This is a still from my first piece of 3D and my first animation.
I took on this project for a friend of mine to kick start an new area of work for myself. We are waiting to get the track released as a single at the moment.
Hope you like it and Enjoy
Check the music video at:
http://www.wilenkin.com/transformers
(you will need FlashPlayer 7)
Any comments, suggestion or advice welcomed!!
The transformers animation was excellent! I never realized they were so good at dancing… 
Very nice work, very stylish, I liked the music also. Not much to critisize, but maybe the beginning with rotating building didn’t exactly match the style of rest of the animation…
Thanks man, glad you liked the breaking. The first scene of the moon base recording studio was done by a friend who I was studying with. He’d done it as his project and it seemed to fit with the rest of the vibe so I got him to rejigg bits to try and make it fit in a bit better.
As it was an uncommissioned project we had to be as resourceful as we could at the start to get 3mins 45 of animation to fit the music. But by the time we hit the edit suite we had nearly fifteen mins of raw renders…
Thanks for your crit, appreciated and noted…
Nice1
omfg that was excellent dude
it works sooo well with the electro music 
very ladytron/felix da housecat (and a bit kraftwerk) 
gonna link this to my friend who loves transformers
That is so sweet. I absolutely love it.
Any way I could get a higher res version? It’s really well done.
I’m like, watching this thing for the gazillionth time right now! Can’t get enough of it. Best video on the net since the Steven Balmer “Developers” video.
It’s rockin.
the_podman
guy. do me a favour. do the rest of the formers, and make them have a breaking session to settle their battle once and for all. Great work… just a couple o questions about the animations.
Mo Cap, with some keys?
all mo cap.
or all keyed out?
no matter the answer… great work.
more please
Wow!
Soundwave was always my favorite, and this brings back a lot of memories (I had totally forgotten about the statistical readouts that came with Transformers). The animation is really just top notch, and the editing is great too.
The only problem I noticed is that after Rumble (I think that’s Rumble, or is it Frenzy?! Anyway… the cassette guy) pops out and starts breakin’, there are a couple of moments in the backspin animation where his shoulder busts through the floor.
I enjoyed this a lot. It gave me some much needed late night energy.
Thanks for sharing!
-T
well… i love this video more than breathing air.
so do my buddys. they are very impressed and would like to start a church in your honor. they want to know where to send you checks and money for making their day.
good work. very nice animation!
Great stuff! However there are several floor penetrations that should be fixed, especially near the end. And you may want to check on the transformers copyright information if you plan on selling the music any time soon.
Woot! Man that was sweet. The modeling AND animation were top notch. Great job. Man…seeing one of my favorite chartoons in 3D brings a tear to my eye… 
It’s great to see the transformers again!! 80’s nostalgia is just soo quality. Damn nice edit of some quality renders.
What software did you use? How long have you been using it for?
~BruiZ 
Wow! I’ve been blown away by all the feedback. I really appreciate all the props you guys have been giving the video. It makes all the hours put in seem worth it, to know everyone has been diggin’ it so much, is dope!
In response to the questions asked:
Yes we used Mo-Cap. Some friends at Centroid3D.com helped us out and with the equipment and data clean up. So yes its a combo of Mo-cap and keyed animation. The Transform sequences and a few of the special moves like the HelicopterInvert moves, they are hand animated.
I terms of time taken to do the project…
Well we weren’t commissioned to do the video so I had to do most of the modeling in my spare time. Soundwave, the main character took me two weeks to do because he was my first 3D model and it was a software learning curve at the same time. The little dood, ‘Lazer’, only took 3 days in all. But I did have to go back and do a bit more clean up on ‘Soundwave&Lazer’ later on when it came to UV texture mapping.
I spent 10 weeks on a Maya course at the end of last year at EscapeStudios.co.uk, learning the software’s basics and learning how to animate etc. The last two weeks of the course I spent doing all the UV maps and textures, as well as building the additional scenery whilst Dan Kohn the guy who built the recording studio was doing his part on the course as well.
From Jan this year I was working at Escape and in between doing jobs to earn cash to live off I was using the Studios as a render farm at night and getting everything out rendered to individual frames.
Once all the rendering was done we spent two months, near enough, compositing and trying experiments with live footage, that I filmed, of Supple the Breaker, and getting all the renders into the edit in the right places.
The guys who wrote the track LAZER came down to the edit suite and basically tapped the beat into the edit so we had cuts exactly on the beats to make it impact audio and visually.
Then once we finished tweaking the edit, I spent two more weeks making the overlay graphics and fine tuning and tweaking. This was one of the most fun and satisfying parts on the project because we could see the light at the end of a very long steep tunnel.
So all in all it would be about six months approximately for the whole project. But spread out over at least a year and a half, with thinking about what we were going to do and getting the track finalized.
Just to give you and bit of perspective and history.
LAZER put the first rendition of the track together nearly four years ago and it went through nearly six versions whilst the video was being made.
Hopefully we’ll be able to get them all put out there soon. We are in talks with Hasbro about getting the track released!!!
The bits where there is floor break through I will definitely tune up. It seemed like such a minor detail at the time and we had so much to get through but now I’ve had a bit of time off from it I will definitely go back a fix them. Thanks for pointing them out and keeping me on my toes.
Quite a long winded response I know, but thank you again, for all the feedback and the props. I will pass them on to the the other guys who worked on the project as well.
Nice1
:buttrock::surprised:
Hey Bruiza,
The Video was done using MAYA and shake and Media 100 for Edit.
Gotta say a big thanks to EscapeStudios who are a valuable sorce of knowlege and a great school of visual effects based in London. The people who work there are to notch industry professionals who are happy to pass on what they know to people eager to learn. Big thanks for letting me use the studios as a render farm for the project. Nice1
:bowdown: :buttrock: :bowdown:
Hey, just curious as to who the credit goes to for the actual dancing, since you said it was Mocap.
Could you just give a simple rundown of how you got the Mocap into Maya? Motionbuilder?
Thanks,
the_podman
Hey PodMan.
It was my friend Supple a wicked coreographer who did all the breaking. Most props to him for his mad skillz and killah moves. will post a link for him once i get one.
The mo-cap comes in through Kaydara FilmBox then gets cleaned up. Then the Maya model is imported into MotionBuilder combined with the mo-cap data and exported as a Maya file.
There is some really good tutorials for handeling mo-cap data in the book by Sybex. Maya ‘secrets of the pro’s’.
Peace Podsta.
Very, very cool. I love the fact you put the ability charts in, so much nostalgia… Amazing work.