Transformers creative programs

[LostArt]

I was curious as to what programs were used in the designing and creating and pretty much everything else for the robots in transformers. And if I could get them to run on linux, because then I'd have the ultimate system evah. Thanks for the help, I couldn't find anything. Also what is the difference between 3ds studio max, and Maya. Thanks and I'll talk to you later:popcorn:

[Calash]

MS Paint




:)

[Warpnow]

More than likely either lightwave or Maya, but I can't be sure on either of those, but they're very powerful and capable of that level of graphics manipulation.

[LostArt]

Hmm, What would they have used for CAD though, and do you know if those programs might be able to work under Linux.

BTW

MS paint LOL

[%hMa@?b<C]

you could try Blender, it is free and open source (not to mention extremely powerful!)

[LostArt]

I have tried blender, and Maya for that matter, I found the Blender interface difficult to get used to, although I do like tinkering around with it. Maya was difficult as well, but I made a simple animation in a weekend, I couldn't do much after a week with Blender.

[Adrenal]

Even on the computer they used for transformers, there was a single frame which took 38 hours to render. Even if you get their software, you gotta know that there's no way you'd make stuff of that quality on a conventional PC

[Warpnow]

38 hours for one frame? That's outrageous. A minute at that level of complexity would take, what, 6 years?

[LostArt]

I don't expect to be making a professional film here, and by thirty eight hours are you talking about ONE SINGLE FRAME, or every complex CGI Frame in the movie??

[Polygon]

38 hours for one frame? That's outrageous. A minute at that level of complexity would take, what, 6 years?

its gotta be less then that, as they have huge freaking server farms that are just dedicated to rendering, and not to mention movies that have a LOT more cgi then transformers (any pixar movie, happy feet, recent disney CGI movies, etc) get done semi-quickly....

and by 38 hours they mean like a scene you would see in a CGI movie, like simple projects dont take that long to render, but when you start getting into some very complex stuff like those CGI movies get into, then you get into some serious render times.

[Adamant1988]

I know at the end of the credits the Avid logo is pretty visible.. maybe that's it?

[slimdog360]

those transformers in the movie were actually real aliens. Didn't you know that.

[Warpnow]

I know at the end of the credits the Avid logo is pretty visible.. maybe that's it?

Avid is for ordinary editting, not 3d graphics.

[LostArt]

Hmmmmmmm well assuming they used Autodesk Products, It would make sense that they used Maya, 3ds studio max, Motion Builder, and possibly Human IK, but how would they texture, can Z brush create textures like that??

[init1]

Even on the computer they used for transformers, there was a single frame which took 38 hours to render. Even if you get their software, you gotta know that there's no way you'd make stuff of that quality on a conventional PC
Rendering takes FOREVER. I have some 3ds max experience, so I can testify to that.

[matthinckley]

From IMDB:

It took approximately 38 hours for the animators Industrial Light & Magic to render one frame of the CGI animation to portray the Transformers. This breaks the record set by Weta Workshop for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), where it took 20 hours to animate a frame of CGI to portray the Ent Treebeard.

[Tomosaur]

You have to be wary of figures like that - what they often mean is X hours of processing time, which is not the same thing as X hours of regular time. The more processors you have, the more you can spread the load out. Let's say you have a frame which takes 100 hours to render. If you have 100 processors, then each of those processors can theoretically do 1 hours processing simultaeneously, so the actual 'human' time to render the frame is 1 hour, while the total time clocked up by processors is 100x1, which is, obviously, 100.

Of course, it is entirely possible that the frame DID take 38 hours of human time, even with thousands of processors, depending on the complexity of the scene, the lighting techniques, etc etc etc. I'm not too 'in the know' about 3d animation / CGI, so I'm not entirely sure what definition of rendering / processing time they use, but my explanation is certainly prevalant in large-scale research projects (SETI, folding@home, etc etc), so it seems fairly probable to me that the same definition is used in the animation industry aswell.