Eternal Ascent - 3rd place Full Creation Breakdown

Summary of the Video

Mitch Mitch (Mitch Mitch here) shares his full CGI creation breakdown for “Eternal Ascent”, explaining how he built a 5-second animated CGI scene for a challenge where artists had to follow a simple staircase template: keep the staircase shape, include a main character climbing, and use a provided animation while still creating a distinctive interpretation of the prompt.

He frames the project with a philosophical approach—the visuals serve the idea/message, not the other way around—and then walks through concept, character animation, set building, cloth/costume creation, crowd simulation/optimization, lighting, rendering pipeline, compositing, and color grading.

The scene’s emotional concept centers on a “calm amid chaos” moment: reverence and universal respect emerging from turmoil. Visually, he uses motion/rhythm in the staircase ascent and adds slow rippling upward movement through the crowd to guide the viewer’s eye and pacing.

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Artistic Techniques, Concepts, and Creative Processes Shown

1) Concept Development & Visual Storytelling

• Idea-first approach: visuals are designed to convey a specific emotional state.
• Multi-layer motion design:
  • Stairs provide directional ascension.
  • The main character creates decisive upward momentum.
  • The crowd motion creates a wave/ripple upward effect to slow pacing and guide attention.
• Early rhythm planning: kneeing posture timing in the crowd is chosen early to establish the scene’s visual tempo.
• Reference-driven thematic procession: he connects the staircase procession to religious/cultural procession scenes and painting traditions, discussing influences like gravity, crowd dynamics, and death/mourning symbolism.

2) Blockout and Animation Planning (Blender)

• Uses rough blockouts inside Blender to “interrogate” the template and test visual language.
• Focuses on:
  • camera readability
  • crowd composition density
  • the sense of motion implied by the twisted staircase form

3) Character Creation & Animation Transfer (Rigging / Retargeting)

• Uses a custom character to replace a provided template motion:
  • Characters are built from AI/character generation tools (noted: “made the lady using … geneen”).
  • Uses Armatures from MetaRig and Blender tools.
• Retargeting method:
  • Rather than fully traditional retargeting, he uses bone constraints for key parts (notably feet and hips).
  • Mentions inverse kinematics (IK) so the rest of the body follows more naturally.
• Secondary motion for realism:
  • heel lifting before steps
  • shoulder sway
  • subtle head rotation
• Inert “dead” baby character physics:
  • A baby created and rigged similarly.
  • Uses Bone Dynamics for floppy, physics-driven motion.

4) Costume Design and Digital Cloth Simulation (Marvelous Designer)

• Costume design is inspired by ancient cultures and historical silhouettes (ancient Egypt/Assyria/Mesopotamia/Greek plus Far Eastern/Pagan influences).
• He sketches/iterates shape language to avoid an overly stereotypical religious look.
• Cloth simulation workflow:
  • Uses Marvelous Designer to model clothing with layers.
  • Uses material elasticity/stiffness assumptions:
    • inner layers: more elastic (e.g., silk)
    • outer layers: thicker/stiffer (e.g., wool)
• Practical realism principle: “stick to what works in real life.”
• Tips include:
  • Use the layer system for garment assembly, but turn it off during simulation to avoid artifacts.
  • Fix time step/framerate mismatch:
    • Blender project at 24 FPS
    • set MD time step to 1/24 = 0.041667 (instead of 0.033)
  • Use nonlinear simulation; disable GPU simulation if collisions look wrong.
  • Keep self-collision interaction count low (values above ~1–2 can reduce quality).
  • Tune CG finish condition (residual threshold) for better convergence.

5) Texture / Material Workflow (References + Substance + Blender Shaders)

• Uses reference libraries such as Smithsonian Open Access for patterns.
• Texture generation tools:
  • Photoshop (content-aware fill)
  • Substance Designer (map generation)
  • Substance Painter (texture painting; noted palette includes gold/dark green)
• Blender shading approach:
  • simple BSDF using a base map
  • adds sheen/velvet behavior

6) Crowd Generation, Variation, and Optimization (Instancing + Shader Randomness)

• He needs a large crowd; too few people breaks the effect.
• Settles on ~66 people.
• Optimization strategies:
  • Characters are built from shared components using instances (saves memory by reusing assets).
  • Uses a single shared shader for the crowd, varying outputs through object-data-driven shader randomness (e.g., different skin colors via variations rather than unique materials).
• Crowd kneeling animation strategy:
  • Act it out first to understand balance and gravity.
  • Decompose motion:
    • key joints first: pelvis + feet
    • secondary later: head turning, etc.
  • Use timing offsets so kneeling cascades upward into an upward wave.
• Balance method:
  • center of gravity within the polygon/area formed by the grounded joints
  • describes kneeling dynamics as forming a “Z” shape overall in motion.

7) Environment / Set Building (Geometry, Vegetation, Detail Breakup)

• The set is built around the staircase sides, columns, and stonework.
• He keeps it ancient temple/ceremonial ambiguity, not explicitly modern.
• Stone/block realism:
  • sculpts using texture maps from Google images
  • adds both large and small wear/detail
• Vegetation:
  • uses G Scatter to quickly place vegetation in cracks/crevices
  • uses an ivy generator via geometry nodes (stated: “iv generator from Baga”)
• Break repetition:
  • introduces randomness in UV/tiling with tools like object info nodes and noise blended with lighting variations.

8) Lighting Design (Late Afternoon Look, Contrast Control, Rim Lights)

• Targets late afternoon, shadowy atmosphere with strong readability.
• Uses atmosphere scattering and “sun angle” to achieve:
  • highlights and silhouettes
  • readable silhouettes even in basic shapes
• Lighting composition includes layered “sun” setup:
  • two suns
    • sharper, warmer main sun (~4200K)
    • larger, warmer/dimmer diffuse glow (~3400K)
  • superposition creates energetic highlights plus warm shadow-edge glow.
• Narrative lighting framing:
  • sunlight focuses mostly on the queen/main character
  • background stays shadowed to reduce distraction
  • the dead-hair element is framed as ominous dread; the queen carries the infant toward hope, while uncertainty remains (hinted by shadows higher up)
• Adds rim lights using light linking so only key characters are affected:
  • reinforces silhouettes
  • separates characters from background
  • kept subtle to avoid breaking the illusion

9) Performance Planning and Render Pipeline (Cycles GPU + Layer Splitting)

• Notes the scene remains heavy even on a powerful computer.
• Render strategy:
  • splits render layers into:
    • background
    • midground/hill
    • set + main characters
    • multiple crowd scenes
  • uses linked collections to reduce duplication/edit issues across Blender files
• Cycles issue fixes:
  • disables polish/photo smoothing since motion blur breaks if left on
  • addresses occasional transparent mesh/jumpy vertex bugs after motion blur by:
    • baking character animations
    • forcing animation keyframes to linear interpolation to match baked sim assumptions in Alembic exports
• Rendering settings highlights:
  • Cycles noise:
    • noise threshold controls tolerated noise
    • increases threshold for speed (with visible artifact tradeoffs)
    • uses animated seed to reduce temporal noise
  • bounce control:
    • keep diffuse/glossy bounces moderate
    • tune transmission/transparency to scene needs
  • enables persistent data to speed up subsequent frames

10) Compositing and Color Grading (After Effects + DaVinci Resolve)

• Exports multilayer EXR (32-bit) to keep grading flexibility.
• Compositing:
  • After Effects for assembly and minor fixes
  • cloud atmosphere added from a folder of cloud images converted into masks
  • technique:
    • solid/grading color layer
    • cloud texture as alpha mask
    • channel shift linking opacity to luminosity
• Final grading in DaVinci Resolve:
  • levels/saturation adjustments
  • slight blur + overglow for analog-film feel
  • subtle vignette
  • local color adjustments (especially greens)
  • lens reflection/distortion
  • chromatic aberration
  • film grain

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Step-by-Step Lists Extracted From the Video

Cloth Simulation Tips (Marvelous Designer)

• Turn on/use garment layer system for layout, but turn it off during simulation to avoid artifacts.
• Set correct time step:
  • use 1/24 = 0.041667 if your project is 24 FPS (don’t keep the default 0.033 meant for 30 FPS).
• If collisions look wrong:
  • enable nonlinear simulation
  • turn off GPU simulation
• Keep self-collision interaction count low (avoid much above 1–2).
• Use CG finish condition = residual, and reduce its value for more accurate cloth settling.

Crowd Kneeling Animation Approach

• Act it out physically:
  • kneel slowly multiple times
  • check balance at key moments (unclench test; observe fall direction)
• Decompose motion:
  • kneeling depends on foot placement for leg bending
  • manage pelvis shift relative to planted foot (balance timing)
  • choose lowering style (squatting vs forward-and-absorb using arms/chest)
• Start animation with key joints:
  • pelvis + feet first
  • add secondary motion later (head turning, etc.)
• Create the upward wave:
  • time crowd characters so kneeling cascades up the stairs.

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Creators / Contributors Mentioned

• Mitch Mitch — creator of the artwork and breakdown
• Clinton Jones — challenger who ran the “Eternal” staircase prompt/template challenge
• Trisha Biggar — referenced as lead costume designer for Star Wars
• Universe Kinematics / IK — technique referenced (not a person)
• Thomas Cole — referenced as an inspiration for naturalism

Music / Composers Referenced

• “The Isle of the Dead” — composer name not fully specified in subtitles (noted as Rak (Rakel?) Manov)
• Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard — for “The Wheat” from Gladiator