'56 Chevy Nomad Transformer

#21

Hi! woow nice project!..
so far a like all! nothing to say right now!

i wait for new updates!

good luck!

#22

Okey Doke. I’m really tired. But I’ve finished a base animation test. Keep in mind the face, eyes, nose, mouth, head, chin, etc. are all (obviously) temporary, which is why he doesn’t look too much like the concept sketch. The only completed geometry would be the blue jaw and black “ears”. Yeah, they have a proper name, but I’m too sleepy to look it up.
So, here’s the transformation/animation test:

Quicktime

Youtube

#23

awww man wish i could make something as cool as that…looks really cool…im trying to imation how it would look with the entire body also moving and turning and stuff…this is gonna be awesome! more more more more i want more XD.

#24

Excellent !..keep going on it…i want to see more jeje…i realy like the test!..

#25

Hey guys, thanks for the comments. I didn’t get enough sleep last night. I’m definitely taking a day off. Expect head modeling when I get back on the horse. G’night.

#26

Whoah … awsome transformation … love the animation. Watched it first time and had to replay a bunch more times then used slider to watch in slow motion.

More please!

#27

Hey everybody, thanks for the awesome feedback. It’s been really really encouraging. So it’s 1 AM, but I’ve built the eyes and nose.

Click the Thumbnail to see the big pic.

Fortunately it looks like the concept image. Unfortunately the engine couplings (ears) look too low poly. I’ll have to whip out some modeling skills on 'em to make them look correct.

Thanks guys,
Hasta Manana.

#28

Hola!..
hey man! take a breath!..you need to rest a little while! jeje
but i realy like the model you are making!..
and you left me nothing to say, because you correct whats wrong yourself!..
i want to see more…so i´ll be here waiting!

PS: sorry for my english, i´m training on it!

#29

Woah! Lookin’ great. Keep up the good work =)

#30

Thanks everyone. This is definitely a portfolio piece, and I’m aiming to have my reel finished for October, so I’ve got to finish Nomad quickly.

Okay, the “lips” are mostly done. I might have to put some connecting geometry between them, otherwise they’ll just be floating out there. The cheeks are also done. I’ve had to rescale the ear brackets for design purposes. I’ve set up the eyes so they can dialate, and added the second lower eyelid.

#31

nice nice more more more!! ^^

#32

I’ve finished the base skull mesh (which may be Zbrushed… I haven’t decided), which is fully visible before the full transformation, and partially afterwards. I also tried a couple early mat tests. Does anyone know how to achieve a car paint speckle effect? I’d like to try that mat out next…

Click the thumbnail for the big pic.

He’s still lacking lots of little pieces and of course, the big helmet.

#33

Looking amazing so far, can`t believe the detail will be so cool to see the finished piece in action.

CarPaint Specle: I was thinking about this recently but i forgot to try it. Maybe the standard car paint set up with falloff diffuse (black - paintcolour), reflect falloff and maybe specular falloff. What i was thinking was that rather than have you main reflect map as a single colour have it as a cellular map (3dmax) or something like that with slight colour changes to each cell. Itd maybe need to be a composite material or something to seperate the standard reflection from thespeccle` i think im goin to try this…

#34

wow…very clean

#35

Hey all, thanks for the C&C. These last two days have been busy, but I’ve progressed on the head and all that remains are connecting pieces and small bits. I’ve got the lower jaw and the helmet built. The paint scheme now has a temporary speckled paint look (that I’m not completely happy with) which is a basic Maya fractal shader with specular and reflectivity networks assigned. The big prob is that they need to be circles, and not fractal noise shapes… I’ll keep looking for a shader, because it would be a huge pain in the kiester to have to paint all those dots by hand.

Here’s a video turntable test:

Quicktime

Youtube (Sucky quality)

#36

looks great bro.

#37

which version of maya are you using?
in maya 8.5 there is a mental ray shader that mimics car paint:mi_carpaint_phen. I haven’t used it myself but IIRC it features those “flakes” you want.

You mentionend that you wanted a noise that produces circular shapes. Billow noise may suit your needs. When you decrease the density you can clearly see single round spots randomly scattered across the texture. The only problem could be that it’s a 2d-Texture, so your model needs to be mapped properly.

Your model looks very great so far. Good luck finishing it.

regards,
m4gnus

#38

OK, I didn’t feel like modeling yesterday, but I did feel like animating, so here’s an early mouth test. BTW, thanks for the tip m4gnus. I’ve got Maya 7 and 8 at home, so I’ll need to track down that 8.5 shader and see if I can download it separately. I’ll try billow noise next. Thanks.

Youtube

#39

dude that looks amazing:thumbsup:

one thing thats bothering me from the movie and you have the same problem i guess, all the pieces that transform, don’t always have any mechancal mechanism they just float in the air and move. it’s like magic, not realistic att all in my opinion…

#40

Yeah, that’s the really iffy thing about transformers with lips. After doing this animation test, and watching the movie, I’ve come to the conclusion that the mouth needs more parts to lose the magickey animation. I think I may just end up putting nurbs cyliders at the pivot points to give them the illusion of screws.

At this point I’m going to move on to modeling the torso, because if I spend weeks and weeks and weeks on the head, the whole project won’t get done, or there will be a definite sense of continuity loss between the head and other body parts with geometry size, etc.

I’m really wanting to do a full on organic, gravity driven, transformation animation for this guy because, and no offense to people who’ve done this, most youtube transformer animations look like they’re done using two keyframes over the span of 3/4 of a second. Then they plant in the old transformer noise and completely undo all the hard work they’ve done modeling the machine. I want to match the movie as closely as I can, without having to render a frame over the course of two days.

EDIT: Post # 200! Yippee! I think I’ve just upgraded to admiral nerd.