Berlin-based 3D artist Daria Togunova merges her longing for home with a mastery of Houdini and Redshift to craft a very tactile short film “capturing small fragments of people I love and translating them into 3D embroidery.”

“Embroidery has always felt close to me. It reminds me of creating things with my hands, of patience and connection. That’s why I asked my mum, dad, and sister to join me. They each drew small doodles, simple sketches that carried so much personality.

“I then turned their drawings into embroidered 3D forms inside Houdini, connecting them with digital threads so they moved together. As if we were connected through invisible strings. Seeing those little drawings come alive was emotional; it felt like building a small piece of home inside my computer.
 

“In the end, this project became a personal way of reconnecting with my family, with my memories, and with myself. It’s a mix of love, nostalgia, and digital chaos.”

 
“One of the biggest challenges was keeping the project warm and alive. I didn’t want it to become melancholic or nostalgic in a heavy way. Homesickness can easily turn that way, but for me, it was about transforming that longing into something playful and full of energy.

“Technically, the process was full of experiments. Building something that feels handmade in a procedural 3D environment is not simple. I used Houdini as my main tool, because there I can easily experiment with forms and build custom setups to make the threads move naturally to capture that soft, imperfect quality embroidery has in real life.

“Each memory (from the carpets on the wall, to puzzles I used to build, to apples falling in my mum’s garden) needed its own logic and motion. Finding the right balance between control and randomness became part of the storytelling.

“In the end, this project became a personal way of reconnecting with my family, with my memories, and with myself. It’s a mix of love, nostalgia, and digital chaos. This is a visual diary stitched together from everything I miss and everything that still lives inside me.”
 
 

 
Director/Animator: Daria Togunova

Sound Design: Aaron Graham