The Weapon of Optimus Prime

So. Optimus Prime's awesome axe.

In the beginning I was going with a two sided blade, which worked but wasn't really a nod to anything. However, I searched for a few image results to work off of and I got this:

As you can see, I based the axe blade's shape almost entirely on the old G1 axe, and kept the glowing orange, although now it doesn't cover the whole axe.

My axe is designed to fold up, and the handle can extend or retract for two handed or one handed grip, and can reach up to six feet away from Optimus.

When Optimus gets really angry, he can warm the edge of the axe blade up, to help him cut through metal easier.

Be aware that this is not by any means the final design for the axe, which I expect will go through a few more changes before debuting in Scene 3.

First Character Poster Added!

There's a new poster in the Downloads section of this blog... this time it's the first of my "Character Feature" series of posters and depicts Optimus Prime standing in a corridor of the Nemesis. THE corridor, in fact, that shot 004 takes places in. The reason I'm hyping this up is A. you probably wouldn't notice the addition of a poster or a video unless I tell you about it being added, since I add them discreetly on the "Downloads" or "Videos" or "Images" pages, (which you should by the way, check out because there may be a few things you didn't notice were added), and B. this poster actually took an entire day to create. Optimus Prime is 5.4 megabytes, and my poor OSX 10.5.8 system can't handle it. In order to make the image I had to reboot my computer five or six times to get it to reset it's memory. Anyway, about the image itself:

I composited an image of Optimus onto an image of the Nemesis's corridor that I had rendered previously, to save memory. I added various smoke effects and blur, plus some glows to the headlights. A bit of adjusting the brightness and contrast later, and using "Surface Lighting" to create some stronger light colors, (they were in the image originally but were too faint), and I was done!

Here's some trivia for you: I accidentally spelled "than" "then" when I first uploaded the poster. I decided to fix it to "than" right away rather than, (ha ha), wait until tomorrow.

Well, that's my big update of the day. Expect something considerably more exciting in the next few days, because I now have both the Vehicon AND the Nemesis Corridor modeled, and you know what that means...

Hint: Shot 004 can be animated and rendered!

Vehicon Modeled

Yesterday I spent most of the evening finishing up the modeling of a Vehicon. The Vehicons are Decepticon lackeys who all look the same, so it was important for the model to look right, otherwise all the Vehicons would look wrong. Luckily everything seems to be okay with this model, except some limited elbow movement. The car mode is better then the robot mode, as usual.

Nice and compact, just the way I like it. This'll be nice to see on the roads, fighting the Autobots and taking them out with a well-placed missile. Oh yeah, I didn't mention the missiles, did I?

Two missile launchers fold up from the back of the truck mode, pointing behind the car, so that they can be fired and take out enemies sneaking up from behind. You'll also notice two mini-zander cannons can also unfold, which can fire steady bursts of energy at pursuers. I'll have to come up with a cool weapon for these guys to use in robot mode... maybe a spear or something? At any rate, the Vehicons are finished, which means that I can finally finish shot 004, which is the first shot to feature robots in the short, and they are... you guessed it! Vehicons!

During the modeling process I had to remind myself where parts where going sometimes, just in case I forgot. I ended up not needing these notes, but I thought I'd post 'em up here just to show a bit of the work that goes into these things.

Finally, I have this lovely movie to show... it's a Proof of Concept shot of the untransformation, to give myself an idea about what the final battle's cinematic shots will look like. Remember, this shot is a work in progress, and probably won't show up in the final film, so don't use this as a basis upon which to judge all the final animation.

It may be hard to see, but Steve, (that's the Vehicon's unofficial name), fires two missiles near the beginning of the video.

I'm working on a few ideas for the battle sequences as well, but I need to finish modeling all four Autobots, plus getting the first scene done, before I can move on to THAT.

Also, be sure to stop by the Videos page if you haven't already to see Optimus Prime's featurette, or watch the new Vehicon test movie again! (You did watch it, right?)

Videos Page Now Open!

The videos page is now officially open with it's first video— Optimus Prime's featurette!

You can check it out by clicking the image above!

Shot 002 - The Nemesis on Cybertron

So, this shot was about five times more work then the previous one, due to the fact that I needed to model the Nemesis AND Cybertron's surface-- and although that may seem easy to you, seeing as what you're looking at is the final shot, it wasn't easy. First of all, be glad that you didn't end up with this:

This was my first attempt at creating a barren, desolated Cybertronian landscape, which isn't as easy as you'd think. Again, it wasn't. I spent almost all day yesterday trying out new ideas for what an abandoned part of Cybertron would look like. For the most part, Cybertron has been seen in TV shows and movies only in the city-like areas, and not the unpopulated ones. This scene is set in an area of Cybertron that's near the crater at the top, but still near the Decepticon controlled cities. So I had to keep that in mind as well as the fact that the landscape is probably damaged because it's near the crater.

So, for my first attempt, I tried a mountain-like setting, which didn't really work. It looked too organic,  and the lighting didn't match the outer space shot. So, during the day I reworked the landscape, trying out things like particle arrays to create technological pathways and things; but it just looked too much like a city. In the end, I once again relied on a displacement modifier for the ground with a mechanical-ish texture, and added some ruined columns and things around to show that the area was once a city.

I modified the sky texture too, adding stars and making it darker. Again, this is nearer to the dark side of the planet, so it's darker. I put in the hexagons because I figured that that's the way Cybertron's atmosphere looked from the ground. If it even has an atmosphere, I'm not sure, but in my series it does.

And I've basically talked this shot to death at this point, so I'll stop talking now.

I may have a post or two coming up in a couple of days, so keep checking the site if you want to stay informed, (or just catch up on all the posts I made a month later; that's always fun).

Creating Cybertron

This is Cybertron. The planet that both Decepticons and Autobots call home.

In the final short, you only see it for three seconds, but it's the opening shot, which means that I spent a great deal of time on creating it. Today, I'm going to show a behind the scenes look at how I made it.

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Now, I know I was going to talk about the transformations, but this isn't going as fast as I had previously thought it would. Unfortunately, even though Optimus is done, I don't have enough transformers models finished to do a full, in-depth look at the transformations yet. You'll just have to wait a bit longer, I'm afraid. So, Cybertron it is!

In War of Ends, Cybertron appears as a large, robotic planet, with a large crater near the top, (where the Omega War was fought).

Towards the bottom are naturally formed hexagonal ridges that serve as borders for the cities. The Autobot capital Iacon is marked with a large Autobot symbol, dug by the Constructibots, that's so gigantic it can be seen from space.

Farther south, nearer the crater at the top, are Decepticon-controlled cities, such as Kaon, where, in a deserted area near the city Kolkular, the story begins.

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I created Cybertron with a new method, one that I haven't used before but is extremely effective. Instead of creating a texture and a bumpmap, as I usually do, instead I created a texture and then a displacement texture to use as a displacement map. A displacement is a modifier, (it "modifies" a mesh), that uses a texture as a base for distorting geometry. Because of this, the crater is actually a part of the mesh. If it was just a texture on the mesh, it wouldn't curve inward. I used two lights, one is the "sun" and is the main light source, illuminating the rim of the planet. Then there is a secondary blue light that is there to pretend that the glowing circuits on the dark side of Cybertron are glowing. If I turned it off, you wouldn't see the the texture on that side and the image would look spare. The glowing circuits were one of my ideas, although I took some inspiration from several iterations of Cybertron as portrayed in various cartoons. They are a separate emissive texture that's overlaid over the normal one.

Overall I wanted a sense of grandeur to the opening shot, which was originally going to be the Nemesis. The new opening is way better, as it zooms in to the ship all the way from outer space, letting the story start slowly and start picking up the pace later.

Anyway, I'm afraid I can't promise you a post for a few days, but that doesn't necessarily mean there won't be one. I'll keep updating you as this short moves steadily through production.

Character Feature - Optimus Prime

Optimus Prime is the first character I've modeled for this series. His look borrows heavily from the game Fall of Cybertron, but I've stuck on my take on the live action movie head, and the legs and feet transformation is entirely my own. But he didn't always look like this, as you'll soon find out, as we take a look at Optimus and his evolution into the model he is today.

When I first finished him, Optimus looked like this:

Because I was making his Character Featurette, I started to render out his robotic turntable, having already finished rendering his truck mode turntable.

But then I ran into a problem. I didn't like his arms. Unfortunately, because I'd already rendered his vehicle mode turntable, I had to render out the vehicle turntable again, and then a new version of Optimus's robotic mode turntable.

But then disaster struck again! I realized a little later that I'd messed up his legs, and his knees were backwards!

So it was time for yet another turntable render. Now, I'm happy to say, the turntable is finished and so is Optimus!

So, why go to all that trouble? What are the turntables for? Well, Optimus's Character Featurette is part of a series of short online featurettes about each of the characters that I'll be releasing towards the end of the production of this short. In the featurettes, I show turntables-- basically, the 3D model rotating on a plain background, so you can see all the detail. Then I peel away the textures and show the wireframe, revealing the mesh for those interested. I show both the robot form and the vehicle form, and then I have a section on the development of the transformation-- showing all the bits and pieces that go into making these guys transform. Someday I'll do an in-depth blog post series about the transformations of these guys, but I think I'll put that off until I have all four main Autobots complete.

Anyway, back to Optimus. For the short, as you may know, (you don't), the musical score is being composed entirely by me as well. Before, I used tracks from the movies or other pieces of music, but this time I'm doing it the right way-- by myself. Optimus has his own musical theme, like all the other characters in the short. Whenever he has a special moment I try to bring in his theme, and it adds a sense of continuity to the music. It's a nice piece, and I can't wait for you to hear it when the short is released.

Optimus's textures are mostly modified textures from CGTextures.com, (a great resource, and membership is free, so sign up today!), with the exception of one. Optimus's cab. It's my first time UV unwrapping a model and then using blended textures to paint on it, and it's very exciting! Okay what did I just say? I'll explain. In order to create a hand painted texture, you have to put your model through a process known as UV unwrapping. This flattens the model into an image, (see picture below), that you can import into a painting program and work on.

I used many different textures to create the final texture, by using filters and tools to draw on dirt and grime. However, the torso is the only  part of Optimus that was textured in this way, but every other one was specifically fine tuned using UV Mapping, which is different from UV unwrapping. I won't get into it much, but basically the idea is to tile the texture in a way that makes sense.

Stay tuned for more, and speaking of more, check back in a few days for a post about the transformations!