Recreating Nausicaa's Secret Garden in 3D

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is a 1984 animated film directed by the renowned Hayao Miyazaki. This was one of a handful of animated films preceding the creation of Studio Ghibli and is one of my favorite animated features.

After viewing 2019's Lupin III: The First by Takashi Yamazaki and studios Marza Animation Planet and TMS Entertainment, I became heavily inspired to create this iconic scene in Nausicaa. I took this opportunity to learn Blender's features and challenge my ability to forge Miyazaki's works into what it could look like in the 3D realm.

An obstacle I faced early in the modeling stage was the perspective of the reference image. It became clear that I was limited to a single direction for rendering this scene. During post-production, I remedied this issue by finding interesting compositions with the completed scene.

Simulating the flame from the lantern was a matter of tweaking velocity parameters just right to give the impression the flames were coming from the prongs. My attempts at simulating liquids however fell flat when realizing it didn't take the appearance of water. This is not an problem with Blender but more about my lack of experience in liquid simulations. In the end, I defaulted to using scrolling UV textures and animating displacement noise patterns for the water.

Having used programs Maya, UE4, Nuke and After Effects, I was really impressed with the scope of Blender's many features. Other than the placement of hotkeys and navigation style (which became second nature as I continued to use the software), I appreciated the elements it shared with other software which can allow most veteran users to adapt efficiently.

When it came to texturing and materials, I made some hand-painted textures and combined them along with procedural nodes from the material editor to diversify the scene.

Other than certain textures which were created in Clip Studio Paint, I created this project entirely in Blender (modeling, UV-unwrapping, texturing, sculpting, materials, simulations, rendering, compositing).

Below: Mask used to determine direction of water flow (white = vertical, black = horizontal)