Transformer Jazz

[Anttaru]

Back in 2002 or 2003 (wasn't keeping track of exact time) I was aware of the plans to make a live action Transformers movie. In that case i found it a challenge to make my own Transformer. Unfortunatly i started playing FFXI at that time and spent less of my leasure practicing my 3D skills.

I dreamed of working on that flick, and now that it's been made i'm starting to feel the backlash of wasting so much time playing FFXI. So once again i'm going to continue what i've started cause it would kinda burn me to start from scratch. To say the least, i can complete the project alot quicker if i picked up where i left off.

I'm expecting some hard crits, some i will ignore for the sake of completing this in a timely manner. Sharing progress i think is fun, although taking the time to take pictures and upload them takes away from actually working on the project itself, i'll do it anyway.

So what i have so far.

Car Body

Modeled after a Porsche Carrera GT. I can assure all of you that have no trained eye for this car, this model is not accurate. Unlike a large list of cars, i was not able to find an Orthographic blue print for this. So i had to do the best i can by eye. Personally i'm not pleased with it, but i think i can get away with making it out to be a concept Carrera GT with some kit on it.
I'm also gonna have to chop it up and stick the surfaces to movable body parts so it can transform. should be a peice of cake.

Autobot logo

I thought it would have been cheap to have it as a texture so i modeled one and planted it on the arm. I plan on using just 1. The problem i'm having with it is how this logo needs to have a dark background for it to look proper, so i bent up a poly and blacked it out then sliped it through the surface to correct the logo. without the blacked backround the logo really does look incomplete. Still i want to fix it, maybe build a black pedistal to outline the entire thing.

Tire and Rim

When animated this will only be used on close ups, when far away i'll replace it with a bump map texture, but for now i'll just use this. The reason for swapping the tire with a textureed bump map version is to cut down on render time, that is alot of geometry for such a thing, plus there will be 3 others like it, the rear ones i made fatter too.

The Arm

The way i put that tire there is pretty much the kind of positioning i want the tire to be when the Car transforms, further into the project i'll most likely fine tune it, if it's to sit linar or slanted is still beyond me. I have my money on the slanted look, but i could be wrong.
I never wanted it to resemble hydraulics or servos, as the transformers are not really from around here, so i made some gear looking joins which imaginativly is powered by some motor under the shell caseing of the body.

The arm i used in this video session. Just a peice of junk from a vast yard of models i have, so i tossed it in, just to show you. It's always originally been made for this project, I nearly used it for a robotic gorilla cause i could have got away with using 4 of them 2 modified. Colour scheme may change. for this.

The Hand

Thinking of putting some kind of rubber or leather to fill those gaps, or maybe just use the one i used in that other project. There is also something obvious about the fingers, i'm wondering if anyone can point that out to me. If not that's actually a good thing in a way. So just a hint my question is, "What is seemingly lazy about the creation of the fingers ?" And no it's not the duplication and scaling of them.

The Head

I wanted it to look simular to the original with a new twist. These exposures allow others to steal the concept, something that would boath anger and flatter me. I feel it's best that happens for some reason.

I was shooting for an urban/classy look, which is why the helmit looks like a cross between an english cap with a pair of headphones. It has to say cool, and it has to say music. I never took a rear shot, but in the lower back there you can see those chains, which are supose to be chrome locks. But i think i will scrap that idea, cause loose chains around hardware makes me feel sad. So no dreads !

I've been told long ago that the face does not work, and it's true, i don't like it myself, so later on i'll fix it. It's hard to figure out how to make the mouth move seeing on how the original series depicted them to have flexable mouths on a metal surface. I can do that too, but that might ruin what i'm trying to pull off here. Maybe i should plate the face with scales so the lip movements arn't so distracting.

 

[Helius]

Man, that is some extremely nice work. Takes time and effort just to make the car, let alone a physically accurate Transformer, I wish you best of luck and I have a couple notes.

-Arm: How does the extreme roundness fit into play? Or do you plan on adding plates to that later as the shell of the car?

-Face: Not sure what you mean by having a hard time making the lips how you want?

Thinking of putting some kind of rubber or leather to fill those gaps, or maybe just use the one i used in that other project. There is also something obvious about the fingers, i'm wondering if anyone can point that out to me. If not that's actually a good thing in a way. So just a hint my question is, "What is seemingly lazy about the creation of the fingers ?" And no it's not the duplication and scaling of them.

Their straight and not bent?

 

[Solan]

shit looks really really good, i cant be a negatice critic on this seeing as its something ill never be able to do and goodluck with it

 

[Anttaru]

Man, that is some extremely nice work. Takes time and effort just to make the car, let alone a physically accurate Transformer, I wish you best of luck and I have a couple notes.

Yeah i made it long ago, actually the 1st thing i really made with polygons was that, i usually use a different substance in 3D. I don't remember how long it too me to make that car. probably within a month though. still not finished. I'll show you a smothened version later, working on the interior now, which my be problematic for the transformation.

-Arm: How does the extreme roundness fit into play? Or do you plan on adding plates to that later as the shell of the car?

Well i'd like to leave the arms as it is, but i may have to scale it down. Might be too long. the Roundness is just a design. Thought it might look better than the box method of approach. If you look closely you can see the arm can bend in a V shape before the surfaces make contact.

If i have to i'll make the surrounding parts retract into the arm. I wanted the hands to do that but then i would have to make them too small. Like the comics i want it to have big hands.

-Face: Not sure what you mean by having a hard time making the lips how you want?

Well i'm shooting for real here. Realistically metal does not simply bend and flex like our mouths which is comprised of flesh and muscle. The cartoon transformers ignore that, and do have lip movements even though the robots face is metal. For this project i need to work with that in a more acceptable way due to what i'm trying to achieve with it.

Their straight and not bent?

Nope ^^

EDIT: Ok i'm seeing you're questions about the arms in a different perspective, how they fit into play as in where they will go when it transforms ?

It will transform like the original Jazz on the most part, so the arms will kinda cross and fold under the front end of the car.

Because of that i might have to find a way to make the head transform itslelf too or else it will end up with a small head like the Original toy has, which is one thing i don't like.

 

[Helius]

The fingers are from the other arm you previously made?

 

[Anttaru]

That's it Helius. Think i can get away with that ?

 

[shmedly]

Nice work guy! Which program do you use for this? I use Pro Engineer for my modeling software but I do engineering work.

I've always been told there is no such thing as a bad idea because even a bad one can provoke thought to the right solution. I'll try to give some ideas.


The Arms:

The idea to have them fold under the car is good, maybe have a joint at the shoulder and fold them forward and under at 90 degrees and they could be considered as frame rails.


The Hands:

Could they be retractable into the forearm and take some of the other features and fold them out into sheetmetal for the body? Maybe the other features could be modeled after car parts(or closely resemble)and just rotate the arms to have them fit/look correctly under the car.


The Head:

Even though most of the Transformers had moving, realistic looking lips you could try a different approach. Maybe try a very short lower jaw that is movable and maybe work it into the helmet. Even though it would split apart, and not have a humanly look to it, I believe it could be modeled to get close. Maybe give the jawline a horizontal sheetmetal texture instead of being a vertical one. That also may distract from the mouth movements of at least blend them a little better.

Also, have you thought about having the head folding down (bending forward, and moving 90 or 180 degrees) to become part of the main torso as the front of the car moves into place? Or you could leave it where it is and when the hood is open the head could maybe resemble the engine from the back. Could keep the chain Dreads and they could serve as engine anchors.


The Logo:

It looks good, but maybe adding a little shading to the outer perimeter would make it POP out at you I think.

I look forward to seeing more of this as you get more completed.

Peace,
Shmed

 

[Helius]

That's it Helius. Think i can get away with that ?

Why wouldn't you? No one will know if you don't tell em.

 

[Anttaru]

Nice work guy! Which program do you use for this? I use Pro Engineer for my modeling software but I do engineering work.

Excuse the delayed response i wanted to respond with some updates. I use Maya 7. Which is not bad for you to get into cause of the Mental Ray render engine which is intergrated into maya's interface. There are ways to transport you're models to other 3D programs. It's only good if another software has something you want from it, so i was just saying.

I've always been told there is no such thing as a bad idea because even a bad one can provoke thought to the right solution. I'll try to give some ideas.


The Arms:

The idea to have them fold under the car is good, maybe have a joint at the shoulder and fold them forward and under at 90 degrees and they could be considered as frame rails.

I'm considering that, There definatly has to be something to pivot the arm under the car.

The Hands:

Could they be retractable into the forearm and take some of the other features and fold them out into sheetmetal for the body? Maybe the other features could be modeled after car parts(or closely resemble)and just rotate the arms to have them fit/look correctly under the car.

Originally i never wanted to do that, but it's a must. It adds to the transformation porocess, and it helps alot when trying to stuff those arms in place, so i'll most likely be fixing the hand so it can fold more so it can retract into the forearm. reason why i'm thinking i'll make it fold instead of shrinking is because i like the size of them as they are.

Also. I may be forced to make the arms go into the interior part of the car, in order to achieve the scaling i want. If i can't compact the arms under that hood then i'll be forced to scale down the arms which would effect the look of the robot.

Space

(showing the above pic for no reason in particular, it's actually the current state as i'm writing this, i was fixing gaps and what not.)

Here is how much space i have to cram those arms under the hood. That is because of the cars interior, which is somewhat in jeoperdy right now lol. Even with that interior box, i'm not so worried for the space in the rear.

That box in the middle works well when you look at it from the inside, the interior has a floor, but on the outside it's problematic because that is just about where the stomach is and i don't want it to look like that. I model something to go there if anything but ... now i'm thinking the interior might get re-arranged.

Scale test

So i choppd up the car and held the peices together just to get a visual of what direction this is going. The head is too big and the arms are a tad bit too long in this picture.

Here i'm trying to imagine how tall the robot will be I tossed in those cheap looking feet just for the sake of imagination.

Everything is an easy fix and it definatly needs to be, also i'll be making new breaking points along the hood and other areas of the car maybe, and i'll show you why...

Research

The video
http://redruth.greenbean.org/~ben/tformer_ILM_test.mpg

Yes, the transformers we wanted but never got. I found this to be the best study because the conversion from car to robot is good enough, and the robot in general has a very nice scale. Too good to be like the toys we knew, and also the arms and legs are scaled as we'd expect it to be in general.

This shot is what sold me the idea to emulate this. Look at where the hood breaks, not all the way to the windsheild. that makes a world of difference for the model itself. After putting much thought and stairing at the transformation, i can see that method reduces the size of the chest, so it won't look too bulky, like how my test visuals are.

The down side....
The arms (those white parts in the above pic) fold out from the where the cars interior should be, which is why i can see why Industrail light and Magic never went with this method even though it looks more original, even more acceptable. If the cars in the movie had messed up interior, that would cause alot of screw ups when people interact with them in vehicle mode.

But as it turns out the robot looks very good, and i'm feeling better about making the head smaller. I even like where the doors end up on this version i even tried positioning it there on one side of that test i did, the doors do cover up alot of details when they are like that, maybe i should make the arms more basic like these guys did. We all know what happens when transformers have too much damn detail. ' '

The Head:

Even though most of the Transformers had moving, realistic looking lips you could try a different approach. Maybe try a very short lower jaw that is movable and maybe work it into the helmet. Even though it would split apart, and not have a humanly look to it, I believe it could be modeled to get close. Maybe give the jawline a horizontal sheetmetal texture instead of being a vertical one. That also may distract from the mouth movements of at least blend them a little better.

I was watching that Bjork video "All is for Love". Most amazing CG visuals. They have what i believe inspired the design for I-Robot, another thing i'll mention in that test image i posted, i smothened out the face, but still there is something wrong ; ;

Not sure what to do, but i'll write down what you just said on my splice sheet.

Here's that Bjork video, Very inspiring work, nice detail. Creepy content though. It's all about getting away with a soft organic like face.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjAoBKagWQA

Also, have you thought about having the head folding down (bending forward, and moving 90 or 180 degrees) to become part of the main torso as the front of the car moves into place? Or you could leave it where it is and when the hood is open the head could maybe resemble the engine from the back. Could keep the chain Dreads and they could serve as engine anchors.

The engine is in the rear of the vehicle i even have a peice of it sticking out in the back there.
The head is a concern because there really is no place to put it lol.

I was thinking i would find a way to fold it up and make it slide under that stuffy hood. Even in that ILM video, we see the head slip out, but we don't really see where it was hiding. still if i do the arms the way it was done in that ILM test, i should have pleanty of room for the head. I'm thinking that's the way to go.

The Logo:

It looks good, but maybe adding a little shading to the outer perimeter would make it POP out at you I think.

I look forward to seeing more of this as you get more completed.

Peace,
Shmed

That is on my things to do list, like the face i'll most likely work on it when adding the finishing touches, cause for some reason it i think it would feel less strenuous to do it up when the project is looking good, you might know what i mean. Thank you for contributing to my project, i enjoy sharing it with you ^^

Next i will make the effort to post some rendered images. Right now i have something very close to photo realistic and i'll like to tweak it up some more, my test renders also revealed alot of mistakes in the car, like being able to see past the gaps which distorted the beliavability of the image. Updates soon.

 

[shmedly]

How has this been coming along Ant?

I thought about something for the head. Could it be part of the dash or center console LOL.

Peace,
Shmed

 

[Anttaru]

Ehh. It's so and so, right now it;s taking 45 minutes per frame to render. I don't want to expose any of the images yet, but tomorrow i'll make an effort to bake you up an image and post it here.

It's not really nessary to work on the render before the model is rigged and ready to roll. I just had the urge to do it so i can visualize what the end project will turn out to be.

I have not been working on it on a daily basis either. I spent the last few days modeling a Sony QRIO. Becase i used video footage of one in that lighting project, i think it would credit my reel if i actually made one and animated it. I already have it rigged and ready to roll too.

As for the transformer project i won't be working on that for atleast another 2 weeks. Like i said i'll render out an image of the model so you can see the latest progress on it. I'll do it tomorrow.

 

[Darkseifer]

Hey Anttaru how hard is to learn and do this kind of stuff? I'm looking forward to learn more about it, looks interesting.
Also, where can I find that maya 7 program?

 

[Anttaru]

Well Seifer. All i can say is, if i had to learn how to use this by myself i would say it's blasted hard to figure it out. But there are ways to learn it on you're own if you're up for shutting off the music and locking yourself in a room with it.

There are guys in the feild that learned how to use the software in their basement and got hired. Ofcoarse they were good animators too.

When you first see Maya's interface right infront of you. You see 4 windows. Top, side, front, and perspective views, each centered into what can only be described at an endless limbo. It's not much to look at, but when you create anything you can literally send it out there as far as you wish and forget it even exists, unless you look it up in the outliner or a Hypergraph. That way you can select it and bring it back.

At first you'll want to manifest you're ideas into the screen right away. But that isn't going to happen anytime soon. You need to learn the basics and use paramative shapes, cubes, spheres, cones, cylinders torus etc... It then turns into long boring sessions as you're grasping the concepts behind intergrating math with motion and construction, then creating offsets in those numbers in the animations. After awhile it's very pleasing to use math to achieve. I hated math, but not anymore <3. It's nto so hard, at first you'll use a scratch pad just to track yourself, then you'll hardly ever write. Looking at the books i made in school, only i can translate what those pages and pages of numbers mean. Others who work in 3D can understand it, but won't be able to point out what exactly they were used for. It's all jibberish that makes it look harder than it really is.

If you can handle that and put good amounts of time into it, you can become a CG artists. Take the challenge and hold it down for awhile. You'll slowly be able to show others some stuff and they'll be like "I don't get it". Meanwhile you do.

It's also safe to say on the most part, unfinished work looks terrible. Low poly is far from what one would have in mind. But that is a method of approach for the sake of what the GPU can handle. When the models mesh is too dense there will be lagy issues somewhere along the lines. So when modeling you need to learn how to make something low poly then when you increase the tessalation it has to turn out how you wanted it to.

Test 1

Being just a render test i paid no mind to the cameras state. The car looks kinda stretched. That can be fixed by moving the camera back then zooming it in. Or changing the lense on the cam. Cameras in 3D go by real world cameras. I'm not expert, i just change it until i see something i like. Or make my own lense setting.

Test 1 again crappy yellow different angle

Reason why i'm showing these images i'm not satisfied with is because they rendered better than the latest. I used the Mental Ray Render Engine with Mental shader nodes.

Test 1 again mistakes galore

Again nice render, but too revealing. Those gaps ruin the image and the side is not smooth. sux

Latest Test render

This one i fixed up the model and even ironed out the sides and sealed up the gaps. still need ironing just a bit. I tweaked some of the render settings. Instead of 45 minutes per frame, it only took 12 minutes to make this. I tweaked the shaders "lit colour attribute" this one i made kinda dark so when the light hits it, it's too dark. (Dam me) I also took out those flakes which i should just make finer. I think maybe once i find the perfect colouring, i might just take a texture map and bring it into photoshop to make a transparent layer just to perfect the flakes on the paint. But probably best to mod it in the attribute editor. either way the flakes make the sahder look more realistic.

So yeah, as you can see there are ups and downs before satisfaction.

When tweaking things like that it's looked upon as a technical issue more than poor art. I should have recorded how i did the shader the first time around. Still it's no matter cause i'm gonna go with with either silver, or white with another layer for decals. Maybe go crazy and make a full blow Le mans. That is after all the heart of the GT.


Back to the interface....Surrounding the 4 windows in the interface you see various tabs, each containing sub options beyond options. Don't bother looking up the words in a dictionary, just go straight for the tutorial as to what each option does. You needen't know how to do everything, and if you do get into it, i'll be happy to show you some things in this very thread if need be. All is welcome to post images here. Tell me what kind of things you want to make, and i'll better know what to show you. There is no set limit as to how good something can look. It's possible to exceed expectations with the basic render engine. It's possible to create the above images even if you're PC has a Pentium II. It would just take damn long like it use to.

There are the basic tools some of which are not really needed, but makes things happen faster. What i'm trying to say is. Some tools you'll adopt and call it basic once you try it out after you've been modeling for awhile.

Where to get Maya 7 you ask ?

Maya was created by a company called Aliaswavefront, who changed their name to Alias. If you look for Alias, you'll come across a company called "Autodesk" They bought Maya reciently so look them up online.
Maya 8 is out last i looked. I tried it and never liked it so much. After Photoshop 7, other photoshops are exactly the same except they have a few extra novelty tools which means nothing to professionals. This can be the same case for any other new software. Maya 8 has some sweet ass tricks, but the slight change in interface and re-arrangement of stock settings rubbed me the wrong way. If i ever need any of Maya 8's tricks to make my life easier only then will i use it.

Knowing Maya:

Because for each release there are 2 versions

-Maya complete $1,999.00

-Maya Unlimited $9,000.00

on a side note the success of the PC makes hardware and software cheaper. SGI computers range from 10k to 30k. PCs sell more so they can afford to be cheaper and make more money. and funny enough be more advanced than SGI. Before 3D software was found only on the SGI's and back then Maya was worth $27,000. So reconize how much the PC is kick ass ^^

There is ofcoarse other ways to obtain it for, how should i put this ..... dirt cheap. But it is very, very wrong. If you have an ounce of PC geek in you, you'll know where to look for it.

When installed Maya takes up around 300 Megs of space in the HDD. Which isn't so large considering how powerful it is. Projects however has unlimited amounts of output. 20 seconds can easily be 6 Gigs when image files are raw. For movie making rendertimes are insane and 1 frame being 3 gigs is small when rendering out images that large.

Maya is used for game developing and movie FX. Maya even made some impossible games, possible. Proudly the software is 100% Canadian might i add v.v same with 3D studio Max and Lightwave. The 3 top powerhouse 3D software.

I always have too much to say. If you don't find any of what i said intimadating, then pick up a copy of "Maya learning edition" It's free cause it's good for business. Maya learning edition is a version of Maya that will assist you in learning how to use it. don't exspect to be able to really fisnish anything with it. just use it for educational purposes and not make anything special with it, then when you're ready to make some sweet CG. Turn to the real deal.

 

[Darkseifer]

Thanks alot for all the info Anttaru, very apreciated. I will PM you if I have other questions related to the program.

 

[Solan]

damn those look dope man i dunno if its just me but i really like the indent in the side door, maybe if you made it a bit smoother it'd look better. Like have it going in smoothly not just like a box

 

[shmedly]

Nice Ant, very nice! The car is coming in to shape fairly well. I am really liking the color on that last render. On the lighter colored cars i'm noticing the "splotches"(lack of a better term atm). Are those the flakes you are referring too?

Have you been looking at the transformation lately or just working on the car? Just curious if maybe you've had any ideas "pop" for you.

Nice write up on the program as well. I think I may have to check out the "Maya Learning Edition". Autodesk also makes one of the few different softwares I use right now, AutoCAD.

The price tag for Maya is not too different from the price for Pro/Engineer(my main design software). Pro/E, 8 years ago, was around $24,000 for a very basic package. Different modules could be purchased(about $2k each) to enhance the design capabilities of the software. Now for around $6,000 you get a few of those modules built in and the extras are about $1k each.

Is there an annual maintenance/license fee for this program, or is it "you bought the license" that's it? With Pro/E there is a $1,000(this may have changed) per year fee like this. PTC Corporation does continuous work on the program and releases update's every few months, and it also let's you use their database for technical usages of the program.

Nice update and looking forward to seeing more.

Peace,
Shmed

 

[Anttaru]

Nice Ant, very nice! The car is coming in to shape fairly well. I am really liking the color on that last render. On the lighter colored cars i'm noticing the "splotches"(lack of a better term atm). Are those the flakes you are referring too?

Yeah, those patches that show up on the surface of the car paint shader more eaily seen on the 1st blue test render. It works in layers and i could have made them smaller, finer, and more of them but instead i took them out. If the paint is just a solid colour it won't be anything like real car paint upclose, so i'll put them back and do the best i can for it.

Have you been looking at the transformation lately or just working on the car? Just curious if maybe you've had any ideas "pop" for you.

I wanted it to transform exactly like the ILM video i used for reference. After seeing the new movie, the new and more complexed transformations puts the original idea of it to shame.

There are ups and downs to making it transform like they did in the new movie. the up side is shattering the entire car like they did for the new film makes it easier to shape it pretty much anyway i'd want it to. The down side ... It would pretty much be freakin hard as hell to set up. chopping the mesh into staggering amounts of seperate surfaces and rebuilding the quad faces so they don't screw up when smoothening, not so bad. At this point in time i'm wondering how the hell to rig a transformer with that many parts to seemlessly turn into a car after making the look of the robot the way it was meant to be made. After seeing the movie i'm not feeling the classic transformation process at all.

Nice write up on the program as well. I think I may have to check out the "Maya Learning Edition". Autodesk also makes one of the few different softwares I use right now, AutoCAD.

Yeah AutoCAD. For the very precise modeler. There are also ways to import and export AutoCAD << >> Maya.

I used a Blueprint once ever and i did it in Maya by setting up front and side views of the blueprints and modeled out a Harrier pretty well. I know AutoCAD has better tools for jobs like that. If i actually found a blueprint of this car, i would have looked into using AutoCAD to build the car body then import it to Maya for mesh editing and finalization.

The price tag for Maya is not too different from the price for Pro/Engineer(my main design software). Pro/E, 8 years ago, was around $24,000 for a very basic package. Different modules could be purchased(about $2k each) to enhance the design capabilities of the software. Now for around $6,000 you get a few of those modules built in and the extras are about $1k each.

Expensive stuff. There are also other packages that are made for Maya, like a software called "Motion Builder" I never tried it, but a friend of mine says it's pretty good. Don't know how much it costs. I think the Maya unlimited package is overkill. Now i'm curious to know what software they used to make the Transformers film.

Is there an annual maintenance/license fee for this program, or is it "you bought the license" that's it? With Pro/E there is a $1,000(this may have changed) per year fee like this. PTC Corporation does continuous work on the program and releases update's every few months, and it also let's you use their database for technical usages of the program.

Well. If you have Maya for home use you needn't pay any licensing fees. But if you're using it to make money, simply put, a business would have to fork out $5,000 a year... for each computer running the software. I know a professional and rather successful animation house that actually cracked Maya cause even they think it's too expensive. That's all i'll say about that.

Nice update and looking forward to seeing more.

Peace,
Shmed

Thanks for writing, i enjoy whatever conversation comes from these threads ^^