🚀 go-pugleaf

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[Too many posts in references header... tin crashing... deleting most of 
references... ahhh..... much better.]

M Sipher (msipher@mindspring.com) wrote:
> Pretty much. I still miss the shiny metal look, too... having the Vehicons
> look like they're made of soft matte plastic doesn't really give you that
> heavy-metal vibe. The entire series seems to be done totally matte, with no
> reflections anywhere save for special circumstances, like dramatic shots in
> Rattrap's visor....

Yeah, I liked the reflections in BW, too, but I'm not averse to the matte
look you describe.  (It's not like all metal objects display laminar
reflection anyway.) It's just a different way of visualizing the show, not
intrinsically any better or worse.  And to my tastes in particular, I
don't like it better or worse.  Obviously, though, YMMV.  :)

> > Got
> > it...  I know exactly what you mean, although, this hasn't bothered me
> > yet because I didn't think that Primal's arms, for example, were
> > *supposed* to look like they had wires coming out of them.
> 
> I think they were, but I can't really be bothered to pop in the tape right
> now. I need to sleep.

I can see that, as with your other examples.  I saw it as a sort of 
integrated-circuit kind of surface, or something.  It occurs to me, 
though, that if those details *were* physically on the model, it could 
add *ages* to the rendering time...  Would it really be worth all those 
extra CPU cycles just to animate a few stupid wires?  Personally, I don't 
mind the cheat, although that's probably related to the fact that I don't 
think it looks silly or cheesy.  :)

I guess your argument was that if they're not going to render it all-out,
it shouldn't be on the character design at all?

I have no detailed memory of the BW models, but I'd guess that if one
looked carefully, one could find many of the same shortcuts being done
there...  Perhaps not so frequently, but I would be really surprised if it
all came out of the blue.  Some amount of shortcut-taking is just good 
horse sense, but obviously you wouldn't want to take so many, or take big 
enough ones, that your viewers start to think you're skimping on them.  
The issue here seems to be whether they've gone to far.  And, like so 
many things, that's completely subjective...

Darn that individual tastes thingy...  If only everybody thought like me, 
the world would be perfect.  ;)


                                                --Steve-o

Steve Stonebraker | alt.toys.transformers FAQ Keeper | Help end email spam!
srstoneb@bu.edu   |  http://astro.bu.edu/~srstoneb/  | http://www.cauce.org