Retour à Hairy Hill (2023) #

Directed by Daniel Gies (E.D. FILMS)

Synopsis #

A fantastical fable based on the true story of a young woman struggling with who she is becoming, as her parents and siblings succumb to the northern wilderness she calls home. Over 10 years in the making, intricately crafted using simple paper and contemporary CG techniques, this is E.D. FILMS co-founder Daniel Gies’ animated tribute to family folklore.

Official Trailer

My contribution #

I created a system for generating the paper cloth simulation using Vellum in Houdini. Each character has it’s own cloth rig, which can be applied to an alembic of the animation exported from Maya. The cloth simulation then completes it’s round trip by being sent back to Maya, where it is rendered with Red Shift.

In this video, you can see one of our early experiments on the Ethyl character, trying to get the paper to move as realistically as possible.