Ever since I announced Ultra Magnus was beginning his modeling phase back in March, on the 3rd to be precise, I've been giving you guys small updates to how it was going. My last update was a little more then a week ago. The day before yesterday I decided to finish him once and for all. And now, roughly a month and half since that announcement, it's time to show the final product. I'd blab on some more, but I know what you really want to see, and that's ULTRA MAGNUS!
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See Ultra's new featurette below!
Now that the big reveal is over, I can settle in and obsess over tiny details about the modeling process.
I ran into several problems in the modeling process, which I overcame. I'm now going to attempt to catalogue how I circumvented these challenges.
The first problem occurred right at the beginning: the shoulders. I started with the shoulders, because they were my favorite part of Ultra Magnus and besides, most of his transformation was going to be just getting the shoulders to rest where they are supposed to! The problem that I ran into was that I didn't know where to go from there. I modeled the shoulders and they split apart, but I couldn't figure out how to make the arms unfold or the shoulders to attach to the body. I figured out how by playing around with my Ultra Magnus toy. I ended up copying the toy's shoulder rotation system exactly. The toy's articulation is great, so why not just borrow it? The second problem was the shoulder base hinges that rest on Ultra's back in robot mode. They were merged together. That was an easy fix, I just added a hollow hinge that would let the shoulders slide along to the sides of Ultra's body.
The final problems were the gaps between Ultra's body and his shoulders. I considered making the legs have a separate piece that would rotate in, and experimented with that, but it didn't look right, so I ended up adding a hinge with two guns, plus a folding panel that filled the space without getting in the way of the transformation.
If there's anything I would love to fix, it would have to be the legs, as they are really flat looking, and the feet aren't as stable as I wanted. Oh well. When Part 2 swings around I'll have an opportunity to scratch that perfectionist itch I have, but it'll have to wait because so far I've completed three robots out of the five and a half I need to model. And I say five and a half because Cliffjumper and Megatron both only need a small amount of modeling. The real two that I'm concerned with are Bumblebee and Ratchet, both absolutely crucial to the plot and story. Anyway, I have a lot of time to finish this short, but I'm starting to worry I'll lose my enthusiasm for it. I promise that I will see this first short through, even if I give up on the second one.
More thoughts that you might want to skip:
Because I'm really eager to model Bumblebee, I will save him for last. Why? So he'll be the best one! I will have probably figured out how to model better then now by then. My other thought is that I need a new computer to animate most of the new scenes. If it takes longer then I think it will to get one, I may not be able to do anything for a while. If this is the case, and I've already completed all the models needed, I may take a stab at remodeling my bad Shockwave model, and fix up all the things that are slightly bugging me about the Vehicons, Optimus and Ultra right now. If I STILL don't have a new computer, then I may even model some Constructicons for the second short.
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| Longhaul. He and Rampage are Devastator's legs. |
But it's important for me to stay active on this project to finish it, which is why, even without a new computer to animate on, I will be modeling robots.
Anyway, to wrap up here are some stats.
Ultra Magnus has over 145 separate polygon objects. That's 35548 polygons!
He's smaller then Optimus, in file size that is. I've cut back on polygons because I'm really afraid I'll crash the computer!
Anyway, that's all for a while. Up next, RATCHET!
