R33GTR - TRANSFORMER - PAGE 3
Well I must be a glutton for punishment - I decided it would be really really cool if the car in this animation actually transformed into a robot and flew out of the scene! Simplez hahahahahaha! I have a feeling certain 3d enthusiast friends will read this page and think 'he's nuts' but actually its already looking quite promising and I have a playblast to prove! Basically I have chopped up the car into a myriad of strange pieces and then I've set up a basic character rig, and animated that simply dropping into place inside the car bodywork. From there its a matter of deciding which bits go to the nearest joint and working through it a piece at a time. So far its only A-B positioning but more complex setup of the various pieces will come. Also I need to build an endoskeleton like structure akin to the transformers in the movie prior to them finding their disguises. From there I'll set up controllers that drive complex animation of the elements from one slider control per joint. this way I should be able to transform the leg separately from the arm, so I can have the car 'get up' off its knees into a pose. Sounds so darn easy on paper lol!
Well I'm off work this week as I'm sufferng from some ear infection. It hasn't made me massively poorly but my sense of balance is a bit off and I've fell on my butt a couple of times yesterday and bumped my head into the extractor twice making a cup of tea. I'm copped up in the house and its tbh driving me quite a bit nuts let alone haveing to take the rest of the weke off too. I'm gonna be ffclimbing the walls to get out come the wkend! Anyhow I decided today to have a bit more of atinker with this trasnfomrer rig. I pretty much restarted the majority of it. I spent the morning doing a frame by frame watch of all the money shots in Michael Bay's Trnasformers movie then scribbling down notes on how they tackle stuff. I then decided to work some of those notes into this animation. One of the cool things I liked is Ratchets transformation and teh way his upper body does a 180 twist so I implemented that. The other thing I redid is alot of the metal bodywork panels making them a bit simpler so they slot together a bit more easily. I aslo added a very basic engine and gearbox which I've integrated into the transfomration and its already looking quite effective. The cool bit is that I've got alot of the broad strokes done ie: the larger blocks of metal and shape changing. From there I can work details and timing of components into this overall transformation. I imgagine the boys at ILM designed some bloody clever rigs to control most of the transfomration systems - I'm not sure how much of this I'll be able to do in that way but if I come out with a fairly funky animation and akin to whats been seen in the movies I'll be happy. Now I've got my head around some tracking software I think I might be able to do a funky bit of compositing with it too :) Click on the image below to view the Qtime movie (approx 3mb)
The virus I've had most of the week has pretty much cleared. Today is first time i have gotten on the road to catch up with a friend, talk 3d chaff & sup a beer or two - had a really great time :) I've been working on this project a little too - got some more details in and tuned the animation. I also added a basic model head, and I've incorporated a turbocharger model into his body which I think makes a really cool kind of heart in his chest. There's still a long way to go with it - building up the structure and shape of the robot but its getting there. Most parts now have a 'home' on the robot body so thats good. I've done a first render here - a basic bouncecard lighting render with an occlusion pass too. I then added some slight motion blur in the render too. I've emulated the angle from the first Transformers movie where Barricade transforms in front of Sam. Obviously mine isn't quite as good as his but its well on its way I think. I also added the audio from Barricades transformation just to see how it looks with the audio! Click on the image below to view the Qtime movie (approx 2mb)
Did a little bit more work on it. Added interior door cards on the doors which add a nice level of detail as the robot pivots during the transform. Also been working through the rest of the bodywork getting it attached to the robot. Its 95% there now - just a few little panels and daft things like the exhaust. I will then add more detail into the robots body and limbs. I've also done away with the run cycle for the time being as in my animation sequence I plan to have the robot drift around the actor on the floor and transform in front of him. Click on the image below to view the Qtime movie (approx 2mb)
I also decided to do a higher resolution render to see how it looks...
Been so bloody busy this last week but then at the same time had no chance to get along to wing chun or do any skydiving and this weekend looks set to be more of the same. So I'm sat in working on me transformer again. Updates include adjusting a few bits of bodywork.. minor changes of position. I also got the spoiler sorted instead of just hiding it mid-transform and I think it looks quite cool attached to the thigh. I also added some feet which I have to say was a right pain in the behind to rig seeing as I were midway through all the animation but I've got a reverse leg setup in there with ball and toe rotation and also a toe spread for when he puts his feet down which is subtle but an effective way of showing weight spreading on each footplant. I also made it white temporarily for a change and done a couple of renders too. Click on the image below to view the Qtime movie (approx 2mb)
just done a quick bit of modelling this evening - well i say quick ...3 blinking hours just to put a hand together.. honestly! Anyhow it looks kinda cool and evil like and suits the rest of the character. Done a render to show how it looks. Really best go bed I think - its daft o'clock... again!
Here's a few more pics - probably a bit too dark lighting-wise but I thought I'd put em up anyhow. I actually prefer the white more I think overall as its more visible but the darker does look meaner. Also put some wireframes up to show how it looks... its about 2000 maya nodes now and is really starting to chug my laptop lol!
Well I had a 4 day wkend just gone so I decided to rest and also put some serious time into putting this together. I was initially going to try and make the project bigger than it is but I decided that I need to scale it back a little and just concentrate on putting a nice 20-30 second piece together instead. I went out and shot some footage. My plan was to shoot a clip in town and use Boujou to track it. This didn't go well however mainly because it was evening footage, not very good quality and blurry too. So I went out, mapped out the area I filmed and figured out how big each building was, how deep the pavement was to the road, what width the road was... basically just measure out the major areas. I then built proxy geometry, matched that up to the footage clip and tried to do a manual tracking job. This was also an epic fail and I've attached a link to the 1mb clip below:
>>> Manual camera matching fail! <<<
Not very good is it lol! ...so after deciding that wasn't going anywhere without alot of heartache, I thought I may as well just model up the environment and use camera mapping to project the texture onto each building. I also went out & snapped some pics of the buildings face on to texture up the buildings. Overall this has worked out alot better for the bg plate, altho I still need to add a fair bit more foreground detail on the kerb & road but I'll get around to those details. My main goal was to put a composite together that I can build upon. I then added the car, animated the car, then the animated transformer and synced the two up. I also added some other animation touches to the robot to prevent clipping of body parts. I then set about putting render layers together in maya, which I'm never fond of because Maya has a knack of cocking them up but overall it seems to have worked out nicely. My main passes are the background, car, occlusion, shadow & sky. I then did separate passes for the headlights & the eyes which I used to glow in my composite. I also added some light flares on the bg street lights, the lights glaring off the car and some other specular glints. Smoke was also added too to the plate, using a baked out camera in afx to get the smoke to match up with the camera move. Click on the image below to view the Qtime movie (approx 6mb)
I will post up a making of video in the future when I've got the rest of the things done like the robot head and other bits.