4 ms·

When Tron was first released I was in a grad level computer graphics class at a university in the USA midwest. I convinced our rather stuffy professor to take

When Tron was first released I was in a grad level computer graphics class at a university in the USA midwest. I convinced our rather stuffy professor to take the class across the street to the "Cinema Twin" and watch the movie. In those days computer graphics consisted of mostly pen plotters and Tektronix vector displays - pretty dry stuff, lots of theory in the class but not much interesting output was generated. To say the collective minds of the class were blown away by the movie would be an understatement. In its own way it showed the future of CGI and what the this domain could look like. If you haven't seen it lately, give it spin - it holds up well.

retcon 4y ago
Precisely because of the minimal gfx world I can't imagine it ageing. Ironically I think it's possible only Disney of the major studios could have understood the necessity as well as potential of audience imagination to fill out the emotional picture.
- kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
  Yes. Tron still looks good, while Polar Express already does not.
  - WorldPeas 4y ago
    I take your polar express and raise you blade(1998)
CoastalCoder 4y ago
So what was the professor's take on it?
- dekhn 4y ago
  "Call me when they can do shaded polygons" :) IIRC James Clarke (who developed the early graphics chips SGI was famous for) said something like "reality is just 80M polygons a second" (at least, in a gross approximation of how the real world is presented to our neuro-optical system).
  - mixmastamyk 4y ago
    They did better than that and had curves as well. See the multiple youtube links on this page.
    - layer8 4y ago
      There’s a short part of the solar sailer sequence with various landscapes that I always found particularly impressive for the time: https://youtu.be/8ruRruqKf5M?t=2m32s https://youtu.be/8ruRruqKf5M?t=2m32s (the music isn’t the original in that clip) For a long time I thought the sandy planes were a mandelbrot-like set, but it’s really a Mickey Mouse logo. :)
    - dekhn 4y ago
      I think I'm jaded, but even when I saw Tron originally, I was only modestly impressed with the CGI. It felt very wire-framey (similar to the Star Trek II genesis sequence) to me, even if (as you say) it had curves and filled polygons. After some time working in computer graphics I realized that what I really needed/wanted was renderman and an entire team of animators/technical directors, circa 2010. So, basically subsurface scattering, monte carlo sampling, many light sources, rich models and textures. Obviously, none of that was really accessible at the time Tron or Star Trek II was made, but those movies opened the path for the necessary brain and money investment to make the Pixar rendering computer and the rest is history.
      - sammalloy 4y ago
        > I think I'm jaded, but even when I saw Tron originally, I was only modestly impressed with the CGI. You’re being downvoted, but most of us who saw it when it was originally released were not impressed. My thinking on this is because we were searching for a different aesthetic, likely what we would see much later with Avatar. However, today, the Tron aesthetic has come back in a big way as a retro art style. This is not surprising. It may very well be the case that as contemporaries of the original Tron, it was not intended for our generation, but for the ones who would come later. Perusing art history, this seems to be very much the case. Most generations do not properly appreciate the art from their own time, either because they can’t or they are too focused on their own personal vision of what art should be. I can’t tell you what the real reasons for this are, but I think that the audience is a prisoner of their time, while the artist has more freedom with their vision to see farther than the species is able to do on the level of the group, which is confined by the herd and the status quo.
oweiler 4y ago
The CGI holds up but the story doesn't. There is a reason the movie flopped on its release.

retcon 4y ago

Precisely because of the minimal gfx world I can't imagine it ageing. Ironically I think it's possible only Disney of the major studios could have understood the necessity as well as potential of audience imagination to fill out the emotional picture.

kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
Yes. Tron still looks good, while Polar Express already does not.
- WorldPeas 4y ago
  I take your polar express and raise you blade(1998)

CoastalCoder 4y ago

So what was the professor's take on it?

dekhn 4y ago
"Call me when they can do shaded polygons" :) IIRC James Clarke (who developed the early graphics chips SGI was famous for) said something like "reality is just 80M polygons a second" (at least, in a gross approximation of how the real world is presented to our neuro-optical system).
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  They did better than that and had curves as well. See the multiple youtube links on this page.
  - layer8 4y ago
    There’s a short part of the solar sailer sequence with various landscapes that I always found particularly impressive for the time: https://youtu.be/8ruRruqKf5M?t=2m32s https://youtu.be/8ruRruqKf5M?t=2m32s (the music isn’t the original in that clip) For a long time I thought the sandy planes were a mandelbrot-like set, but it’s really a Mickey Mouse logo. :)
  - dekhn 4y ago
    I think I'm jaded, but even when I saw Tron originally, I was only modestly impressed with the CGI. It felt very wire-framey (similar to the Star Trek II genesis sequence) to me, even if (as you say) it had curves and filled polygons. After some time working in computer graphics I realized that what I really needed/wanted was renderman and an entire team of animators/technical directors, circa 2010. So, basically subsurface scattering, monte carlo sampling, many light sources, rich models and textures. Obviously, none of that was really accessible at the time Tron or Star Trek II was made, but those movies opened the path for the necessary brain and money investment to make the Pixar rendering computer and the rest is history.
    - sammalloy 4y ago
      > I think I'm jaded, but even when I saw Tron originally, I was only modestly impressed with the CGI. You’re being downvoted, but most of us who saw it when it was originally released were not impressed. My thinking on this is because we were searching for a different aesthetic, likely what we would see much later with Avatar. However, today, the Tron aesthetic has come back in a big way as a retro art style. This is not surprising. It may very well be the case that as contemporaries of the original Tron, it was not intended for our generation, but for the ones who would come later. Perusing art history, this seems to be very much the case. Most generations do not properly appreciate the art from their own time, either because they can’t or they are too focused on their own personal vision of what art should be. I can’t tell you what the real reasons for this are, but I think that the audience is a prisoner of their time, while the artist has more freedom with their vision to see farther than the species is able to do on the level of the group, which is confined by the herd and the status quo.

oweiler 4y ago

The CGI holds up but the story doesn't. There is a reason the movie flopped on its release.