To celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the track 'We Rise' by electronic music producer San Holo, I had the opportunity to create a series of audio-reactive visuals for a special remix pack. This project involved creating 16 unique 3D-rendered videos featuring simulated flags that respond dynamically to the music.
To animate the waving flag I used Blender simulation tools and isolated different sound frequencies to make them drive various wind sources and turbulence forces. The goal was to create a visually synchronized response to the music while maintaining natural and aesthetically pleasing motion. Achieving the right balance required fine-tuning force amplitudes to avoid excessive or unnatural movement.
Blender snapshot of the audio-driven simulation
Generating a seamless 7-second looping animation revealed to be a technical challenge. Simulated physics typically introduce randomness, making clean loops statistically impossible. I had to trick it. You can try to find the looping point, you won't ;)
Beyond the simulation itself, the project also involved handling high data throughput and long render times. Rendering a total of 45+ minutes of 3D animation across 16 different videos generated over 2 TB of data, requiring optimizations in caching, file management, and network storage. Multi-day renders had to be carefully scheduled to maximize efficiency.
All 16 videos on the Youtube channel of San Holo
Spotify Canvas using the seamless loop flag
This project was a deep dive into audio-driven physics simulations and high-volume 3D rendering pipelines, refining both my technical problem-solving and workflow optimization skills.
