The figures were exported as looping Alembic files out of Daz. I then imported the Alembic files into Marvelous Designer, where I created, fit and animated the clothing. Once animated, I exported the clothing as an Alembic as well.
Once I had the Alembic files for the figure and the clothing, I put them together in Cinema 4D and added the garment graphics and colors using Octane.
The movement of the models around in a circle was achieved using Cinema 4D's mograph tools. First, I placed the four models in a cloner object and set them to be cloned onto a circle spline. This allowed me the flexibility of changing the radius of the circle while continuing to evenly distribute the models on it. I was also able to control the number of models dynamically using the cloner. The base circular motion was achieved by simply keyframing the "offset" in the cloner from 0% to 100%. In order to have the models "turning" to continue facing forward relative to their position on the circle, I used a Plain effector with a 360 degree heading rotation parameter and a radial field placed in the center of the circle spline. The scene has two different looks: lit with an HDRI, and lit with individual Octane lights. I set up these lights in varying areas along the circle and separated the lights into different passes within an EXR file for the final render.
The final composite was completed in After Effects. The animation starts with the HDRI look and fades to black as the song nears the "drop". Once the beat drops, the look is switched to a variation of the render lit by the separate Octane lights. I connected one of the main lights to the waveform of the song, so that the opacity of the layer was dependent on how loud the song was. Then, a few other pairs of lights were keyframed to match the song, so different parts of the scene light up to the beat.
Final Piece
A look at the separate light passes
Iterations created during the process
(From left to right): Clay render, viewport view showing circle spline and radial field, viewport view showing Octane light placement, viewport animation render
screenshots from marvelous designer showcasing mesh and garment/accessory sewing patterns
closeups of outfits
