Echoes

February 2024

Inside hyperspace, procedural energy-tunnel geometry Hyperspace tunnel with blue energy streaks Procedural station tunnel interior, hexagonal cross-section with greebled walls Scavenger drones approaching through the station tunnel Interior structure of the alien space station The digital domain, Kali's AI core rendered as a red wireframe structure
Role
Procedural Systems & FX, Greeble Modelling & Texturing, Rigging, Animation
Tools
Blender (Cycles & EEVEE), Substance Painter, Premiere Pro
Time Spent
~3 months
Team
Team of 3

Echoes is a sci-fi short about a maintenance engineer, Jessie, and her ship's computer, Aria, flung into deep space by a rogue AI during a routine repair inside a hyperspace accelerator. They wash up in a vast alien station, get chased through its tunnels by drones, and finally confront the AI, Kali, at its core.

It was our third-semester group project, the first collaboration for the three of us after a year of solo work. We were far too ambitious for the time we had, and by the deadline we had finished assets but almost nothing rendered, so the film was never finished. It taught me to scope a production to the team and time actually available. This entry gathers the shots we rendered out afterwards for our reels.

Style

The look was meant to be rugged sci-fi. Assets and character designs were kept industrial, with weathered metal and rust, influenced by Ian Hubert and Masashi Imagawa. The one exception is the digital domain, an abstract space where Jessie confronts the AI, rendered as glowing wireframe in EEVEE. The brief allowed no pre-made assets, so everything was modelled from scratch, with most of the modelling handled by Laurin Adumatta.

The space station interior, a dark tangle of branch-like structures lit in orange and blue
Organic space station interior structure

Procedural Environments

I built the station's tunnel system almost entirely in Geometry Nodes. The tunnel is built procedurally on a guide curve, using hexagonal cross-sections, scattered greebles, structural rings and branching side ports. I modelled and textured the greeble sets that feed the scatter.

Procedural station tunnel, hexagonal interior with scattered greebles and structural ring segments
The procedural tunnel system
Hyperspace tunnel interior, procedural geometry with a custom shader
Preview of the hyperspace tunnel without compositing

I built the hyperspace tunnel procedurally too, along with its energy shader. Instead of flying the ship through a static tube, the tunnel twists and moves alongside it, so the speed could be adjusted more easily afterwards, without changing the animation. The final sense of speed comes from motion blur and post-process warping that Otto Hornback added in Nuke.

Assets & FX

Laurin Adumatta modelled the ship and drones, and Otto Hornback did their surfacing. I was responsible for the rigging, and we animated as a team. The drones started out as the station's utility units until the AI hijacked them and turned them into scavengers.

Scavenger drones approaching through the station tunnel, infection veins visible on their hulls
Scavenger drones approaching through the tunnel
Infection-growth effect on a drone, a procedural red vein pattern wrapping the hull geometry
The infection-growth system that wraps itself around a target mesh

That takeover shows up as an infection effect: a red, vein-like growth spreading across the drones and station. I built it in Geometry Nodes as a path system that wraps itself around a target mesh, plus a small add-on panel for placing infection points by hand where a fully procedural approach needed more control.

The digital domain, Kali's AI core floating as a red wireframe sphere in an abstract space
Rogue AI Kali in the digital domain

Team