In the distant future, the Corians created the Synthetics, but the Synthetics eventually occupied the Corians’s living space, leading to a prolonged war between the two civilizations. The story explores the bloody past of the synthetic eliminator Yu Xin’s cruel hunting of Synthetics 476 years ago, as well as the complex friendship 476 years later between her descendant Yu Ran—the last of the Corian—and the benevolent Omnic Lord Osin. The work deeply examines weighty themes such as civilizational conflict, revenge and forgiveness, and the meaning of survival, revealing the tragic relationship between intelligent life forms on a cosmic scale—one that is both antagonistic and interdependent.

In the year 2700 of the Xinglong Era, after the victory in the Fourth Stellar War, mathematician Yu Baiyun was deeply concerned about the future of civilization. She focused on researching group cognition models and initiated the Withered Sea Project to conduct simulation experiments, only to fall into a mental crisis as a result. Despite her warnings triggering controversy and even leading to her exile, her research was inherited by her student, Liang Moqing. Amid the celebrations of victory, Yu Baiyun’s reflections on the heart of civilization’s exploration became an important issue hanging over the future of the Xinglong civilization.

This AI short film is adapted from the short story “The Withered Sea Project” from the Computational Universe.

Tools

This time, video generation mainly involves Kling, Hailuo, Vidu, and Higgsfield, while for image generation, I’m relying on old friends Flux and Midjourney, along with Vidu’s multi-reference feature. In video generation, Hailuo is the main tool for card drawing, handling all shots except for close-ups of characters. Hailuo is very stable and occasionally provides surprises. For some particularly exaggerated character emotions, Hailuo is also needed, though in some cases it can be a bit too intense.

For medium shots of characters and beyond, Kling is used, especially since “The Withered Sea Project” involves many dialogue scenes, so KeLing has also drawn quite a bit of inspiration. I mainly use Kling 2.1 Master Edition for generation, which can retain facial textures —a crucial detail for me, as I prefer realistic faces. Kling’s character expressions are restrained, but upon closer inspection, they become more captivating.

Vidu is used for its multi-reference function, which allows specific characters to be placed in designated scenes, which is very useful. The downside is that sometimes the character proportions become skewed, and there’s blurriness. Even in Q1 1080p resolution, Vidu’s blurriness is still visibly noticeable.

Higgsfield is used for some special effect shots. The effects it generates are still quite powerful, but it is expensive, so I only use it for special effects and not for other tasks. Its image generation feature is still quite a bit behind Midjourney. Midjourney remains the main tool for image generation.