CGSociety :: Special Feature
26 June 2009, by Dane Maddams
In the span of just weeks, Plastic Wax Animation completed 16 shots with a total of one minute 11 seconds of animation for the new 'Transformers - Revenge Of The Fallen' game cinematic for PS3 and Xbox360.
"We had two weeks to work with our good friends at Activision and Luxoflux to garner their ideas and vision, creating storyboards and ultimately bringing their concept to life.
We provided them with numerous animated storyboards until we all were in agreement with cameras, timing and overall composition.
One of the core components for this piece was the frenetic feel of the camera, throwing you into the heart of an intense battle amid the city."
There were 11 Transformers in the cinematic, nine of which were generously supplied to us by Industrial light and Magic. The ILM models were in Maya format, with no shaders or rigs and as they were film quality assets they were extremely high in geometry detail.
Considering they were made for a very specific pipeline, we reduced geometry that was not visible in scene and re-worked the textures to show more appropriate scene specific damage and wear.
Optimus Prime originally came in with around 10,000 objects in Maya which we then brought into 3ds Max and reduced by eye to just under a third of the original object count. Similarly Starscream came in at around 5000 objects to which we halved.
Two of these Transformers, the Combaticons - Scout and Warrior (supplied by Luxoflux), required full UVs, textures and shaders from scratch.
Considering the strangely exciting yet arduous task of making a believable Optimus Prime transformation within the tight deadline, we worked closely with the plethora of reference materials from the movie and brainstormed what would be the most appropriate, while keeping the fast-paced flow. Even though time was an issue, the rigs had to contain many animation controls so that the animators could refine all motion right up to the very last minute.
We built up a library of character rigs which had been developed with very specific functionality in mind. These could then be used for certain shots which had individual motion requirements for each character.
A major consideration for the animation was the camera itself. One of the critical points in the creative brief was to develop a hand-held feel to make the viewer feel like they've been thrown in amongst the action.
We wanted them to feel the heat of each explosion and also capturing the sense of overwhelming scale from these characters.
The cameras evolved throughout the animation pipeline.
In the intense battle scenes we considered the cameras to be an extra character caught between all of the chaos, which deemed integral to the choreography and flow of the action.
