The Winter Lights at Marketplace Pier was a light show put on in 2023 on the virtual Hideaway Resort world. The team at Hideaway approached me about creating the light show for them using Blender with independently composed music by their in-house team. Above is a full 360 degree video of the final show, and below are details about how I crafted this work from scratch!
Initial Concept Art of the Marketplace Pier Location
Concept Art Created to convey the Aesthetics of the Show
I was originally given a short pitch including concept art of how the show should be laid out from managing creative director "Croc". From there I was given an asset pack to return a mock-up to them including pre-existing music so the composer on the team could create the original tracks with them in mind. Below is a video of the original pitch footage I created using Adobe Premiere Pro to illustrate what I had in mind. The highlight of the show was the moment at 1:19 in which the village lights all turn on and the sky turns into an aurora borealis.
After this initial test was given the green light, Hideaway's composer created 3 separate tracks based on my test that fit the overall vibe I was aiming to achieve with each section. I was then able to bring these into Blender and begin animating the different light sections using simple cubes on the buildings as placeholders for the light models. Below is what that looked like in Blender.
I treated each building as its own instrument. The large building in the video above took on the form of a piano with each roof representing a key. Quick ascending crescendo's are illustrated by what looks like when someone swipes their hands across a keyboard. It turned out wonderfully and after I was finished I handed it to the engineering team at Hideaway to implement them in game with the finale light strands. Below is a video of the final show in its entirety, captured in 360 degrees.
