Dark Zarak wrote:I've been thinking the same thing, and I'm going into the CGI field. The TF's still look fake to me because their complicated transformations that needed a mathmatical algorithm to create still are done too fast for us to notice how they work.
I'm not sure the transformations took seats into account. There's a part where Bumblebee transforms into a car and his windows are black. Maybe they are anyway, but that seems like a convienient excuse to hide all the robot parts in the car, and just use the regular vehicle for the next shot.
They are surprisingly fake looking, from the ent-like way they walk to the super fast transformations. Yeah they're detailed and awesome, yeah they're rendered wonderfully, but they still look fake. And coming from me, that means something because I almost always defend CG effects.
Personally, working as a Freelance Animator, I hanve nothing but praise for ILM's work on the movie - I would challenge anyone to find a shot in the film where the Bots are poorly composited into the live-plate. I think the transformation speeds, etc have more to do with Bay's direction than any Algorithimicly calculated collision detection.
Yes, some fudging occurred - such is the nature of the beast, either for time / rendering constraints or "Artistic Licence" (it took me ages to learn that people want things to look good, not necessarily "real"), however I would highly doubt the ILM team would simply leave out the interiors...to do such a thing would only serve to destroy the credibility of the visual.
On a related note, most of the characters change into vehicles with no rear seating, which would help reduce the number of bits you have to find homes for.
PS: looking at photos of the "live" Bumblebee, my best guess is that the seats reside folded into either his calves or thigh areas.
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