POP

I wanted to animate a piece of gum, but since I'm not able to make a random animation, it needs to be a story instead. I built this animation around the idea of how fast life goes. It's not that I want to tell a story, but having one gives direction to the process.

Nov 2025 | #houdini #c44 #redshift

This started when I saw this image on Pinterest and I thought, "ok, this is animatable". Then I saved it for a year, waiting for an idea to start🤔. I'm always looking to animate something that behaves in a different way from my previous projects. And this was also an opportunity to work on a packaging animation.

(I couldn't find the source to credit them.)

Does it fly?

I always need to start with a simple test. In this case, it's just a box with a bunch of layered textures. But I need to see it done by myself to decide whether worth keep moving forward or save it for later. 

← Actual first thing I did for this project.

Gum v.038

Then, like always, a loooooot of iterations.

Modular  Simulations

I'd like to know how Pros do it. But to have more control, I prefer to simulate each element separately and feed it into the following simulation in the chain. This way, I can move forward and avoid ruining one simulation by trying to fix another one. Also, it allows editing the timing afterwards in C4D.

Packaging: The challenge here was using a Cloth setting, but making it look like paper and not a stretchy fabric.

Metallic Wrap: I simulate the wrap using the inflated gum as a collider to avoid intersections.

The Gum: This was the first simulation, since it needed to push open the metallic wrap. This was also the most time-consuming, since I wanted it to go from dry to inflated to wet-looking.

The gum-splitting was a real headache. Having those polygons pull inward gave away the division before it actually happened. I tried so many settings to solve the Normal issues and the geo-overlapping problem. I ended up deleting those polygons before the opening.

Look Dev

Since this is a personal project, I like to jump from animation to look-dev to see what can be done with materials, and that informs the animation as well. Unlike a real project, this is always on a dev stage. 

I really like how this looks. Modelling and animating something like this would take so long if it weren't simulated.

When I work for studios, there is usually someone providing this kind of design for packaging or UI. Now I had to pretend I'm a designer. That's why I only took care of what the camera sees and put whatever on the back side.