The Energon Pub

This thread is not a rant on Optimus' movie paint job. IIRC, the reason given to fans for the "dark" rendering of Optimus was the difficulty in using red in CGI. At the time it was a believable statement. However, Iron Man has shown the fallacy of the assertion that red is more difficult and less believable in CGI. The special effects in Iron Man were spectacular. I thought they were better than Transformers--primarily because the action was not shakey and jittery. So what is the majority consensus on Prime's movie color scheme? It is already known the flames are a Bayism. What about the dark blue? Were Prime's colors really altered to make the CGI work more realistic?

I stopped reading this since I don't want you to spoil Iron Man for me...

But the CG argument is nothing new, here is one of many examples of things that kick ass that where made without studio production values

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJXQttVr-oU

G1 exact, ok, I can see the issues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM74D1mFjN0

but how about a happy medium

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Wq8aScZ-lo

I know these are all oldies, but still they are goodies.

Well, Iron Man had a much darker shade of red on.

Prime had a very bright red, almost that orange red used on DVD Masterpiece prime

St. Even wrote:This thread is not a rant on Optimus' movie paint job. IIRC, the reason given to fans for the "dark" rendering of Optimus was the difficulty in using red in CGI. At the time it was a believable statement. However, Iron Man has shown the fallacy of the assertion that red is more difficult and less believable in CGI. The special effects in Iron Man were spectacular. I thought they were better than Transformers--primarily because the action was not shakey and jittery. So what is the majority consensus on Prime's movie color scheme? It is already known the flames are a Bayism. What about the dark blue? Were Prime's colors really altered to make the CGI work more realistic?

It's still a darker shade of red at least to my eyes but you have to keep in mind that it was also done a year or more after transformers and technology can change that quickly...the first transformers had been delayed because "the technology just wasn't there" as one production member stated a few years back and it had to wait another year or two for the technology to meet the demands of the complex designs with all of the parts and pieces that went in to each bot, optimus alone took a good six months to design and render.

St. Even wrote:This thread is not a rant on Optimus' movie paint job. IIRC, the reason given to fans for the "dark" rendering of Optimus was the difficulty in using red in CGI. At the time it was a believable statement. However, Iron Man has shown the fallacy of the assertion that red is more difficult and less believable in CGI. The special effects in Iron Man were spectacular. I thought they were better than Transformers--primarily because the action was not shakey and jittery. So what is the majority consensus on Prime's movie color scheme? It is already known the flames are a Bayism. What about the dark blue? Were Prime's colors really altered to make the CGI work more realistic?

I wouldnt call it a "fallacy".There has already been quite a lot of inporvement in CGI rending in the year+ since the TF movie.

Further more in Ironman they could devote more of their budget to inproving the look of a red character due to the fact that they were creating CGI models for one primary character while in the TF movie they had to split the budget to pay for CGI's for over 10 characters.

sto_vo_kor_2000 wrote:

St. Even wrote:This thread is not a rant on Optimus' movie paint job. IIRC, the reason given to fans for the "dark" rendering of Optimus was the difficulty in using red in CGI. At the time it was a believable statement. However, Iron Man has shown the fallacy of the assertion that red is more difficult and less believable in CGI. The special effects in Iron Man were spectacular. I thought they were better than Transformers--primarily because the action was not shakey and jittery. So what is the majority consensus on Prime's movie color scheme? It is already known the flames are a Bayism. What about the dark blue? Were Prime's colors really altered to make the CGI work more realistic?

I wouldnt call it a "fallacy".There has already been quite a lot of inporvement in CGI rending in the year+ since the TF movie.

Further more in Ironman they could devote more of their budget to inproving the look of a red character due to the fact that they were creating CGI models for one primary character while in the TF movie they had to split the budget to pay for CGI's for over 10 characters.

Not to mention Ironman has a lot less detail than the Movie Transformers.

Can't we all just accept Movie OP's color scheme? Come on it's been almost a year since the movie was released; not a new topic.

jaws wrote:Can't we all just accept Movie OP's color scheme? Come on it's been almost a year since the movie was released; not a new topic.

Some people just cannot accept change of any type, for christs sake it's still red and yet we still also hear rantings of flames on optimus and lips too like no other transformer has had lips...let's not forget the mouth guard shall we, at least they gave that option too.

Let's just throw all of these people whining about such petty issues in front of the same computers the bots were rendered on and they'll see just how "easy" it is to do or as far as they are concerned it is.

jaws wrote:Can't we all just accept Movie OP's color scheme? Come on it's been almost a year since the movie was released; not a new topic.

Can't you just read? My first sentence was "This is not a rant about Optimus' color scheme." This topic was about the use of red in CGI. Fans were told that the colors of Optimus were chosen because red is a difficult color to render in CGI. Iron Man was just released in theaters, and the main color of the Iron Man suit is red. Ergo, this is a new and current topic.

As for the other remarks about complaints about Optimus' colors--I was not complaining. I have never had a problem with Optimus' color scheme. I do have a problem with being sold a fake bill of goods. I posted this topic to see if other fans felt the same way. If Bay wants movie Prime to have flames because he thinks it looks cool that is fine by me, but be straight and tell the truth. Do not wait until after the movie is released to finally come clean. After watching Iron Man I felt like the same might have happened with the coloring of Optimus.

St. Even wrote:

jaws wrote:Can't we all just accept Movie OP's color scheme? Come on it's been almost a year since the movie was released; not a new topic.

Can't you just read? My first sentence was "This is not a rant about Optimus' color scheme." This topic was about the use of red in CGI. Fans were told that the colors of Optimus were chosen because red is a difficult color to render in CGI. Iron Man was just released in theaters, and the main color of the Iron Man suit is red. Ergo, this is a new and current topic.

As for the other remarks about complaints about Optimus' colors--I was not complaining. I have never had a problem with Optimus' color scheme. I do have a problem with being sold a fake bill of goods. I posted this topic to see if other fans felt the same way. If Bay wants movie Prime to have flames because he thinks it looks cool that is fine by me, but be straight and tell the truth. Do not wait until after the movie is released to finally come clean. After watching Iron Man I felt like the same might have happened with the coloring of Optimus.

Like I said before, Iron Man has a lot less detail then any movie bot.

Shadowman wrote:

St. Even wrote:

jaws wrote:Can't we all just accept Movie OP's color scheme? Come on it's been almost a year since the movie was released; not a new topic.

Can't you just read? My first sentence was "This is not a rant about Optimus' color scheme." This topic was about the use of red in CGI. Fans were told that the colors of Optimus were chosen because red is a difficult color to render in CGI. Iron Man was just released in theaters, and the main color of the Iron Man suit is red. Ergo, this is a new and current topic.

As for the other remarks about complaints about Optimus' colors--I was not complaining. I have never had a problem with Optimus' color scheme. I do have a problem with being sold a fake bill of goods. I posted this topic to see if other fans felt the same way. If Bay wants movie Prime to have flames because he thinks it looks cool that is fine by me, but be straight and tell the truth. Do not wait until after the movie is released to finally come clean. After watching Iron Man I felt like the same might have happened with the coloring of Optimus.

Like I said before, Iron Man has a lot less detail then any movie bot.

For the most part your right.

There were a few scenes that featured Tony getting into the suit and there was plenty of detail there but the rest of the time Ironman featured less detail then any of the bots in the film.

And as I also said with Ironman they could fousce more of their CGI budget to make him look great but with the TF film they had to spread that money to pay for 10 or more CGI models.

And theres also a years wort of inprovement to the CGI tech used.

It all boils down to the desires of one man.

In Ironman, the people behind tries to stay true to the Ironman tradition. Even though, they can simply choose to stick with the initial silver design, which is good, more realistic and practical.

In Transformers, one particular guy who holds the reigns initially hates doing a toy commercial movie. Hence, he tries to deviate from the original as far as possible. Making as much changes as he can to move away from what it traditionally is.

It was truly difficult to design these CGI characters. The thousands of parts, the details given to each single parts, moving all these parts in unison... it's mind-boggling.

Tremendous amount of computing power and amazing human ideas and efforts were given to make it happen. And yet, one stops dead on the track with a single problem of red color? Not a solution, or even choosing a slightly different tone of red?

Horse-sheet.

If one has the desire, one will climb mountains to create a solution where there is none available.

If one has no desire, one will be blind to all the most obvious solutions in the world presented right before his very eyes.

This is my own opinion. BUt i guess anyone who's willing to be open-minded and be objective can easily see the obviousness of this issue.

Auto Bot wrote:It all boils down to the desires of one man.



If one has the desire, one will climb mountains to create a solution where there is none available.

If one has no desire, one will be blind to all the most obvious solutions in the world presented right before his very eyes.

This is my own opinion. BUt i guess anyone who's willing to be open-minded and be objective can easily see the obviousness of this issue.

I agree with the vast majority of your post above Auto Bot and to be honest rather liked the last two sentences and consider them sig worthy but I must keep my current one until after the release of TF2 so sorry about that.

As far as climbing mountains to create a more realistic solution to get a better shade of red means more time and more people and more money just for the color red ?

That seems rather ridiculous to me and at no time in the weeks before when all we saw were previews, or when the movie came out or since did I ever once think "hmmm, optimus looked odd or his colors were off" in any way shape or form.

If TF2 will be made in Ironman's graphic style, it will be a blast!

a)"red doesnt look good on screen" was probably a lie.
b) I dont see what color has to do with level of detail, since there was a pretty high amount of detail on iron man and primes panels
c) which do you think came first, "I want flames on optimus" or "red doesnt look good on screen Mr. Bay"?

NewFoundStarscreamLuv wrote:a)"red doesnt look good on screen" was probably a lie.

Or someone's opinion.

NewFoundStarscreamLuv wrote:b) I dont see what color has to do with level of detail, since there was a pretty high amount of detail on iron man and primes panels

No, there's most definitely isn't. Iron Man's armor is mostly flat, and Prime has a lot of open areas showing.

NewFoundStarscreamLuv wrote:c) which do you think came first, "I want flames on optimus" or "red doesnt look good on screen Mr. Bay"?

The director's opinion, which is the only one that actually matters in a movie.

NewFoundStarscreamLuv wrote:a)"red doesnt look good on screen" was probably a lie.

I dont think so.The evidence can be seen in both the First Spiderman movie and the DareDevil film.

Each time their costumes were shown in ether bright light or Day light you could see the issues with keeping it real looking.

NewFoundStarscreamLuv wrote:b) I dont see what color has to do with level of detail, since there was a pretty high amount of detail on iron man and primes panels

First movie OP had a hell of a lot more detain then Ironman had.
Second Ironman's effects were created by a two step method.

There was an actor in a suit and there was some CGI enhancements made over the guy in a suit.

Its a hell of a lot eazier and cheeper to layer some effect over a guy in a suit.

And by the way the suit was made by the same people who made the Terminator cyborg skeletons so you cant say that the suit built was properly with out detail.

Optimus had to be edited in from scrach.There was no one in a ?OP costume that the CGI effects could be layered over.He was a complete CGI character.

NewFoundStarscreamLuv wrote:c) which do you think came first, "I want flames on optimus" or "red doesnt look good on screen Mr. Bay"?

Does it matter.