Tron Legacy: how the special effects were done | Hacker News Reader

Tron Legacy: how the special effects were done

jtnimoy.net

419 pointsbasil77 comments

What I love most is seeing how they go about thinking and producing the effects used for computers used by characters in the film! From the films that do it really poorly to the films that attempt something realistic, I always wonder who's in charge of it, how they think about it, what tools they use to create it, etc. For the films in which it's poorly done I always figure it's the assistant FX designer's kid who has 4 months experience in Flash. For the good movies I always wonder if they grab the DB administrator for all the film assets and ask him some nerd questions :)

From the article:

In Tron, the hacker was not supposed to be snooping around on a network; he was supposed to kill a process. So we went with posix kill and also had him pipe ps into grep. I also ended up using emacs eshell to make the terminal more l33t. The team was delighted to see my emacs performance -- splitting the editor into nested panes and running different modes. I was tickled that I got emacs into a block buster movie. I actually do use emacs irl, and although I do not subscribe to alt.religion.emacs, I think that's all incredibly relevant to the world of Tron.

It's utterly fascinating to me that people have jobs like this.

  | grep '[o]s12'

would have filtered out the grep process from the ps output. :)

It is a futuristic, more intelligent version of grep that understands the context in which it runs, and automatically filters itself out when it processes the output of ps ;-)

Or maybe there was an alias to grep that was 'grep -v grep | grep $*' or something like that.

And they use ack for File searching cuz it's way better.

http://jtnimoy.net/178/TRON_GFX_BR_07.JPG seems to indicate plain old grep, not futuristic intelligent grep.

Trivia: These /dev/.udev paths will most likely disappear from Linux systems soon due to http://lwn.net/Articles/436012/, bookending the timeframe in which that system would have been set up.

When I saw that image, the first thing that came to mind was pgrep from the procps package. Using pkill would have crunched it all down to one line. Too bad they didn't use that.

However, I must admit it did look pretty cool as-is.

In that vein, I was way too excited to see Mark Zuckerberg hacking in Emacs in The Social Network. It's so rare that movies get this stuff right that when they do I can't help but smile.

It was also pretty nice to see all those KDE 3 desktops in the film, especially since it were the historically correct versions for the timeframe of the story.

If you look at see what SunOS version the Grid is running, when Sam sits down at his dad's old workstation, it doesn't match up with the timeline.

If you look really carefully you can see that it is actually running "SolarOS" not "SunOS".

I paused one of the trailers at 1080p and captured the workstation desktop and I've been using it as a desktop background - quite a few people have told me that I really need to clean my monitor...

Would you mind sharing that wallpaper?

NP I'll do it first thing tomorrow.

Awesome, I'd also love that

Here you go: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1401686/tron.png

END OF LINE

Thanks very much! It looks great on my desktop.

> it doesn't match up with the timeline.

A couple seconds later in the movie, the hero is disintegrated by a laser cannon behind his back, scanned and transfered to virtual reality environment where programs break apart when they hit hard things. Suspension of disbelief is a requirement.

OTOH, I am quite surprised Disney got to name its first Tron villain the same as Burroughs mainframe OS. It's worth noting MCP's sidekick name sounds a lot like MARC (the Menu Assisted Resource Control).

> the hero is disintegrated by a laser cannon behind his back, scanned and transfered to virtual reality environment

That bit always made me laugh. Tron leads you to believe that the exciting/magical part is the virtual world, while I always thought the laser was the real world changing invention.

It's like Iron Man.

The guy creates a compact, cheap, abundant and unlimited power source and a form of non-reactive propulsion and what does he do with it? He builds a suit!

To be fair, it's Tony Stark.

Actually, he didn't build the suit. The robots he invented built it for him, controlled by the AI system he also invented.

The part I found unbelievable: in spite of the fact that Stark Industries is prepared to sell us everything we need to live in an Asimovian future, their stock price is tanking because Stark wants to stop building weapons.

Another movie that did reasonably well was Antitrust, using Gnome desktops for all the systems, though IIRC some of the commands used to undelete files may have been made up.

I once wanted to undelete some files out of an ext4 filesystem and I can assure you there is no such thing as an undelete command...

Not as-such, but the data is still there to be recovered, depending on how motivated you are. :)

http://www.xs4all.nl/~carlo17/howto/undelete_ext3.html

It took him three weeks to develop it for ext3, so you might want to give yourself a week or so to add in support for ext4's changes: https://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/New_ext4_features

(Also, note the second-last item on the list of new ext4 features. :)

Loved TSN for that part too.

Another awesome one (less technical but a spot-on acknowledgement of tech culture) was the 30 Rock spoof of the iPhone launch keynote: http://www.hulu.com/watch/67267/30-rock-the-keynote

I laughed for two minutes straight and my wife missed it completely.

I'm a fan of computer interfaces in film across the board. From the intentionally tongue-in-cheek 'Hackers' to the downright unintentionally awful and the occasionally vaguely bordering on something close to reality.

I haven't seen this movie, but I'm actually impressed by what I see in the article. It raises the question, however, whether it's something that actually pays dividends. That is, when you employ any sense of reality in this specific domain, does anyone who isn't intimately familiar actually notice? Is the subset of people like ourselves who notice even worth catering to in such small ways? I know my mother, sister, grandmother, and most of the other people in my life wouldn't recognize if it was accurate or not and I suspect 95% of the audience falls into that category.

On the other hand, small things can make a big difference, when you catch them. They're like seeing a loose thread on a piece of clothing that you can't unsee again. Or a stuck pixel on your LCD. For instance, I was watching a marathon of Roswell on Netflix this week (hey, shaddup -- I've never seen it before and wanted something awful to go along with feeling under the weather!). At one point, a guy says to another who is holding a revolver "you might as well just fire every bullet in your chamber!". Of course . . . a gun only has one bullet in the chamber at an time, as far as I know. Most certainly only one in a revolver. And it has bugged me ever since.

I don't think he'd have saved any time doing a completely original interface based on nothing. Quite possibly, it would have taken him a lot more time to do something as visually compelling (for mom and pop) as that completely from scratch.

"I know my mother, sister, grandmother, and most of the other people in my life wouldn't recognize if it was accurate or not"

I think each knowledge domain has it's set of experts that will spot mistakes in their own areas of experience.

Every mother I know, when watching an on-screen delivery, will retort "that's not a newborn" when the babies face first appears on camera.

retort "that's not a newborn" when the babies face first appears on camera

Some fathers too :)

It results in much better consistency and depth.

Look at Star Trek (at least TNG+): when they were talking about fairly real science, it was rich, consistent, and added to the story. When they went off that track, they ended up giving the same phrase multiple inconsistent definitions. "Phase," I'm looking at you.

You're right, 95% of people won't notice this, but in any given scene there are dozens of tiny details that only 5% of the audience cares about. Over the course of a 2 hour movie, if the crew has cut corners on all of those little details, everyone notices a few things, and the suspension of disbelief is a little less suspended.

This conversation brings to mind Neil deGrasse Tyson's quip about Titanic, the movie (the fact that they used the "wrong" sky):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICsgjqVvtM0

But I think little things like that do make a difference, even if it's just to a small audience, for example "chip art" http://smithsonianchips.si.edu/chipfun/graff.htm People in general appreciate attention to detail, but mass consumerism has somehow discouraged it - and I think that's sad.

This account goes to show how valuable domain-specific knowledge is in creating a plausible space. The movie was such a visual masterpiece because the artist used algorithmically-generated visual effects to illustrate a world purportedly generated by algorithms.

The computer visuals were great. One thing that I caught, being the complete nerd that I am: if you look closely at the terminal that Sam sits down at before going on-grid, there is a copy of top running. It reports the system uptime as a few days (9?) even though that system was supposed to be up for years.

Rebooted Tron for a kernel upgrade?

The rest was great though, and I smiled too. I wonder if the author knew how his terminal footage was going to be used...Cillian Murphy's actions were entirely plausible in context.

Tron Legacy was incredible visually and musically, I'm sad the story didn't live up to the rest of the movie. I hope Disney can look pass that and maybe make a sequel.

I hope this guy does go ahead and create a OpenGL UI toolkit. He should start a donation site to fund the project.

Yes the music was awesome. No surprise, it was Daft Punk. I think they're in the film too. You see them as djs having minor interaction with the characters towards the end.

It looks like you'll be getting your sequel. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhkp04_tron-the-next-day-fl...

That's a fan thing, right? It doesn't look like a real trailer.

A little bit of backstory here: http://www.slashfilm.com/tron-next-day-flynn-lives-revealed/

  Last year, before Tron Legacy was released, Disney shot some footage 
  that didn’t appear in the film, but will show up on the DVD release 
  that hits in April. Some of that footage became Tron: The Next Day 
  (Flynn Lives Revealed)...

I expected a great mood, music and visuals. As far as that went, I really enjoyed it. It was definitely a movie to see in the theater, in 3D.

Thinking about other movies, I guess I can compare the music, the special effects and the mood to Blade Runner. However the story quality and acting is like night and day. As much as I enjoyed TL, I doubt it will gain much of a cult following.

I hated Tron when I saw it, mostly because I had such high hopes and the story was just so piss poor.

But now I've come to an understanding. It's a gorgeous, technically and artfully masterful screensaver. You just have to ignore all the idiots who keep talking over it.

I find myself occasionally searching for the videos on YouTube so I can hear the soundtrack (I somehow haven't thought to buy it yet), particularly End of Line. I'm always annoyed when I end up with one of the trailer versions with all the talking, in addition to the music.

I bought the soundtrack, and enjoy it. Many tracks are prefect for working to, if you like listening to backgroundy type music while coding or whatever.

Same here. For the first time, I used the feature in iTunes that allows you to set the in/out points, so I could skip over Jeff Bridges VO on 'The Grid'. With that tweak in place, it's my new favorite working soundtrack. I suspect the alteration between symphonic pieces and ones with an articulated rhythm is a bit part of what makes it so good. Also, the amazingly great production.

Definitely just buy the soundtrack, it's completely worth it. And the one track with a bit of Jeff Bridges dialog isn't distracting like the trailer dialog is.

I think it's strange how upset people were about the story, given the story of the first movie.

There have been claims that Tron: Legacy was produced not as a movie, but as a 2-hour music video for Daft Punk. And I don't really mind that :)

But they already had an hour long music video with Interstella 5555 ...

"I hope this guy does go ahead and create a OpenGL UI toolkit"

Rather ironic, given that Bill Spitzak at Digital Domain (who did the VFX for Tron) created FLTK for Nuke which has now replaced it with Qt...

I would love to see some of these visuals make their way into xscreensaver... Unfortunately I have already promised I would take a look into the Apple II screensaver because it's not completely faithful to its 8-bit namesake. Besides that, this is completely beyond my modest knowledge on mindblowing visuals.

I am more than a little embarrassed because I thought I could map the output of the Apple II screensaver to a curved surface to mimic a CRT screen on current flat screens. That was humbling.

Out of curiosity: why couldn't you?

It was harder than I expected and it would exceed the time I had available for the task.

I have no such excuse for the Apple II simulation. I even have MAME configured with a couple different Apple IIs.

That sounds similar to Cathode - the vintage terminal emulator - http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/

You can try GLTerminal

http://ldopa.net/2006/01/14/glterminal/

Wow. That's any creative developer's dream job. Amazing stuff. I'd love to work for a startup that just comes up with stuff like that. It seems like such a dark and hidden industry.

I do create fun stuff in my free time http://noben.org/term.io/

I'd love to work for a startup that just comes up with stuff like that.

One of my post-exit fantasies is to start a company that solves eccentric billionaires' (and casinos, Hollywood, and large corporations) crazy decoration problems, by designing new types of computer-controlled fountains and nontraditional displays, algorithmically-generated dynamic landscapes, etc.

Why wait? Smart lights are DMX controlled, and computers control things easiest these days with USB, so google up DMX and USB and hit ebay and then write some code to have your laptop control lighting. Once you have a computer controller in the loop you can do almost anything. ("Color Kinetics" is one brand of interesting computer controlled light I have played a bit with. I'm sure there are many more options out there also.)

Well, I didn't exactly say I was waiting :)

http://nitrogen.posterous.com/home-automation-and-lighting-c...

I would join that company.

The author, Josh Nimoy, gave a great talk at last month's LA Hacker News meetup. Unfortunately, can't find a video recap.

I've never heard of Houdini so I had to look it up (it's a purely procedural 3D animation package): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houdini_(software)

Here is their demo reel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leJks6ay4tg

Apparently Maya, Softimage and 3DS Max are not the only players in this space anymore.

Sorry, small clarification:

Houdini is actually descended from the PRISMS package developed by Omnibus Computer Graphics (one of the very first CGI studios (and actually still in business in Japan!)). SideFX (started by two of the original programmers) bought the rights to PRISMS when Omnibus (North America) went under. They opened for business in 1987 and have been going strong since!

They have a number of "firsts" to their credit -- for instance, Houdini was the first major 3D package on Linux. Debuted in 1999, although I was beta-testing it before that.

For procedural 2D and 3D graphics, there is absolutely nothing like it. However, it's hard for most users to understand, so its popularity has never been great. Anyone doing serious FX work knows all about it, however.

(My old boss used to be CTO of Omnibus, in charge of PRISMS development.)

If you're interested in a FOSS application for procedural graphics, take a look at Povray: http://povray.org/

It has no (built-in) UI. Its file format is a domain-specific scripting language. :-D

Great write up! It's good to see real world uses for Processing and OpenFrameworks outside the context of trivial tutorials and sample code. I've always wondered who actually uses them and for what.

At first I also thought that he was using Processing but I don't think he used it for this film.

I am using openframeworks for games and music toys on the iphone. It happens occasionally.

Processing I mostly use for prototyping before I go to c sometimes. It is a bit quicker to write out code and the like.

I'm amazed to know that openframeworks gets used in movies.

A good movie is a lot about level of detail, at least if you have a good knowledge of technology similar to whats being used in the movie.

You can nearly spot a good movie just by seeing how much they have paid attention to detail, based mostly on who they target as their main audience.

This is obviously one of the things the Tron: Legacy creators did right :-)

I didn't like TRON Legacy at all, but after reading this I'm going to watch it again. Several times even.

The story is predictable, but, come on... It's like Star Trek (pre-2009 at least). You know it will probably not live up to your expectations, but you just have to see it anyway.

BTW, the original Tron movie has its fair share of problems.

It's a very ambitious goal to visually depict the world our computer programs see in ways non-trained humans can relate to it and to build an interesting story out of it.

I would, most certainly, fail in this task.

incidentally, if you look up the "top 100" movies on piratebay right now, you'll see tron legacy show up as #3. i think this goes to show just how popular this movie is--the visual effects were incredible.

was there any information on how they created the younger version of kevin flynn?

Lots and lots of plastic surgery. He really looks like that now, they did the movie in reverse!

Since apparently somebody missed the point, the comment above is a joke.

They made a computer-drawn character using footage of himself in earlier films, and (somewhat like Avatar) his new performance drove that character via motion capture.

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1644706/tron-legacy-star-je...

Terminal font looks very similar to BitStream Vera Mono Sans if anyone else was curious.

It is quite interesting to see how much work has been done.

While the graphics are technically well done, I was offended by this movie. Prior to seeing it, I'd decided that, for me, the real 'test' of whether I could consider this a genuine sequel would be in the landscapes...

Tron came out in 1982. Ken Perlin won an Academy award for his work on the procedurally generated textures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlin_noise) used in the movie.

The Mandelbrot set (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set) got widespread fame in August 1985, with that famous Scientific American cover. Tron just missed that graphical opportunity! So, I figured, any true student of CGI involved in the sequel would relish the notion of putting some sort of tribute to Mandelbrot into the scenery (here are some examples: http://www.fractalforums.com/3d-fractal-generation/heightfie...).

How mistaken I was... Yes, I'm really bitter about producers and artists who don't care to know anything about the history of their art. And they had the presumption to call it 'Tron Legacy'??

You were offended that some people simply had no idea about this?!

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