I remade Spirited Away... but in Blender 

If you want to get a deeper insight into how I created this project or want to get all the custom tools I made for this project, you can get them here: www.patreon.com/user/shop/spirited-away-in-blender-project-files-63980?u=103694046&Link&

The speculation you did on chihiro's arms being longer was actually noted by Miyazaki himself. He said that he loves 2D animation because you can deliberately go off model for dramatic effect. Example: one of the reasons Yubaba looked so menacing in the final film was because she was constantly changing sizes.

6:44 2d animators and illustrators actually do that a lot - we prefer shape design and visual appeal more than accuracy. This is also why 3D isn't always the best tool for all kinds of animation, you really have to push it in some areas. But you did an amazing job, I honestly didn't expect you would do it so well!

I don't think people realize enough how groundbreaking this video truly is, the craft and skill required to do this is insane. HUGE props the results are amazing.

one minor note at about 2:55 Miyzaki is not behind *all* of the ghibli movies. Just wanna highlight one of Ghibli's co-founders, Isao Takahata, who brought us some absolute masterpieces such as Grave of the Fireflies, Pom Poko, and Tale of the Princess Kaguya

Something that may give the 3d more expression is using the model as a base then drawing elements on it. I.E. the face and all its expressions, the majority of the work would be done by the 3d model and the finer expressions can be done in 2d, like the mouth since you're basically hammering and fighting the model to get the desired shape anyway.

Something touched on in the behind the scenes for "Encanto" is that the animators will break the models to get better atmosphere from their poses. It's something considered contrversial, but the effect of making deliberate anatomy errors to make a more dynamic pose is a better payoff.

Putting so much tender love and care into ensuring the 3D render looks as close to the original as possible really shows that you loved Miyazaki’s film. Thanks for creating and sharing this masterpiece with us!

Lmao miyazaki's son made a 3d anim film and miyazaki was so disappointed that he basically refuses to acknowledge it as a ghibli film. He would probably like this more than that though because at least it doesn't dip into the uncanny valley. I think he just thinks his son is untalented tbh 😂😭 i feel kinda bad for the guy. Must be a lot of pressure. Anyway this was awesome and tysm for the video!

I don't know what Miyazaki would think, but I think it's truly inspiring. While I admire and adore 2D animation, I find modern 3D artists' efforts really impressive. Great job and I love your explanations of each step.

What i appreciate abt this video is how it centers 3D animation as a translation of sorts, rather an an equivalent to or replacement of 2D animaiton. They're incredibly different mediums, each with their own flaws and benefits. 2D animaiton is by no means a thing of the past and both mediums can learn a lot from the other. Great video!

Great job man! One quick way is also to draw grease pencil lines directly to the surface and parent it with the 3D object. If you need movement you can sculpt the lines and interpolate them. Lineart is awesome but it can be a pain to all fix extra strokes later 😅

This is borderline insane to do

If you were to design the characters from scratch around the cel-shader (centralise their mouths more give their faces more gometry communicate more with overall shape). This would be a perfectly valid pipeline for making a movie. I especially enjoyed the way you projected a background painting on rudimentary geometry for the train shot. You can't move the camera around too much where you didn't plan it, but you instantly can get 3D shadows and volume and get away with basic movement. That's keeping with the 2D pipeline and still getting 3D applications out of it. Love that. You'd have to storyboard a production like this beforehand and nail the energy as you go as you won't get the freedom to move the camera later. The 2D assets on layers will be painted with specific angles and distances in mind.

Man this is good, I envy your 3D skill set. As a beginner in 3D, it's amazing to watch someone work in so many dimensions in one project, so comfortably. And the output was seriously good. It translated far better than I would have thought it would

Oh my heck you're so flipping cool. ART PEOPLE ARE JUST THE COOLEST. Man I wish I wasn't a peasant.

this is amazing, I can notice the effort you put into the editing and the scenes, I love it! keep up the good work!

Sounds exciting 20 hours to go

very cool, ghibli art style is so nice and translates pretty decently in 3d as seen in ni no kuni. honestly videos like this makes me want to see them work with another developer again

As a Japanese person, I am impressed by your 3D recreations! In our manga and anime, destructive compositions and anatomy are often used. While 3D captures a vision without distortion as seen by the camera, manga and anime creators capture the vision as seen by the Brain, where certain parts are emphasized and others are extremely subdued. Therefore, when recreating in 3D, it’s necessary to deliberately add distortions⚡️

just shows how cool and unique 2d animation is. nothing can beat it.

What a beast you are! This is all amazing. The animation, the video, the editing... everything. You deserve more views and subscribers for sure!

This is genuinely crazy! the amount of skill and knowledge combined to recreate those scenes in 3d is something that you have to be very experienced to be able to pull them off. Thanks for uploading this videos man. Keep up the great work.

Just wow. SO wonderful to see how you, step by step, created each scene. Thank you for enriching one of my favorite movies even more.

Amazing! I'm working on something similar for The Boy and the Heron, and your tip for making fur (8:05) is so helpful! I've been overthinking how to do the feathers, but your technique is so simple and looks really nice. Good work.

Bro, this is so well done, like I get the art behind Spirited, and you cant take away from that, but you nailed this one mate!

this video was super awesome. looks great and really enjoyed it. specifically the way you transition between montages and showing off what you have worked on are really good and satisfying on top of already producing super impressive stuff. really glad your video was suggested to me c:

From someone who tried to learn basic Blender and gave up after two years of struggle when realized I failed miserably, I cannot stretch enough the insane amount of skill this person has put on display in this video. I'm floored! Kudos for the amazing job.

I personally always prefer 2D and the craft, and how every frame is beautifully hand drawn, and every frame is intentional, and it’s something I love about ghibli. However, despite all this I still love both mediums, 3D animation can also beautifully impressive, even if I would rather have ghibli stay hand drawn.

Not only are the displayed Blender skills really impressive, but the video editing and flow, as well as the music choices, are all so good!!

I think the best way is like how arcane dealt with it, Using 3D to simplify the work, then painting over each frame to add the artsy feel. Idk much about the cinema world and if that saves time and money, but it seems like it would to me

This is absolutely TERRIFIC! great Job Noggi san

gotta increase the focal length a bit, and change where the camera is slightly. I feel like a lot of the "weird cg look" is just from the camera angle and FOV

As an exercise these type of work is immensely helpful in creating great looking 3D art. It allows you to break things down frame by frame and see what adds to the soul of a final product and allows you to think in similar vein. Anime is starting to have 3D work that comes really close, and stuff like Arcane just blows everyone away.

I will be studying this video at length. Obviously you have a ton of skill, talent, and incredible creativity with Blender. But! You have also shown me at least one hundred unique transitions and movements that I absolutely loved while watching this. I loved every moment of it!

I'm amazed at your ability to recreate these scenes and with your attention to small detail!

Wow! You actually did a whole or better than I expected! Not meaning that to offend you, but this style of 3D can be very easy to make look wrong and hard to make look right, though you actually did a pretty good job! It does still have a slight 3D feel, but if you were to practice this, I swear you’d have it down pretty soon!

It's official, fans will be the ones to finish the Berserk anime we all deserve.

This slaps hard, amazing work as usual! 🔥

The displacement to make the character wobble is absolutely genius idea ! thank you !

There's another way to incorporate lines to the characters or any object for 3D animations looking 2D. I never knew the special shader node works with the coloring, but it would take some time to adjust the shadows. Impressively creative.

There is no substitute for hand drawn animation. The imperfections are what make it so charming. Most CGI loses all of the imperfections that give it so much character.. and most studios are too cheap to spend the time adding it... and you end up with animation uncanny valley.

Probably the highest quality editing I’ve seen on a video in ages. Kudos

12:07 I’ve become obsessed with the idea of a variety of making exact copies of stylized 2D art with Blender lately and “why?” of it is so that ultimately I know how to use those looks on concepts that I make from scratch. So yeah, this.

This is crazy good work not just on the art side but also in editing and presentation. Very impressive!

honestly, have a little bit of trouble telling the difference. so you did a pretty awesome job. the real test is when you see more than a few seconds in actions (like minutes) to really see your work at play.

Pretty incredible how powerful Blender has become and all that opensource and free, a total phenomenon.

bro this is incredible. amazing breakdown and workflow

I just want to experience a world that feels like this in VR. There were some Ghibli demos someone made when Oculus Rift was still a dev kit, but it was just a small taste.

I like how you show all the process. I'm learning a lot from your videos. Thanks!

Daym that cinematography is on point! I like the scene where you put on that artist glove

This channel is Underrated AF

I am amazed I thought this was clickbait but its a masterpiece. The fact that anyone for free can make a Miyazaki Film from a laptop is astonishing. The skill and patience to make it, equally.

As a 3D artist I always did love 2D style I been always mixing up my 3D to look 2D … you’re channel is very inspiring keep it up :)

Dynamism is the word you were looking for XD. But I must say, your music choice...... beautiful. Honestly created such a lovely mood with your great voice.

We already know that the ghilbi look can be done faithfully in a 3D engine becase of the Eden Anime Mini-Series and of course Ni No Kuni. But matching the 2D look is nice. It ends up being a styling choice.

For the weird normals around the mouth, you can use a proxi with custom normals and a data transfer modifier on the original mesh so the normals will stay the same when you move vertices. Still not perfect but it can do the job 😅

I'm not an artist and I don't know blender but I watched all 12 minutes in awe. Well done!

This video has so much production value. This gotta get up to everyone RU-vid do your magic pls

Wow! You showed some great techniques in a very short amount of time! Thank you!

This is nothing short of incredible.

I think if you perfected the proportion of the details it could be nearly indistinguishable from the original. Anyway this is a great cel shading animation tutorial for blender! Thanks for that. 😊

Not even five minutes in and im incredibly impressed by the quality of this video. Great job

I don't know anything about using blender, but this was really entertaining to watch. The effort that you put into this video really shows. 🖤🖤

Okay, I've been holding back from commenting, but you have the absolute number one best content in my option. Great skills, and a motivation to me

The quality here absolutely blew me away! ♥ Seeing the tricks that make what would normally give away its 3D nature look completely 2D seems like such a delicate skill to master that I don't know if I have the patience for. The only criticism I could give is Chihiro's hands on Haku's face look floaty. If you were going to try it again you could IK rig the hands, and have them attach to two bones on Haku's jaw so they never mismatch their positions. Besides that I had to pause and make sure I wasn't watching the original!

Awesome video and impressive skills. The beauty of 2D animation lies in its high artistic feel, while the beauty of 3D animation is its precision. Ultimately, it’s all about creating visual appeal and connecting with viewers’ emotions.

looks pretty great, good job in exploration of the tools

This is awesome. Very well done.

CRAZY WORK! Keep it up Noggi, you are on your path to success. Remember to always have fun while doing your craft

Hats off to you, this is the closest I’ve seen when it comes to replicating the ghibli style

Very interesting... Spirited Away is my all time favourite movie and I have had an urge too to create something non-photorealistic. Will probably start to look into how the shaders and the looks are made at some point. I'm currently focusing just on making characters and building portfolio but I definetely want to learn to create something similar at some point! Overall you made very cool shots!

just gonna mention the insanely creative cinematography shown off in transitions

Wow! You went above and beyong with this proyect. I learned quite a bit!

This is the most insane idea i have ever seen and it looks amazing

Jesus that looks extremely time consuming, the fact you got it to look this accurate is a testament to your skill and talent though, I could only do this if I spent months

Mouths can be really weird in all sortsa 2D animation, so probably just drawing the mouth onto or in front of the model (like you did with the nose) woulda been the best option. Usually the dead giveaway of 2D-looking CGI is either the mouth or the fingers.

Wow, this must have taken a while! great job!

This is amazing, it is even hard to see the difference if you don't pay attention to small details

Well, for pencil artist this 3D thing is actually a lot, lot effort 😂

Man... That's such an amazing job!.

I’ve been looking for this for ages

Great job! The recreations look very close

Youre a blender beast, well done

Great video! Thank you, now I will never unsee the long arms...

I’d love to see whole video game levels modelled with these scenes.

as someone who just watched how to make a DOUGHNUT in Blender for the first time, my eyes just melted and my brain exploded

Honestly one of my dream is to make animation like Ghibli, you did it , and i feels like i did it it really feeling good , you made my day

Your editing is so good, how do you not have more subscribers

You're incredible, my man. WHEW. SKILL.

Also your editing is so good!

the cut you did at 1:22 is inspirational!

So cool! you are so good at painting man!

Hey, bravo for all of your effort! Great work and thanks for sharing :)

While I feel that 3D can do some amazing things and get really close to 2D, it's likely never going to fully replace it. Instead, a 2D/3D hybrid workflow would be the next best thing. Set up everything in 3D, (composition, background, characters, etc.) and then use 2D for cleanup or additional details. You could fully replace the face in 2D afterwards for example, fix shadows, or cover over areas where models may have been clipping. You could even get really into it and save line art for the 2D process. It's basically what a lot of anime studios today do, using 3D elements in 2D anime. It's really fascinating, but I feel like a big thing they get wrong is framerate. 3D stuff looks too smooth, while 2D has a certain chaos to it. I wonder how, from an animation standpoint, you'd fix that issue.

Ghibli tried 3D once - I think the common consensus is that it didn't go too well (Earwig and the Witch). Using 3D for 2D is quite fascinating though.

The amount of skill showed in this video is insane. This video makes me feel like trash at Blender XD

As this was a childhood favorite, and having watched it literally over 100 times (3 times in one day...) I figured I should at least be able to tell the difference in Chihiro's movement when she hugs Haku... Side by side, I could tell... couldn't until I noticed the somewhat stuttery movement... it's hard to explain, like it's not at the same frame rate ig... either way, it is exceptional. I am thoroughly impressed, though it probably doesn't mean much coming from me. I am curious if you would be able to use a motion capture AI to capture the motion of the video and make more bits of the movie, or if you intend to make more parts of the movie... or if you only planned on doing this as an example. Figure the AI motion capture might help with moving the models throughout the movie, like after she cleans the river spirit and all the characters are jumping on the upper floor.

This is really amazing curious how you do the shadow adjustments when recreating the spirited away scene? edit: specifically when she is hugging the river spirit

Really well paced and engaging edit!