With three Transformers films already under visual effects studio Industrial Light & Magic’s belt, Age of Extinction still managed to be eclipse them all in terms of effects shots, shooting locations, crew size, stereo delivery and sheer scale. ILM visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar describes the show as the “heaviest data wrangling picture I’ve ever done, the largest in ILM’s history. It was the largest crew I’ve ever had - 500 people. It was IMAX and 3 D so you’re rendering twice as much at least. Our work is about 90 minutes worth of the movie.” In this article fxguide explores ILM’s new challenges on the Michael Bay film, from ramping up on robot facial animation, to the new KSI-bot ‘hypno-transformations’, to creating the dinobots, crafting the enormous effects simulations as Hong Kong is ripped apart and building vast spaceship interiors. For more on Age of Extinction, check out our in-depth fxpodcast with ILM's Scott Farrar and Pat Tubach. Ramping up on robot animation Optimus Prime has four different configurations throughout the film and was made up of 2.7 million vertices and 6,732 pieces. With more robots to animate - and some like Optimus Prime with multiple body styles and multiple levels of damage seen as the movie progresses - ILM looked to give more control to its 60-plus animation team on Age of Extinction, led by animation supervisor Scott Benza. That extra control extended in particular to facial animation, where existing ILM rigging tech was expanded upon to help the process. On the previous Transformers film, Dark of the Moon, ILM had animated the character of Sentinel Prime with a high degree of facial expression. “ We had put an actual geo mesh under Sentinel’s face to rig it with shapes to drive the facial animation,” explains ILM lead creature TD Jacob Buck. “ This new film built off of that but we needed it to scale. So I built some stuff.
There's nothing in the player. Choose a track and either play it or add it to the queue to get going.
Download Now