Industrial Light & Magic has shared a new video detailing the creation of The Vine, a tentacular structure that dominates the sets of the fifth season of Stranger Things. The team explains how they achieved an organic yet unsettling movement, combining procedural animation with detailed interaction with the environment so that this entity grows and moves naturally.
Procedural animation and simulation for organic growth 🧬
The main technical challenge was bringing to life a vine that extends and reacts to the environment without looking like a digital spring. ILM used physical simulations so that each tendril responded to gravity and contact with actors and sets. Procedural animation allowed for generating random growth patterns, while the team manually adjusted key moments to ensure the movement was as uncomfortable as it was fascinating.
When your set looks like an octopus with bad intentions 🐙
Watching the behind-the-scenes is almost therapeutic: you find out that twisted thing that kept you up at night is nothing more than a bunch of polygons controlled by engineers on caffeine. The downside is that now, every time you see a vine in your garden, you'll suspect it's about to come to life. Thanks, ILM, for ruining houseplants for us.