The Moon - An Untold Journey

August 2024

The Moon rising above Earth's cloud layer Macro shot of colliding particles, rendered in EEVEE Stylised macro depiction of atoms with electron orbits The young Sun surrounded by a protoplanetary debris disk The molten protoplanets Earth and Theia before their collision
Role
Writing & Storyboarding, 3D, Animation, Compositing, Editing, Sound Design, Narration
Tools
Blender (Cycles & EEVEE), Nuke, Premiere Pro, ElevenLabs
Time Spent
~3 months
Team
Team of 4

The Moon: An Untold Journey is an entirely CG documentary short planned to recount the Moon's history from the Big Bang to the present day. We were inspired by our fascination with space and a wish to tell a story with no human characters at all, just cosmic events and inanimate matter, imagery no real camera could capture.

Planned as a longer film with other students in our fourth semester, this entry covers the sections I made: the opening from the Big Bang through the first particles and atoms, a star igniting, and the protoplanets Earth and Theia before their collision. The narration is my own recording, with the voice converted through ElevenLabs speech-to-speech.

The Moon rising above Earth's cloud layer, the opening shot of the short film
Opening shot of the Moon rising above Earth's atmosphere

Scale & Rendering

The film jumps across enormous changes of scale, so each sequence has its own treatment. The stylised macro shots (particle collisions, atoms forming) were rendered in EEVEE, where fast iteration mattered more than accurate light. The big space scenes were rendered in Cycles, lit by a single hard key light against an almost-black starfield.

The young Sun with solar flares, surrounded by a disk of protoplanetary debris
The young Sun and its protoplanetary debris disk, rendered in Cycles

Earth and the Moon use NASA colour and height data with a few tweaks, like more reflective oceans and a separate cloud layer. The molten protoplanets are fully procedural, with emissive cracks running across a cooling crust. Each asset had several levels of detail (LODs), chosen per shot by camera distance.

The molten protoplanets Earth and Theia orbiting through debris before their collision
Earth and Theia, with procedural shaders

Particles & Procedural Systems

The particle sequences are custom Geometry Nodes setups with simulation zones driven by hand-authored rules, so the behaviour stays art-directable rather than physically literal. Compositing in Nuke tied the sequences together with grading, subtle lens dirt and chromatic aberration. Most Blender renders were near-final on their own, so the comp pass stayed light.

Macro shot of particles colliding in the aftermath of the Big Bang
Macro particle collision, rendered in EEVEE
Stylised depiction of atoms with glowing nuclei and electron orbit trails
Stylised shot of two atom formations