Making of the (Transformers) Bumblebee by JayKrushna Rawool, 

Web: http://www.jaykrushnacg.blogspot.com/

Hell Friends,

A few months ago I enjoyed watching the movie ‘”transformers (Revenge of the Fallen)” and since then, I became fan of character Bumblebee from the last of the stories. Recently I had the chance of watching this movie again and was very much inspired by (Transformers) Bumblebee character. I decided to make this Transformer in 3D.

This character was done for fun and practice in my spare time and I learnt a lot in the process of creating it. It is model in Maya and Photoshop for texturing, colour correction, final composition and render some pass in Mentalray and HyperShot pro. 
It took 3 week to complete.

In this making of I will show you one of the common workflow used in the Game and Movie industry.

First thing to do is gathering reference images for studying the character, more you get yourself familiar with the subject, you will model more successfully the final model. 

Modelling

This time I decided to create the Low-poly model in Maya for reference, Using polygons. I made a simple basic geometry model without details like toes etc, as I would model them later during detailing process. Once defined the general proportions of the figure, I began to add more specific details, defining structure etc.

When finished with basic modelling of figure I started giving details to the model. I started detailing with feet’s and with the definitive mesh conformed I applied an “Unwrap UV” to assign texture coordinates.

I used proportions of the leg, to continue adding more details.

 I spend lot of time to make Bee’s face

 All the parts of the car, modelled using the poly modelling technique. I started with the front bumper.

All parts such as bumper, doors, windows, were exactly of the same shape so I used a one-sided plane and converted it into Edit Poly. I extruded the poly edges to shape the basic form of objects and then added details.

For modelling the car tires I tried to spell out as much as possible by putting more attention to small details such as disc brake callipers and bolts.  Exaggerating the size of the wheels, with the purpose of further accentuate the look of the sports car.

Once I finished the detailed modelling of the, I started modifying it for the robot body. 

I began to pose the model in Maya by a making the groups with it, I pose a low-poly version of the model. 

Shading and Texturing 

After completing hi resolution mesh I started the unwrapping file at lowest division for generating UW maps. I used deep paint UW Layout for this job because it gives me more results in less time. After generating, UW's model is ready for texture painting and shading.

 Rendering and Post-Production

I choose Maya mental ray renderer for rendering final output. I set up the HDRI global parameters for more or less “economic” values, for getting the highest quality possible, taking into account that a small change in these values can affect the render times dramatically.

I configured things like the quality of the aliasing or the skylight source (the above mentioned HDR image). The raw rendered image usually looks too clean and artificial (despite the rendering engine), so this was the time to correct these “defects” and enhance the image in post-production. For a still image like this, there was no problem in using Photoshop. My goal was to achieve a high image quality Similar to that which could be obtained through a conventional camera, so I had to resort to the use of effects such as depth of field, vignetting, chromatic aberration or noise; effects easily achieved with Photoshop. 

The background image, was created directly in Photoshop using the difference-clouds Filter mixed with a gradient overlay. For the depth of field effect I obtained separately the Z-Depth Channel during the rendering process and then in Photoshop I used a third party plug-in called DOF Pro (very useful for this task). To bring balance to the whole image, I applied a colour correction layer and it’s done. 

Hope you like my image and explanation given, if you have any query then don’t hesitate to ask

Jaygrushna K Rawool
CG Artist at Pixion Studio, Mumbai INDIA
jaykrushnacg.blogspot.com/

 This art work is for showcase and education purpose only, it has got no commercial usage and is for sharing knowledge.