This halloween we had some fun on stream carving a pumpkin in cinema 4d. To view the whole process, please check out the replay here, and if you're a subscriber you can get access to the source files at the right --->

The pumpkin hull itself was lofted from star splines, and then made editable and massaged into the more pleasing pumpkin like shape. This hull was dropped into a Moroni Fracture to break it into chunks, and give those chunks depth. As a fracture it can all be controlled with effectors and fields to produce the movement.

To create the blobby look to the geometry, that whole mess was dropped into a volume builder and mesher, so each frame would look hand modelled. After a few modifications to the builder, and remeshing, the group was baked as an Alembic. In this case, baking it all out saves us recalculations on each frame, and keeps processing power requirements lower for later stages of lighting and material exploration.

While the whole thing only takes a handful of frames, we're able to stretch those out in After Effects, and remix the timing to get it perfect for a boomerang loop. The exact ping-pong like animation can be disguised by setting the whole thing in motion over the 15 seconds to make it seem like a longer clip and hide the seams of the various looping attributes.