Thursday, June 30th, 2011 Posted by Jim Thacker

Tutorial: the making of Optimus Prime


Luis Manuel Morillo’s finished tribute to Optimus Prime. The transformation sequence starts at 1:05.

A few weeks ago, we reported on VFX artist Luis Manuel ‘Luima’ Morillo’s 18-month struggle to recreate ILM’s Optimus Prime/Jetfire model from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

His finished model, which is fully rigged and textured, weighs in at 8,380,430 polygons and thousands of individually modelled pieces.

Now you can appreciate the intricacy of Morillo’s work in even more detail, thanks to the making-of tutorial he has just written for Max Underground.

It’s more of a general overview than a step-by-step guide, but it includes some interesting information on Morillo’s 3ds Max modelling workflow, and on why he switched from mental ray to Arion for the final render.

Read the tutorial on Max Underground

Visit Luis Manuel Morillo’s website