How Devastator in TRANFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN Became a 52,000-Part Behemoth That Melted ILM's Computers
As you know, director Michael Bay has an appetite for cinematic spectacle and nowhere is that more evident than in his Transformers movies.
When Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) unveiled the initial design for the movie's massive villain, Devastator, for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Bay had just one request: “Make it bigger and more detailed.”
The visual effects team, led by the artists at ILM, took Bay's demand and ran with it. According to Rassoul Edji, a VFX artist who recently shared behind-the-scenes insights on X, the team doubled Devastator’s size and complexity.
The result of that was a mechanical monster made up of an astonishing 52,632 individual parts, pushing both creative and technical boundaries to their limits.
"Devastator was the biggest creature ILM had ever done up to that point," Edji explained. "It was so complex and so heavy that it melted a couple of computers of the artists at ILM."
It’s so wild that these CGI effects were so massive that the computers couldn’t handle it, so they just melted.
To manage the beast's enormous scale: “ILM artists decided that the Devastator asset should be comprised of multiple different rigs, the two arms, the two legs, the torso, and the head. Exactly like it is in the final movie.”
He went on to share some fun facts about Devastator that you might find cool and interesting:
He was over 100 feet tall
He was made up of 52,632 individual parts
If laid out, all of his parts would add up to 14 miles long
Devastators hand travels at 390 miles per hour when he punches the pyramid
The pyramid destruction simulation was 8 times bigger than ILMs previous largest rigid body simulation
The insane complexity of Devastator, Edji noted, was nearly unprecedented. He revealed, “Devastator was the second most complex asset ever in the Transformers franchise, second only to the Driller Bot from Dark of the Moon.”
He added: “A lot of the projects I work on today are very large scale and complex and I still run into computation and data management challenges in 2024.
This gives me a massive amount of respect for the work done by ILM all the way back in 2008-2009 for this film. Truly mind blowing technical and creative artistry!
Devastator from #Transformers Revenge of the Fallen was the biggest creature ILM had ever done up to that point. It was so complex and so heavy that it melted a couple computers of the artists at ILM.
— Rassoul Edji (@RassoulEdji) December 12, 2024
The first time they showed Devastator to Michael Bay he said that it needed to… pic.twitter.com/KCnrK5s1hH