New Walk Cycles

Swing, pass, swing, pass. That's what walking's always been about. But for some reason I neglected this important animation skill for a long time, settling for just swinging legs and arms back and forth without any thought into placement. Finally, I'm making some effort to improve, but the process will be slow. I started by making walk cycles for Ratchet and Ultra Magnus. It was fairly easy, since both their personalities work well with animation. Ultra's regal and majestic, so he walks upright and moves kind of stiffly. Ratchet's younger in this series than he's usually portrayed, but he's still pretty old, so while he moves faster then Ultra, he also walks with a hunch. I also animated his backpack to bump up and down a bit while walking.

My sudden interest in making actual walk cycle animations came to be when I was looking at one of the new clips, and noticing how stiff and awful the walking was.

I also found a way to reduce loading speed for characters: Smart Folders. Basically, in Cheetah3D, you can import a character from an external file inside another one. And though that sounds just like importing, for some reason it takes less time.

More posts coming soon!

Ratchet is Done

The team medic/technician is here! Ratchet's one of my favorite characters in the Transformers: Prime series, (Arcee and Bulkhead are up there as well), so it was exciting for me to re-imagine Ratchet in my own style. I borrowed most of his vehicle mode from Transformers Animated Ratchet's cybertronian car mode, but I changed it a little so that he could have wheels as well as treads in the front.

He also retains his backpack from Animated and also Prime.

Inside Ratchet's backpack

For his vehicle form I only ran into one problem that I hadn't anticipated which was that his legs weren't thick enough to form the back of his car mode. Hence the "shell" that slides up onto the backpack.

One interesting thing I did was the rotating platform that his head rests on, which also controls his waist. In my Animated toy, Ratchet's head just pops down into his chest, but I didn't want to go that route, having had prior experience with squeezing these guys heads in to fit inside their car modes.

Not really worth it, especially considering how I usually need to use some 3D trickery, (specifically: scaling the head in size), to make it look right.

Ratchet's featurette is on it's way, it'll be done as soon as I can get his transformation rendered, (now I'm showing transformations in slow motion as well as normal speed, which takes more time to render out).

However, you can go to the downloads section to check out the newly added poster of Ratchet, which you should since I worked all day long on it to make it especially good.

So yeah, all-in-all, he's definitely my favorite Autobot modeled for this short so far, (sorry Ultra, you're in last place). And guess what else. I've modeled Cliffjumper's head and Megatron's eyes! Which means I only have one more robot for this short left to model, Bumblebee, who happens to be my favorite Prime Autobot, so awesome. Stay tuned for his head model!

After Bumblebee, all I'll need to model are the environments. Okay, so I really need a new computer to render out the scenes, (I'll also have After Effects, so I can spruce up shots in post), and in the gap between finishing all the models and getting a computer I'll still be busy! I'm thinking of modeling Rodimus and crew, just so i have them when the time comes for Team Charr. And don't forget, Devastator's in the next short and I'll need to model robots that turn into vehicles that turn into assorted appendages, so maybe I'll model those guys too.

And there's even more news! Shockwave's new featurette has been updated and now features the new Shockwave, along with a slow version of his transformation so you know how it works, so check that out in the videos section, or down below.



And I think we're done here, so be sure to stay tuned for the next update!

The Doctor is In

With goggle attachment raised

I modeled Ratchet's head yesterday, and now I have approved it as the final.

He will be wearing his goggles for the most part of the short, but I also needed the goggles to lift off of his face.

For his head, I borrowed both from the Transformers Animated Ratchet's head, for the shape of the back of the head, and Transformers Prime Ratchet for the heavy eyebrows, eyes, some of the shapes of the face, and the "sideburns".

The goggles I added were partially inspired by Animated Ratchet, because in one episode he has a monocle device that helps him zoom into injuries and analyze them. In my story, Ratchet needed to be more a technician then he is normally depicted, so I gave the goggles a sci-fi twist.

I decided his color scheme should be dark red, white, grey and cyan, just because I haven't been using white and dark red much and it would help differentiate between him and the others. 

Also, let me point out a new addition to the sidebar of this blog: the "Updates Timeline". 

In this timeline, I list important events in the making of this short chronologically, so check that out if you have the time.

Look for another Ratchet update in the coming weeks!