusion. This was a clever use of passes out of the render and masks to hide and reveal layers.

To make things more art-directable after render, the majority of the rain and water FX are done in After Effects. They were meant to be 2D/geometrical style rain, so it was only natural to do in post.

The trickiest water of all was the giant wave. The wave itself is a 3D mesh, but the shapes and streaks were comped after the fact, using the UV maps to stick to the render and was able to animate the shapes moving upwards. The foam on the top is also done in post, which is a mix of voronoi noise to create those arcs.

The scene above was a particular favourite of mine. It was tough to get the warm sunrise to be saturated enough in render, so it took a lot of clever compositing to create a warm welcoming scene. The droplet was done in post for timing. The edge light on the character was also done in post, to give it a more geometric 2D feel.

The scene above was a monsterous shot. There are hidden cuts between the pillars of the tower, because it was very difficult to make a clean transition in 3D. So there was a lot of shadow removal, blending of frames, and extra gloss. A lot was done to make it look smooth.

I'd like to thank Moth Studio for having me on. As of writing, it is the most precious project, and I look back at it fondly.

You can see the rest of the credits and all the wonderful artists here:
https://moth.studio/projects/mv3

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