This was one of those projects where I got massively lucky. It's not often that it happens, but like everyone else I very much welcome it when it does. Everything came together quickly without hours spent into look dev or simulation builds. The track even fits perfectly and I didn't even search for it until after the render was complete (a practice I rarely do anymore).

Most of the modeling was simple, but I made sure to create clean, quad polys so that my reflections and refractions were more accurate. While triangle polys are great for creating smooth, circular shapes, one of the problems is that triangle can easily throw off the reflection or refraction. There's no telling when it'll happen; it may only happen in one to two frames of an animation.

The textures were a collection from several different projects I had worked on over the previous two months but I shifted the colors around to match the palette. Looking at the project now, I don't think the back wall works as well as I wanted it. It needs just a little bit more contrast or definition.

I first started the simulations by running a ball through the base of each structure, then reversing the animation to rebuild it. The tests came out great, but the towers mostly collapsed in on themselves where I was trying to get them to scatter. The breakthrough came when I decided to animate the gravity modifier itself. By rotating the gravity toward the back of the frame, the towers gently leaned back until they fell over.

The scene was set to 540fps to create buttery smooth simulations. I thought it would take a long time working on camera angles and transitions, but I was wrong - the first camera I setup and animated captured the animation perfectly. Lighting was also pretty straight forward. I had an infinite light that rotated and several animated palm branches peering in the window. All together, I think this project took a little over a day and a half to complete.