"Longing" Project Exploration
- Katherine Nitti
- Aug 14
- 3 min read
“Longing” began as a project in the Winter of 2025 as a way to explore clouds and fog volumes/ vdbs in Houdini. As I’ve continued my studies, I’ve had the opportunity to receive feedback on it from mentors and generous artists in the industry, and have continued to develop it.
Concept and Theme
The concept was inspired by the feeling of "wanting". A longing for something- not out of a cynical greed, but in a way of love, life, or passion. I chose to associate this feeling with clouds, as I believe the visuals of the vast expanse of sky fit well with ideas of dreams and desires.
Animation
The original animation had the woman reaching and stepping forwards, materializing herself out of cloud as she confronts her longingness for more. However, when recreating the animation, I wanted to create more feeling and life.
Instead of just stepping out of the cloud, she is pulling herself up and out, exerting a bit more force. It is less natural, and the cloud seems to almost resist a bit instead of complimenting her efforts to materialize. It gives her a bit more naivety and curiosity, instead of making this seem like something she has done before or is confident doing.
As I was animating this scene, I was rereading Hayao Miyazaki’s “Starting Point”. In the beginning of the book, there is an excerpt from John Lasseter regarding Miyazaki’s talent of portraying scale and weight through movement. Reading this made me realize that, while animating the character, I had to further exaggerate her animation to communicate her scale and weight.
I slowed down her movements to emphasize her large size. As well as this, I tried to make her gestures more gentle, light, and flowy, imagining how a cloud woman may move. I picture it’s a bit like being underwater. The near weightlessness, the freedom to move, and the flow of the water around you. I tried to incorporate some of this familiar feeling into how she acted.
The bird animation in shot 1 was sourced online from Sketchfab user Pikawut (“Bird Flight Animation”). However, I set the birds along a path and staggered the timing of their flaps and positions, as well as the direction they would flee upon the cloud woman’s awakening.
Clouds
Much of the feedback for the original “Longing” was regarding the swimming through the cloud noise. To combat this in my new project, I educated myself on volume deformers, and ensured not to animate or translate any clouds prior to applying noise.
To create the details I wanted, I split her into several layers of cloud:
Base body
Hair
Background cloud (which she emerges from)
Breakaway particles (the ones coming off of her and the background cloud as she emerges)
Cloud details (clouds whisping off her hands as she moves them, materializes, and smooths her form)
Her body was created by sourcing a cloud from her static body mesh, adding noise, and
then using a volume deform to apply the character animation.
The hair was hand animated instead of simulated using curves parented to her head. I wanted to be able to control its movements more precisely than a simulation, since I was attempting to make it more flowy and lightweight given her being made of clouds. Finding a balance between real, gravity-pulled hair and cloud hair took deliberation. I wanted it to fall slightly like real hair, since I liked the movements of it swaying as she pulls herself out of the cloud. However, I tried to balance some weightlessness to it.
The curves of the hair were then solidified using spheres copied to points along them, and from there turned into a fog vdb for the cloud.
The breakaway particles were created by using the body as a collider in the particles of the background cloud, as well as a small bit of wind noise and drag. I isolated them by identifying which would collide with her body mesh using vex.
Lastly, the cloud details were created by isolating her arms, and creating a moving attribute along them that wiped over her arms the more she moved them away from the cloud. This gave the impression of the noisy cloud details falling off of her arms as she smooths out her body and creates her form.
I intend to continue adjusting this project, and add more feedback that I’ve been grateful to receive. In the future, I intend to polish the movement of the dissipating clouds to be more in tact and stringy.
I would also like to land on a name for my cloudwoman once her third iteration is complete. "Nephali", inspired by greek cloud nymphs, is a top contender, but I also admire "Desiderius", given the theme.
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