Wahoo, I’m back. This past week has been a definite portfolio update week. I needed to get back to this project. So, currently, I’ve started the main car body. Currently the engine cavity, hood, chrome grill, and tires are modeled. They aren’t two sided yet, but will be once I figure out where the transformation lines will be. The cylindrical headlight geometry and the roof is very early geometry, simply there as stand-ins to give the car some depth.
cool ideas, but in the full body concept scetches, it looks fat and wimpy. i needs much bigger arms and legs.
Bournaby: It may look a bit disproportionate right now, but I have a pretty good idea how it’s going to turn out. Trust me.
Here’s the latest update. I remodeled the roof and wheel wells, and began on the door and hubcaps.
Thanks again M.
OK, it’s starting to sound monotonous, but I have the base body mesh done. Expect the next update to be a video of a full body transformation test. Once I have all the split points and unition lines ready and all the basic movement ironed out I will finalize this geometry.
This is looking pretty cool, Im interested in seeing how you’re going to rig this to transform 
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Hay man, nice to see a classic car transformer around here, looks like you’ve done a load of work on it so far. I’m looking forward to a full body transformation. Wicked choice of car btw. 
Hey, I’m back. Yeah it’s been about two months. But I’ve been busy, honestly. I lost my job at PCC and have been freelancing and looking for work ever since. I think I might’ve found a good replacement job, so I decided to reopen the Nomad project. I’ve tried out a number of configurations over the past month +, but most didn’t really emulate the style of the movie. I settled on this. Keep in mind this is NOT how he will transform. This is a very simple 10 frame keyframe to keyframe animation. There are pieces constantly intersecting with one another, and their final movement will be determined by skeletal bones they’re attached to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpmS9poejDo
(BTW, the head pops in because I sampled the old animation and essentially scaled down the keyframes) It won’t act like that in the final animation.
Thanks M.
Nomad has HANDS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSmKhpSlK4c
Right now I’m just modeling the whole “shell” of Nomad. Meaning everything that will be based off autoparts and have that same ugly blue blinn. Then when I have all of that modeled for the whole model I’ll start in on skeletal innerds to connect everything together.
wow… just watched a few of the youtube vids you uploaded looks crazy. Keep up the good work man. Im not sure if somone hasnt already asked this but what are the render times on this, for instance the lip sync animation test. How long did that take to render out?
Cant wait to see more to be honest 
kam.
Actually the render times on the lip sync test were pretty quick. Mind you there was no texturing, no occlusion, and no real reflection to speak of. I thought about using Mental Ray, but decided to go with Maya Software since it was a pretty early test. I think it was about 8 seconds a frame.
8 seconds a frame 
thats some bad ass optimisation lol well to me for a model like that looking that good i doubt id be able to get away with 8 seconds a frame… but im a noob so yeh 
Cant wait for updates
kam.
Hi nice to see you back:wavey:
i love this transformer thread! definitely one of the best in this site.
that hand looks very cool (cool transformation) but keep in mind that fingers also should have space to move sideways.
Ps. i think i also wanna make a transformers movie quality transformer (some day)
Hey guys,
Thanks again for the support. The project’s going well. The only bummer (aside from time) is building this dude without creating division lines. The last thing you want is the final render to have some strange specular highlight showing where the metal splits. I’m building his robot mode first, and will attempt to squeeze all the mechanical crap in there somewhere.
BTW, I’ve been watching the Transformers DVD rather religiously for the past week and can honestly say ILM cheated a lot. I don’t blame them, though, it’s a tough puzzle to solve.
Im aslo have been watching DVD and im glad that im not the only one who have notest that cheating thing. i have to say that i was not expecting that kind of stuff from ILM:eek:
well my question to yo is! are you gonna cheat a lot:)
The short answer is yes.
I’m just watching the movie realizing, “Hey, Optimus’ hands are totally taking up the engine compartment. What happens if someone peaks under the hood? Won’t they see these huge 8 foot robot claws?” Then I saw the “Inside the Allspark” DVD feature where they had a couple wireframe renders of Ironhide doing the “Quake Jump”. And his nearly already transformed legs are just hidden in the bed of the pickup!
I do find myself cheating design wise right now. There’s absolutely no practicality in splitting a door panel into thousands of pieces just so there’s an even distribution of color on the robot. That and, it looks weird to have the panel break up into all these little pieces and suddenly zoom to their proper place. So I find myself creating allready colored panels and simply making sure they aren’t visible in car mode.
EDIT: I rendered a turntable animation of these stills, and I slapped it on Youtube:
Click Here
Do you have the HD-DVD version of transformers… i just have 2disk dvd
how much more the hd-dvd extras have more stuff then dvd extars?
i just dont remember to see any Ironhide wire frames on my dvd
Yeah, I’ve got the HD-DVD version, but I’ve only got the Xbox add on HD-DVD player to play it. I think they’re might be one extra featurette on the Disc, but other than that it’s pretty bare bones.
Here’s a Youtube video showing half of the documentary I’m talking about:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wD61GBoI25U
