Nodevember 2022

What is Nodevember?

Nodevember is a yearly challenge to create something every two days of November using procedural workflows and no outside assets. It’s a fun time to experiment and share what you’ve done! Here are my interpretations of the prompts that I did in November of 2022!

Days 1-2: Space Junkyard

For days 1-2 I made a “space junkyard” containing needles on the surface of the moon. I used basic primitives and booleans to make the needles, and strung them together using vellum ropes between the different needles. Getting the robes to behave just right was a fun challenge, using a series of “find shortest path” sops and source points. I had to write several rules in order to make sure that the ropes didn’t clip through the sides of the needles and remained inside of the needles rather than falling out.

The ground was a basic heightfield to get some variation in verticality. I added some randomized “shockwaves” from the needles being pressed down to give some variation to the patterns in the ground, and got variation in the color using noise patterns and gradients.

Everything being fully procedural meant that I had a lot of control on the number of needles, number of ropes, size, and everything! I found it quite easy to art-direct to get a result that I was happy with out of my unusual interpretation of the prompt.

Days 3-4: Psychedelic Alley

I saw most people take this prompt towards the direction of a creepy alley street, and that isn’t something that resonates with me. I decided to make a bowling alley, and have the lanes warp to get the “Psychedelic” look. A bowling ball slides down the warping lanes and hits the bowling pins sending them to the back. The pins are simulated only when the ball hits them to allow them to properly warp without falling over beforehand, but the ball properly interacts with the warping lane all the way it rolls down the lane.

The lighting was just a fun repeating position based gradient. While the geometry of the lane is made from fairly simple primitives, I wanted to add some details with the planks of wood being different colors and the warping colors. Relying so heavily on emissives raised render times a lot, but created a fun overall look to push home the “Psychedellic” look.

Days 5-6: Oceanic Wonder

Two days is not a lot of time to really fine tune something, so what I decided to do for oceanic wonder was simply playing with water retractions and colors! Rather than do something with FLIP fluids and particles, I created a whirlpool using a grid with noise. The whirlpool was created with VEX to displace the grid down in a swirl pattern.

The object under the water is simply a white sphere that is animated to move up and down in order to get interesting retractions. The view is top-down just to have the retractions creating an interesting swirl pattern. I adjusted the size and depth of the whirlpool in accordance with the position of the sphere in order to have it grow and shrink.

I cleaned up the render a bit in Nuke in order to make the colors a bit more saturated and remove some blown out parts reflected from the light.

Days 13-14: Dream Depot

Nothing initially came to mind when I heard the prompt for days 13-14 of “Dream Depot”, as that is by far the least concrete prompt. What is a dream depot? I interpreted this by first attempting to quantify what a dream looked like, by using some bubbly volumes from the Cloud SOP in Houdini, and then having a box travel from one to another as if a package being transported.

The most fun I had with this was getting the clouds to deform in an interesting way from the velocity of the box. I hand-animated the box to get the timings and loftiness that I felt fit the topic of “dream” and without giving it any particular form, I had it travel from one cloud to another. I key-framed the velocity influence on the clouds over time until I got the nice swirls that I was happy with.

I had a fun time lighting this with pinks and blues in order to get a bit of a gradient on the back of the clouds. I honestly still have no idea what a “dream depot” would look like, but I’m happy with this interpretation for now.

Days 15-16: Polar Mystery

I chose to go with a rather abstract look for this prompt. I wanted to create something that was like the combination of the underside of a frozen lake and aurora lights. I took inspiration from a shot from the underside of a lake in the movie Promare, and saught to preserve the boxy shape language that Studio Trigger used.

I sliced up the surface using booleans of boxes of different sizes and strips. I separated major cuts with minor cuts and gave them different colors and reflectivity. I liked the idea of auroras over a night sky, so for this entry I avoided including a light above the lake, instead giving the impression of lights shining through the cuts using emissives.

I added some little bubble dots to push home the underwater look, and added camera movement for a quick dive under the water.

Days 19-20: Hidden Dwelling

This prompt I wanted to capture the fun of finding a treasure or hidden base from when you were younger. I decided to experiment with the “mixing” of 2D and 3D lighting for this prompt, creating an interesting style between the two. I used basic rounded primitives for all shapes, and adjusted the color of each object based off of the normal direction in order to create “faked” 2D lighting. Combining it with the large area lights that I used off-screen and underground create very soft shadows which contrast the colors in an interesting way.

I liked the look of 2D games, and limited to only basic primitives I didn’t do a “realistic” environment, but am still quite happy with my result from this. I believe that I still hit a decent level of interest with the red X and the lighting, so I still think it’s visually interesting.

The idea of a stairway was taken from the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series where you could stumble across a hidden stairway that would take you to a secret level. I animated the stairway opening up and felt the need to add some nice lighting coming from underneath to imply the existence of a secret base without actually needing to make it.