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A Detailed Look Into The Making of Tron Legacy VFX (gmunk.com)
87 points by animal_spirits on May 5, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 28 comments



My favorite thing about Tron Legacy is that my dad got to see his son’s name way, way down the credit roll before he died.

My second favorite thing is that night we all went out into the parking lot outside the Whale and contributed the backs of our heads to the crowd fill.

My third favorite thing is that I’m pretty sure the movie wouldn’t have made its premiere if it hadn’t been for some last-minute Python I wrote to fill the last drive to rush out the door.

God, was DD a good place to work.


Here DD means the "post" vfx effects house Digital Domain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Domain

The vfx business was and continues to be a "challenging field to work in", but man what an incredible experience it was working there.


> if it hadn’t been for some last-minute Python I wrote to fill the last drive to rush out the door.

What was the code doing?


Not much, really, just validating some incoming work from an outsource vendor, kicking off some conversions and bookkeeping entries in a database, then copying the critical files required by the edit to the external drive to be hand-carried to the finishing suite… problem was the outsource stuff showed up REAL last minute, and didn’t match what it was supposed to.

So basically glorified ETL with one hell of an expensive deadline.


I watched a preview of that movie during a high school Disneyland trip and was completely blown away. It was nice to watch the whole thing once it came out, since it was one of the few movies I was excited for at the time. Thanks for your hard work to make it a reality


Just learned that JT Nimoy, the lead code artist who worked on the TL visuals passed away in 2020. Her work was incredible. RIP JT.

Edit: some more technical details about the effects JT built https://web.archive.org/web/20190124122848/http://jtnimoy.ne...


This thread has some more information: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25660152


This is sad. I just don't get it with what's wrong with being trans or gay.


I didn't like this one. The first movie made it feel like you were inside of a computer, the second just felt like a generic cyberpunk world. It was also a bit too empty. I expected to see so much more data flying around. The music was good though!


Thank god I'm not the only one. The first Tron from 1982 really made you feel you were in the computer world[1], from the blocky graphics to the sound effects.

Tron Legacy feels more like an videogame[2], the story was poor, reverse ageing CGI was terrible, the only thing that saved it was the glorious Daft Punk soundtrack and the acting chops of Jeff Bridges ("Where's the money Lebowski?")

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyqS4IS7h8Y

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv4WayqlLcs


As a film its okay, but as a Daft Punk music video its awesome and for that I love it.


In which it follows the original, where Wendy Carlos' pioneering electronic score was the best part.


Tron Legacy is an amazing visual spectacle paired with an enjoyable story.

It's a shame that this site uses Vimeo embeds rather than Youtube. On Youtube, you can pause and use the , and . keys to advance and reverse by single frames to truly enjoy the wonder of the animation. On Vimeo, no such frame-by-frame scrubbing seems to be available.


It's truly an incredible video clip for a Daft Punk album.


Criminally underrated movie. Thank you for sharing!


What I'd like to know is how much BMW and Ducati payed for their gratuitous product placements in the first ~20mins of this film...


Does anyone know what is meant by this:

> Other design tools included the infamous 'Egyptian' algorithm that generated massive amounts of linear-based traveling linework and was used extensively for the bracket animations when a combatant was de-rezzified.

Some googling and chatgpt searching hasn't yielded any info. I'm a huge fan of the tron asthetic, and it inspired me to design an entire game based on it. Such an algorithm sounds like it would be very cool to impliment in a game.


Beautiful film. Would love to have access to the arena fireworks program or patch.


Absolutely my feeling as well.

I bought the Bluray off of Ebay recently and watched with my wife. English is not her first language and she was concerned but I told her it was a very rare case where the spectacle is worth the watch. After one watch, we both agreed.

The gorgeous visuals (a proper use of blue/orange heavy contrast), the amazing soundtrack — and a mostly inoffensive, enjoyable story.

(My controversial opinion is that it's my favourite synthwave musical since 1986's Transformers The Movie, but I can see how that sounds insane)


Mostly inoffensive...aside from the "sexy born yesterday" trope.


Man we're not gonna get a sequel to this until the actors who plays Sam and Qora are as old as Jeff Daniels was in Legacy...



Jeff Bridges. Though Jeff Daniels would be pretty funny.


Tron: Ares is coming in 2025 I’m pretty sure.


I have been waiting for this moment. Looking forward to 2025.


You mean the Dude?


They're behind the Windows 10 desktop wallpaper we all know as well


It was this film that turned me into a fan of this artist!




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