More ‘Transformers 2′ coverage over at VFXWorld. Still doesn’t make me want to shell out the $10 to see the film. But still a good read for other visual effects artists out there.

LINK: Escalating VFX for New Transformers

“One thing that was a major breakthrough was allowing the animators to do most of the motions,” Farrar continues. “A big problem for us, up to this point, has been they do some animation, we see it in the shot, the creature dev people, who manage all the pieces on the character, might make a gear move; then they would send it back to animation to plus it out for us. And this back and forth is very tedious. So we arranged everything so there is more control in the hands of the animators. That saved weeks. Another great time savor was the ability to break apart the lighting on each of the robots into various categories (specularity, diffusion). You can render the whole robot with everything baked in, but then you have no control over it later. If you want to fluctuate lights and darks and control that in the hands of the compositors, we can do that with a little bit more disc space, but it gives you room to control the image at a really critical point when Michael wants last minute changes in the lighting.

And for the other 2 people out there who haven’t seen this movie yet, here’s the entire film in one minute! Yeah.