"The Moon-Birds Sacrifice" Project Exploration

“The Moon-Bird’s Sacrifice” is a personal project created during the summer of 2025, inspired by a story of love, loss, and limerence that I created alongside a desire to further explore Pyro simulations.

I am responsible for all aspects of this project asides from the following:

• Human animation and rig sourced from Mixamo

• Bird 3D model sourced from cgtrader user s-akkush

This post will cover the following:

• Story, Concept, and Theme

• Procedural Flora and Animating with Bends

• Shot 01 - Pyro Sims and Characterization through Fire

• Shot 03 - Hair Sims and Emotional Beats

• Shot 04 - Advecting by Volume, Masking Particles, and Blowing Up the Sun

Story, Concept, and Theme

“The Moon-Birds Sacrifice” is inspired by tales from many different stories, mythologies, and dynamics. The background behind it is the following:

Many years ago, the Sun god fell in love with a maiden, drawn to her radiance. With each passing day, his love grew fiercer, yet the maiden’s heart belonged to a mortal man.

In a jealous rage, the Sun struck the maidens lover into ash, only deepening her resistance. Consumed by obsession, the Sun outreached its flares towards her, attempting to engulf her in its light.

The Moon, witnessing this cruelty, blessed the ashes of the maidens lover. From them rose a dove, her lover reborn, racing to free her from the Sun’s grasp.

With this story, I was hoping to contrast an unhealthy, obsessive, and single-sided love with a mutual, healthy, supportive love. I was especially interested in attempting to portray the different types of love through the effects and movement of the two contrasting “characters”. 

This story was also inspired by Florence and the Machines “Drumming Song”, and its intense portrayal of love and the overwhelming emotions it can create.

Procedural Flora and Animating with Bends

The forest layout draws from a stylized, 2D-inspired aesthetic, with flowers deliberately arranged and angled toward the camera to frame the scene’s composition.

Randomizing and Not Randomizing

The majority of the plants and trees were hand placed and scaled using transforms, in order to art direct the composition and framing of the shot. 

However, the following was randomized using vex and the attribute randomize node:

• Tree branches (created using SideFX Labs Tree Generator)

• Leaves on trees

• Leaves on plants

• Grass

• Terrain

The flowers are intended to appear unnaturally precise and orderly. Therefore, randomness was not used in their modeling.

Animating

In order to make the environment react to the effects, I chose to hand animate the plants using bend deformers and keyframes.

I experimented with other methods of animation, such as using sin equations, edit nodes, and even simulations at times. However, I settled on bend nodes - albeit a more tedious option.

Bend nodes provided much more precise control over the intensity and direction of the movement, allowing me to exaggerate or lessen it when needed. It also allowed me to make a null control node and animate from one place.

Since the environment is already relatively stylized in the composition of the flowers, I wanted to further push exaggerations through movements. Hand animating felt like the best option for this.

Shot 01 - Pyro Sims and Characterization through Fire

The two contrasting forces in this project - the Sun and the Moon-Bird - were both spawned out of pyro simulations to create a wispy, fiery, magic effect.

However, with both forces having different motivations, origins, emotions, and expressions of love, I wanted to focus on the movement of the effects representing this.

The Sun Flare - Emotion and Design

The sun encapsulates a type of love that is possessive, manipulative, and overtaking. One that can be both aggressive, but also eerily calm in how it steadily overtakes its victim. I wanted to represent this through its movements. 

In the first shot, its solar flare beams down, aggressive and quick at first. It spins in an elegant yet precise spiral, hypnotizing in a way. Then, it dissipates in a calm, elegant manner.

The pattern mirrors traits of toxic love — an abrupt, meticulously staged eruption of anger and longing, then a deceptive calm, designed to erase the damage and lure the target closer once more.

The Sun Flare - Breakdown

To create the pyro sim for the flare, I started by creating a lumpy sphere using the mountain node.

From there, I filled the source geo with points to use as a pyro source, and added noise on its density and temperature attributes.

Then, I animated the geo rapidly descending downwards using a transform node, reducing its scale as it does so. As well as a very quick spin animation as it descends.

This animation of the source geo is what gives the pyro sim its swirly, beam-like appearance.

From there, I customized the parameters in the pyro simulation to create its whimsical yet unnerving movement.

The Moon-Bird - Emotion and Design

When designing the birds magic, I considered styles that would clearly contrast the sun, since the bird is intended to represent a caring, selfless love. Such as representing it through more geometric shapes, to differ from the fire-like wisps of the sun.

However, I quickly diverged from this direct disparity, opting to instead intentionally draw similarities.

Both beings embody light: the Moon shines only by reflecting the Sun, differing only in color. I wanted their magic to feel related, avoiding simple opposites.

Likewise, while the magic is representing different types of love, it is still that: Love. At times, it is hard to tell the difference from a love that is hurting you, and one that is nurturing you. It is in the subtleties of its movements and motivations that exposes this.

While the irrational Sun has its aggressive spits of energy, or eerily slow dissipations, the Moon-Bird is consistent and purposeful in its movement. Behind it trails sleek streaks of wavy wisps, which move naturally, yet not erratically.

The one obvious contrast I did add was the sparkles, as a representation of hope. On top of a common association with nighttime such as through stars, I wanted to give the bird one slight difference other than the movement of its animation to differentiate it as a being of serenity and nighttime.

The Moon-Bird - Breakdown

The Moon-Bird has three main layers:

• Pyro trail

• Sparkles

• Body geo

To create the pyro simulation, I created a particle pyro source from the birds static mesh prior to adding animation. Then, I added a point velocity with a small frequency, but high intensity noise attribute.

After creating the source for the bird, now with randomized velocity on its points, I re-animated the static mesh to add its movement.

From there, I created the pyro simulation and adjusted the parameters to help achieve the gentle, whimsical flow of its ghost-like trail.

The sparkles were also sourced from the animated mesh, and created in a pop network.

They were then scaled using a ramp based on their age attribute.

To render the body geo, I created a gradient @Cd attribute of white to black from beak to tail. This was then used as a mask for the bird materials opacity, which gives it the effect of the body fading into the trail, while the beak and front of the wings stayed sharp and defined.

Shot 03 - Hair Sims and Emotional Beats

The close-up of the maidens face was intended to emphasize the emotional intensity of the piece, and highlight her reaction to the birds sacrifice.

The hair simulation was created out of three main layers:

• Bangs

• Side bangs/ hair framing her face

• Background hair

I wanted her gaze to be framed by strands of hair waving in the wind, creating a stark contrast with her own stillness. The disheveled hair partially obscuring her face was intentional, emphasizing the sense of vulnerability in her moment of peril.

To create this, I keyframed the wind movement on the vellum hair simulations to fluctuate in intensity.

Shot 04 - Advecting by Volume, Masking Particles, and Blowing Up the Sun

When designing the Suns explosion, I considered several options for its appearance, including:

• A typical explosion, with bold billowy fire

• Sudden light rays radiating outwards

• A large flash of a white screen, and then a sudden aftermath of dissipating fire

In the end, I settled on a mix of several ideas, but with a stylistic and more magical approach.

I added a moment of impact prior to the explosion, with a stylized flare and dramatic drop of light. From there, the flare collapses in on itself to result in an explosion. 

Throughout the project, I felt I had characterized the Sun as a magical spirit comprised of intricate light rays - delicate, yet aggressive. Because of this, I felt a gaseous, billowy explosion would not only contradict its mood, but also shift away from its association with light rays and wisps.

To create an explosion with whimsy and elegance, I first began with a pyro simulation sourced from a Pyro Burst Source.

From there, I created a pop network, sourcing particles from the same center point that the Pyro Burst Source originated from. 

I then advected the particles by the velocity of the volume created by the pyro simulation, which shaped them to the explosion.

After simulating my particle explosion into the correct shape, I began to create masks via attributes. As detailed in the breakdown, there are three main masks:

• Central radiating mask

• Gradually increasing noise mask

• A vector noise mask with several colors

The first two black and white masks were combined and used in the particles opacity. This made the particles fade out both from the center, as well as in random segments.

The vector mask was used in the materials color to add variation in its hues. This mask was based on a rest attribute, to ensure the color was ingrained in the moving particles instead of them swimming through noise.

In comp, a slight ray effect was added to the explosion.

This personal project went beyond exploring procedural environments and pyro simulations; it became an exercise in infusing story, emotion, and character into some of the more technical aspects of animation.

I look forward to continuing to develop my ability to bring stories, characters, and emotions to life through the art of effects and animation.