Taking Scott's block out for the scene, I imported the arm mesh into houdini. The initial lattice used for blocking was done using Merk Vilson's Trypogen plugin, and although we did try out some alternative approaches to generating it in houdini, we prefered the look of Scott's original model.
Taking that I set up some start and end point groups using bounding regions to define the start and end points and use houdini's closest point sop to generate the veins that follow through the mesh.
Exporting that resulting set of splines back into c4d as an alembic, I then used simple mograph cloners to clone small incandescent bulbs down the length of those veins. The veins themselves took a bit of time to load into redshift but used RS proxy's to speed it up again for lookdev.
Finally we used a translucent material with some subtle SSS for the main arm lattice, a simple SSS shader for the veins and just an incandescent shader for the leds.
The Marble arm was fairly simple materials with multiscattering. All rendered within Redshift (C4D).
Sound design: Cypher Audio
Full Titles here vimeo.com/276142429 .
Stills and more:
behance.net/gallery/67043195/TEDx-Sydney-2018-Main-Titles-Event-Package
Client: TEDx Sydney
Direction: Scott Geersen
Layout, Cinematography: Substance
Edit: Joe Morris
Look Dev / Shading / Lighting: Rich Nosworthy, Rory McLean, Jeff Briant, Ezequiel Grand, Scott Geersen
Additional Sculpts: Ezequiel Grand, Rich Nosworthy
Original Music & Sound Design : CypherAudio / John Black & Tobias Norberg