Searching for guidance to reproduce the alien symbols in the movie "First Contact" by Villeneuve

Questions
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1

Hi,

I would like to reproduce this type of symbol / character : https://youtu.be/PBYi6DTHZE8?si=gAsc3y95ooLU7p1L&t=150
For me It’s grey, misty… It should use a mix between particles and other things to reproduce the smoke impression. How would you start ?

Thanks for your help

2

This is a good start : https://codepen.io/sbrl/pen/zNdqdd

3

This is quite complex task, in my opinion. My advice is to split it into several simpler tasks and pursuit each of them individually. Most likely I’d split into these major subtasks:

  • recreation of the shape (as a static shape)
  • motion of the particles into that shape
  • adding overall emotional atmosphere

Each of these tasks could be split into yet simpler tasks and so on. For example, the smoke effect could be used for the background. The particles, on the other hands, move more like flames. The shape of the symbol is generally a circle with some filaments or, as I could suggest, some solar prominence in increasing slow-motion until complete freeze.

Here is one very rudimentary example of points going from their origin to a circle and back to the origin. Do not look at the code, it is ugly.

https://codepen.io/boytchev/full/XWoomXe

image

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4

Impressive ! thanks a lot !

5

Do you think it is doable to mix what you have done with that :https://codepen.io/sbrl/pen/zNdqdd ?
I think the global aspect is rather close to the movie.

6

If I give you this black and white image, can you make each points migrate to this shape rather than a circle like now ?
savedImage
I can do it if it is easy of course

7

Of course both can be mixed, although it will take some efforts to convert the clouds example to a more recent Three.js; and to adjust the objects sizes and positions. Here is how they look like when mixed – the particles are red just to make it easier to see them.

As the initial post was for a guidance, this is the most I can do for the time being. If you want someone to do this effect for you, you may post such request in the Jobs category.

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8

Thanks a lot, I can finish this by myself

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9

WOw Very impressive. walked through your code using GPT-4 And i really like your ideas.How many hours did it take you?

10

Didn’t measure, but approximately: 20 minutes for the code, and 20 minutes playing with various formulas for the motion paths.

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11

Thanks for your help

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