DAUGHTER OF
THE INNER STARS

A feature-length film accompanying
a live orchestral experience that
blends live narration, original
animation, and a powerful
cinematic score.

Daughter of the Inner Stars is a cosmic fairytale and orchestral experience scored by Nicholas Buc. Written and directed by James Vinson and created for audiences aged 8–16, it follows a brave girl named Fia on an emotional journey through magical realms in search of her lost father. With a live symphony orchestra and a story exploring love, loss, and music's enduring power, the production premiered with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 2024 and debuts in North America with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in 2025.

SHOWS

SYDNEY oPERA HOUSE - AUGUST 2024
ORPHEUM VANCOUVER - MAY 2025

PRESS

INTERVIEW WITH NICHOLAS BUC
TEACHING RESOURCE KIT
Sydney Opera House Premiere Overview

BOOK THE SHOW

CREDITS

NICHOLAS BUC

JAMES VINSON

MELANIE HILUTA

NATHAN SU

LUDVIG HOLMEN

NOUR HASSOUN

SARAH SU

BETHANY EDGOOSE

MISHA PINNINGTON

MARYNA
Solemennykova

KYRYLO YEROKHIN

OLGA SYROTKINA

ARTHUR AVAKYAN

ANDRIY
DROBOVYCH

01
WORLDBUILDING

Daughter of the Inner Stars takes place on Berynia, a planet in an orbit where there is no sun-like star keeping the world warm or providing light. This world, visually inspired by the luminiscent materials found in the dark depths of the sea or the innermost sections of caves, has evolved to create its own light and warmth through bioluminescence.

Everyone who lives on Berynia has found a way to make their own light, whether through biological evolution, or by living with the plants, animals, and flora that generate luminescence. The human characters often integrate bioluminiscent material within their clothing, while creatures generate it through magic, science, or a mix of both.

You can watch more about the worldbuilding of Daughter of the Inner Stars in the video below, presented by Nathan Su of Inferstudio as part of the show’s learning resources.

02
METAHUMAN
MOTION CAPTURE

With no keyframe character animators on the team, we needed efficient systems to make the characters of DOTIS move. The first of those systems involved developing a pipeline for motion capture on a budget — no suits, no markers, no trackers. By testing AI-driven motion systems, we were able to capture real human performance and retarget them onto our characters, saving up 80% of our animation time. The final touches were cleaned up using Unreal Engine’s curve editor animation tools.

Being a character piece, Daughter of the Inner Stars’ bigger challenge was conveying believable emotion through facial expressions. By leveraging depth sensing technologies through the MetaHuman animator framework, we were able to integrate our actors’ facial movements from their live performances, and pair them with body movements, allowing for a very human performance.

This base performance was then manually cleaned up in Unreal Engine, allowing us to inject more life and personality to our characters, while also giving us control of eyelines, blinking, and the interpretation of stylized facial features.

03
PROCEDURAL
ANIMATION

The main animation challenge for Daughter of the Inner Stars was animating the non-human characters, whose movements needed procedural physics. By building complex control rig systems, much of the procedural animation work was automated, significantly minimizing the need for manual animation.

THE LEVIATHAN

The most complex animation system developed for Daughter of the Inner Stars, the Leviathan is a fully procedural, self-sufficient character with extremely simplified animation controls. The control rig was built to allow animators to simply move the head, and the body does the rest on its own.

THE SELKI

Blending both the motion capture pipeline and the procedural animation pipeline, The Selki’s body was connected to a motion capture system, which then generated secondary real-time fin physics through Unreal Engine’s control rig and micro-movements on the material level.

Controllers were set up to drive facial blend shapes, allowing for control over emotion and eyelines.

DORMO

A testament to markerless motion capture, Dormo pushed the limit of retargeting human proportions to non-human figures, and making them work. By combining specially-designed mocap retargeting systems, facial expression blend shapes, multi-layered skinning (flesh vs. feathers), and a custom Unreal Engine Control Rig, Dormo was brought to life in Daughter of the Inner Stars.