Probably the coolest effect in Tron is the ‘derezzing’ of light cycles after they crash into an ‘exhaust wall’. This effect didn’t end up being part of our Tron test animation. So I figured, I’d give it a go and create one anyway

Anyway, I did a first test setup of a single fragment that’s exploded of a crashed cycle. To figure out what happens during the violent ‘derezzing’ I closely looked at the original VFX test. A few days ago I also found links to Digital Domain’s making off video, which has in the mean time been removed again. However, I did have a close enough look at it to get some idea’s on what to do with my version of this effect. Unfortunately, Tron Legacy hasn’t been released to cinema’s in my little nook of the world (have to wait until Jan 19), so I haven’t had the chance to get better look at all the examples in the movie itself.

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I totally forgot to include the part on beta testing

As the wave system is getting to the point where it becomes usable for animators (I hope), I’m thinking of starting a kind of selective ‘Beta Testing Program’.

So, I’d like to invite serious parties to beta test the breaking wave animation tool. For this first run, I’d like to keep it limited to a few testers as I don’t want to drown in feedback and not have time to process it correctly. If you’re interested, please send me an email with some details on yourself and/or the company you work for and I’ll get in touch to discuss details.

Cheers,

Erik

It’s been a bit silent on this blog for a few days. The reason for this, is that I’m preparing a major update of the wave system, which is taking some time. I’ve fixed some problems with the wave zones (used for shading) that were only visible on the back side of the wave and thus didn’t show up in renders so far.

In addition to this I’ve taken a lot of the feedback I got from both technical/vfx and surfers’ point of view and made changes accordingly.

Last but certain not least, I’ve started to turn the wave system into a fully self-contained digital asset. The technical side of this is already fairly much working. The main thing I’m focussing on are ‘artist friendly’ animation tools. There were some already in place, but there are a number of settings that are getting a lot nicer UI including visualisations and interactive handles. The nice thing about the tool version of the wave system is that an animator ‘only’ needs Houdini Escape to access the full functionality, which is much cheaper than Houdini Master.

Renders and a look at the animation tools will follow soon…

Cheers,

Erik