I am trying to make a robot that transforms into something else.
First which direction should i work? robot-> thing or thing-> robot?
I feel like i almost need to work thing-> robot so that the object is seamless and looks good, but conceptualizing and building it never seams to come out right.
Any ideas? thanks.
You should probably start with a thing -> robot. My advice would be that you should start with very simple and basic 3d model of a car. Almost like a cardboard car so that you gain some experience when modeling a more detailed and complex transformer.
Sorry but what…? Start with a ‘thing’ and then the robot. This has to be the most non-explanatory thread ever…
When he says “thing” he means a car, bus, truck, boat, airplane, helicopter, a trash can etc. I think he explained it pretty well.
Ahhh right, well in that case I’d first make the vehicle and then I’d probably want to create the robot separately in such a way that it conforms or fits to the shape of the vehicle and then I’d kit-bash the parts onto the robot.
However there’s no easy way to do this, this’ll definitely require planning otherwise it’ll just look shit. Make sure you design the robot in such a way that it has supporting points for the vehicle parts while it hasn’t transformed, the tricky part is making it so that things don’t clip into each-other.
There’s a reason about %60 of Michael Bay’s 200 million dollar budget on Transformers went into its VFX design. Simply put, transforming robots are incredibly laborious to design especially without any references.
Agreed on “thing --> robot” assessment. Easier to chop stuff up than tack stuff on and hope it all fits.
If you ever get around to rigging and animation, I’d also suggest research into the actions constraint as applied to the rig. It allows you to build pre-defined animation sequences that can be controlled by control sliders or drivers themselves. (So at 0, car. At 1, robot. The sequence of movements from car to robot could be 100 frames long.) That way you’d only have to animate your transforms once (which would always be consistent in the order they occur) and spend your time doing other things when building your action around it.