Personal project. I’m always looking for a new reason to try to push Cinema 4D capabilities into Houdini-level simulations.

So I decided on mushrooms as a subject for this exploration. I started by building my own custom mushroom generator in Cinema 4D, so I can quickly iterate background mushrooms. Next was R&D with soft-body simulations. I began exploring different techniques for creating morph and inflation motions. Once I had a morphing base sim I was happy with, I moved onto layering in some fiber & string FX. Messing around with different properties such as tension, stickiness, and friction; I eventually settled on a pretty cool, organic look. The final touch was adding particles to the surface of the mushrooms. I spent some time building a system that would release the particles from the mushroom surface ONLY when the surface was at a certain velocity. This way, the most tumultuous moments would automatically be accented with particle dust.

Sound design by me as well.