Behind the Scenes

Behind the Scenes: Dota 2 ICY SILENCE Cinematic

Bart ·
Close-up of a stylized character with blonde hair and dark makeup, holding a weapon. Text "ICY SILENCE" is visible.

A team of 11 Blender artists collaborated on their entry for the Dota 2 Short Film Contest. Their entry has the typical feel of a highly polished AAA game cinematic. I asked Israel Soteldo to share more about its creation process.

Icy Silence is a short film by TimeWarp Animation, created for the Dota 2 Short Film Contest 2025. Our team currently includes 11 CG artists; this is our first project together, and we plan to continue producing high-quality cinematics—both original pieces and select fan projects.

The film was directed by Israel Soteldo (freelance artist, ~13 years in CG). Prior to settling on Blender after the 2.8 era, I worked across multiple DCCs and contributed to projects such as a PlayStation VR cinematic (Pistol Whip) and various game spots (LEC, Valorant, Counter Strike). I also produce courses and tutorials on YouTube.

Pipeline overview. The short was rendered entirely in Blender, primarily with Octane Render (ACEScg), chosen for its look and fast iteration on physically plausible lighting. We also used Cycles on a few shots to optimize turnaround near the deadline. Modeling/sculpting/texturing were supported by ZBrush and Substance Painter. For characters, we leveraged Unreal Engine’s MetaHuman and established a bridge to Blender (via Polyhammer) to use the MetaHuman facial rig natively. Rigging and animation combined in-house rigs (some in Maya) with Reallusion AccuRig/ActorCore and targeted hand animation in Cascadeur. Houdini FX and EmberGen handled most of the effects work.

The main technical hurdle was unifying a body rig with the MetaHuman facial setup inside Blender. We also iterated heavily on snow simulations and the Blender↔Houdini handoff before reaching a stable result. Closer to the deadline, we balanced render quality and throughput by mixing Octane with Cycles where it made sense.

All team members are freelancers with experience in indie studios and content creation, which helped us collaborate efficiently and keep the production moving.

Thanks again for the opportunity. Here i leave you some captures and the making of video:

 

Author Bart
I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Community Lead at n8n.
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