Life (abstract)

I was inspired by a small image that I saw about 6 months ago in Internet, a heart with few branches growing from inside. Unfortunately, I still don't know the author. I decided to develop that idea and make something more interesting.
The heart-tree was sculpted in ZBrush. Small branches were made with FiberMesh that I converted to mesh. To animate the heart I made a low poly copy. Used bones with spring controller to animate branches. FFD and Flex modifiers for heart deformation. Lowpoly heart was attached to the highpoly one with the help of Skin Wrap.
Leaves were made with particle flow. Before rendering leaves simulation was cached.
Liquid and waterfall were simulated in Realflow. Waterfall was rendered with Krakatoa.

I had some issue with SSS material. It caused heavy flickering. So, I had to set Rate to Very High and Interpolation Quality to High. It increased rendering time.
In general, average rendering time of a single frame was 19 minutes.