utopia or dystopia?
Propädeutikum ZHdK | Animation project | 2022
Taking a look into the future shows how a potential Utopia might look like. However, there seems to be a rather dark secret lurking in its history.
Two worlds, two different approaches
Due to their vastly different requirements, the dystopian ruins and the city of Utopia were created using two different techniques.
For the utopic scenery I chose the Unity Engine, the main reason being the need for a dynamically generated crowd simulation system, which I ended up coding by myself. Given that my laptop had an RTX capable graphics card, I wanted to give raytracing in Unity a try. The different scenes were all set up in the same scene and arranged on a single timeline, which automatically recorded all takes for the animation.
For the creation of the dystopic landscape I chose to use Blender, to benefit from its more sophisticated rendering capabilities. This was my first time using Blender, learning it as I went. Unlike in Unity, rendering all the frames needed for the animation took substantially longer, forcing me to lower the render quality all the way down, resulting in a noisy image. Despite being unintentional, the added grain was percieved as fitting to the already derelict atmosphere of the dystopian ruins.
I wanted to give the impression that the two places are related to each other so I tried to make matching transitions as far as possible. To make it clear that the city is a virtual world, I added visual glitches. Some of them are more noticeable than others, while also serving as a good way to make transitions back to the dystopian world.
Central park in the middle of the city
Mysterious pyramid surrounded by ruins
Detail of the park
Interior of the pyramid with the simulation running in the center
Scientists discover the world is flat
Detail shot of a surveillance drone
Set piece for the tower shot
Set piece for the simulation clock
Overview in Unity
Overview in Blender
Inspiration
Inspiration for this project came from several different sources. The core idea of having a simulated virtual utopia came from the 1999 movie Matrix. The uninhabitable Earth setting was heavily inspired by Wall-E, while the mysterious architecture located in the center is loosely based on the brutalistic forerunner architecture from the Halo franchise.
