Did you get nice blueprints from BMW, or did you have to go searching on the web like other car modellers? :)

Yes, I received a catalogue CD of official BMW/Mini Cooper parts that they used in their service departments, which contained detailed and accurate drawings of all of the pieces from the largest to the smallest details. I also visited a local dealer to photograph some Minis from certain angles I needed, as well as collect an official car catalogue to sample paint and surfaces from. In addition, Andrew Orloff and Carla Attanasio from Zoïc Studios, provided me with tons of digital images from a photo shoot they did in a California dealership. I also had a few concept drawings of what the robot should more or less look like. With that in hand, I started the process, getting feedback along the way, to make sure the client liked the direction we were going in.

How long did modelling take?

The original deadline was about 6-7 weeks from beginning to end, for one finished robot, which was to be used in magazine ads and a billboard. Bear in mind that this needed to be a high polygon count model, plus have a full working engine and dashboard section under the chest (bonnet).

It was done on time, and then modified a little bit and re-textured for animation of the web clips, and other web and print uses. I stayed on and off the project after that for several weeks, doing all of the lighting and high resolution renders and colour changes for different billboards and ads, which the client needed. I was to build one robot originally, with a total of three colour variations. Along the way the client asked for versions of the regular Mini and a Mini-S version, as well as different rims on certain models. So I ended up making well over 10 versions of the robot. Plus different lighting rigs for different environment (indoor/outdoor) settings. Some photoreal, some stylised studio lighting. In the end I can't even measure the total time, but if I had to give you a ball park figure I'd say around three months total. It was a quite a bit of fun to work on something different like this.

It's one thing to see your work on screen or TV, but to see your work on billboards in Time Square, magazines, websites and newspapers was quite an amazing feeling.

How did you achieve the car paint look?

The car paint took some tweaking, in the sense that every render for different media that it was being rendered for, required different lighting. Hence different surface settings as well.

Most of the renders were done with a combination of HDRI environment lighting and area lights. Some using regular 3-4 point lighting and reflection maps stitched together from actual location pictures. Nothing new here, just gradients on incident angles for reflection and spec channels, combined with colours I had sampled from the catalogues. In some of the stylised renders I used radiosity with white boxes to light the scenes on dark backgrounds. On most of the photoreal renders I used some HDR images taken by Loni Peristere on location where the live plates were being shot. I ended up enhancing the lighting and reflections quite a bit.

For the dirty engine parts standard grime images and dirt techniques were painted and used to simulate oil streaks and wear and tear.

What are you working on now?

Right now, I'm working on the Firefly feature film called "Serenity" with Zoïc Studios, with whom I work frequently.

Thanks for telling us about your robot experiences Jose! You can build your own Mini robot at this site. and anyone interested in seeing more of Jose's work, or contacting him, should visit his website.