In more detail<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Grace continued working on the hand animation sequences. We currently have two close-up hand scenes planned, and they serve two important purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, they add emotional richness to the story. In the first scene, Light hands Shadow an apple during their \u201cmeet-cute.\u201d Near the end of the piece, there is a visual callback: Shadow reaches for Light, trying to hold on, but she is out of the picture (metaphorically and figuratively). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second, these scenes support the overall visual language of the piece. Including two animated close-up sequences makes the use of animation feel intentional rather than a one-off stylistic choice. They also provide a useful way to break up scenes and transition between larger environments without requiring additional transition shots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oliver, our sound designer, experimented with rendering video from TouchDesigner with a transparent background. This will allow us to overlay the pulsing, particle-like clock visual into the final fight scene. In addition, Oliver continued refining the music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alex and Christina completed another motion capture shoot, with Christina performing the fight choreography. Through this process, we are continuing to learn about the limitations of our simple six-point motion capture setup. Motions such as squatting, crossing arms, or any pose where body parts touch each other do not translate well with our current system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/dots-to-depth-studios\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/mocap-device-1-1024x1024.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/dots-to-depth-studios\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/christina-in-mocap-gear-1-1024x1024.jpg\")
Alex then worked on remapping the motion capture data onto our character models. Once this process was completed, Hazel placed the animated characters into the snow environment, and added camera movements. Once we are confident in the scene, Hazel can begin creating additional camera angles and cuts to make the sequence more visually dynamic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
During this process, however, Hazel experienced multiple Unreal Engine crashes, suggesting that the 3DGS environment file may be too large or otherwise difficult for Unreal to handle. Christina reached out to our SMEs, who advised that keeping the number of splats under 5 million should generally be safe. However, our current scene does not appear to exceed that threshold, making the exact cause of the crashes unclear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier this week, Grace and Christina had already begun cleaning up several 3DGS scenes in an effort to reduce file size and improve Unreal performance. However, Hazel had already completed work in the current Hallway scene, so replacing its backdrop with a newly optimized 3DGS file would require redoing that work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For that reason, unless we encounter problems during rendering, we plan to keep the Hallway scene\u2019s current backdrop as-is. Moving forward, however, all new scenes will use the cleaned-up, smaller 3DGS files to reduce the likelihood of future crashes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alivia continued developing the space scene, focusing primarily on keyframing the motion-captured characters within that environment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For scene transitions, Alex provided Grace with a morphing version of the supermarket environment, which Grace integrated into the supermarket scene in Unreal. This is helping us create the effect of the supermarket dissolving into the next world (the garden scene). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Outside of production, Christina became interested in a video about Gaussian Splatting released by Corridor Crew on March 29, 2026. After watching the video, she reached out to our Subject Matter Experts for their thoughts. Dominic responded with several insights into possible applications of 3D Gaussian Splatting, particularly noting that the video did not discuss 3DGS\u2019s potential for training robots. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This connected back to a conversation the team had during Playtest Day, when one group mentioned using 3DGS street captures to help train autonomous driving systems. Following up on this, Christina also reached out to Vivian Shen, an ETC professor specializing in robotics, to ask about 3DGS applications in robotics and to gather additional resources. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Looking ahead, our top priorities for next week are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- Developing a system that allows the characters\u2019 brightness levels to change over time<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Continuing to build out scenes and camera movements in Unreal<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Nice to have: Expanding the snow scene with more shot variety<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Continuing to refine transitions between environments<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Here is our animatic as of April 3, 2026:<\/p>\n\n\n\n