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General => Terragen Discussion => Topic started by: Matt on November 13, 2010, 08:10:26 PM

Title: Tron Legacy
Post by: Matt on November 13, 2010, 08:10:26 PM
Something I've been involved with recently:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4RiUy23e9s

There is some Terragen 2 in the trailer, from about 1:36 to 1:44, and there's a lot more to come! :)

Matt
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: Hetzen on November 13, 2010, 08:49:44 PM
Gratz Matt. This is one film I've been looking forward to seeing.

So you worked on the atmosphere on this?
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: Henry Blewer on November 13, 2010, 11:02:41 PM
I watched the 480p version. I'll download the 1080.  The 'look' is really awesome.
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: Tangled-Universe on November 14, 2010, 07:01:13 AM
Awesome Matt, I was looking forward to see what you made for this production and even though it is very brief I think it looks pretty awesome! Congratulations for this and also for another nice production on your resume. Will you be able to show more after the release? Say separate render-passes?

How much do you actually spent on designing in TG2 for productions like this?
Is it like I think that it is only 10-20% and the rest is for making it work with the rest of the pipeline?
I would be quite confident to make nice TG2 elements, but for integration with the rest I'd be a pretty useless guy I suppose :)

Cheers,
Martin
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: DVA99 on November 14, 2010, 10:55:35 AM
Brilliant Matt!

Kind regards
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: inkydigit on November 14, 2010, 04:35:06 PM
nice one Matt!
loved the original, so looking forward to this iteration!
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: goldfarb on November 14, 2010, 07:41:21 PM
nice...
would love to see a real production article on terragen's integration with a production pipeline...
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: Kadri on November 14, 2010, 08:50:36 PM

Would love to hear more about this Matt  :) Can you say anything more about this or when ?
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: Jack on November 14, 2010, 11:13:30 PM
oh awesome i watched the original when i was a kid this looks just as cool :o!

mmmh so did you use terragen standalone or did you write some plugins using the ngen core into the main app (maya i pressume?)
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: rcallicotte on November 15, 2010, 01:00:12 PM
W-u-u-u-h?    :o

COOL.

Thanks for sharing this news, Matt.
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: goldfarb on November 15, 2010, 10:37:09 PM
Quote from: wetbanana on November 14, 2010, 11:13:30 PM
oh awesome i watched the original when i was a kid this looks just as cool :o!

mmmh so did you use terragen standalone or did you write some plugins using the ngen core into the main app (maya i pressume?)

both Digital Domain and Mr. X have been known to use Houdini :)
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: chris_x422 on November 16, 2010, 05:56:33 AM
Been looking forward to this for a while now.
Wondered what you'd been cooking Matt, can't wait to see the final results.

Chris
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: rcallicotte on November 16, 2010, 01:06:42 PM
Really?  Houdini?  Hmmm...I've thought about getting that, but the idea of learning another 3D package sort of...well, I didn't like it.



Quote from: goldfarb on November 15, 2010, 10:37:09 PM
Quote from: wetbanana on November 14, 2010, 11:13:30 PM
oh awesome i watched the original when i was a kid this looks just as cool :o!

mmmh so did you use terragen standalone or did you write some plugins using the ngen core into the main app (maya i pressume?)

both Digital Domain and Mr. X have been known to use Houdini :)
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: Jack on November 16, 2010, 05:25:20 PM
Quote from: calico on November 16, 2010, 01:06:42 PM
Really?  Houdini?  Hmmm...I've thought about getting that, but the idea of learning another 3D package sort of...well, I didn't like it.



Quote from: goldfarb on November 15, 2010, 10:37:09 PM
Quote from: wetbanana on November 14, 2010, 11:13:30 PM
oh awesome i watched the original when i was a kid this looks just as cool :o!

mmmh so did you use terragen standalone or did you write some plugins using the ngen core into the main app (maya i pressume?)



both Digital Domain and Mr. X have been known to use Houdini :)

Houdini is an amazing piece of software in the right hands you need to be a legend at python though to get decent results
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: goldfarb on November 16, 2010, 06:34:43 PM
Quote from: wetbanana on November 16, 2010, 05:25:20 PM
Houdini is an amazing piece of software in the right hands you need to be a legend at python though to get decent results

couldn't further from the truth...
I've been using Houdini for about 10 years and don't know the first thing about python, or any scripting/programming language...a bit of Hscript (houdini's internal scripting language) but that's about it.
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: Matt on November 16, 2010, 07:56:57 PM
It might be a bit early for me to give away too many details, but... The atmospheres in the shots I pointed out were a mixture of Terragen 2 and matte painting. A number of visual effects companies worked on Tron Legacy, not just Digital Domain. I was one of a few artists using Terragen at one of the other companies. Our 3D clouds were rendered with standalone Terragen 2, although I made a few enhancements to address particular needs (most of which will be included in the next public release).

The Ray trace everything option in Terragen 2.1 was used to render clouds with true 3D motion blur and to efficiently render the holdouts of solid objects (buildings and terrain). The geometry for these holdouts was simply imported using the built-in OBJ Reader. In most cases the same models used by the Lighting and Rendering artists were used "as is" without any particular modification for Terragen to render clean holdouts.

The company has developed a pipeline for publishing cameras to Terragen, but it is via the Nuke .chan file format which we've talked about in other threads. Two cameras for each shot, as this is a stereo 3D film.

So, we only worked on a portion of the movie, but it's still quite a lot of Terragen-rendered atmosphere to look forward to :)

While I'm at it, there is another movie coming out next year with lots of Terragen 2 environment in it. Trailers are already online, but I won't say any more just yet!

Matt
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: Kadri on November 16, 2010, 10:27:29 PM

Thanks for the info , Matt  :)

In the past there  is mostly always render passes mentioned , especially with such big movie productions .
Did you use only one standard pass and is there anything you can say about this and TG2 at least for the future.
I don't like this kind of rendering but it can be handy in many situations .
Kind of a PSD or maybe better this kind of EXR (http://www.fnordware.com/ProEXR/ )
with many render passes ready to any kind of manipulation wouldn't be very bad i think ;)

Cheers!
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: Tangled-Universe on November 17, 2010, 03:16:49 AM
Thanks for the info Matt :)
Sounds like it worked all pretty well!
The true 3D clouds just give that extra punch ;) over matte paintings I think.

The other Terragen artists you worked together with, are those also members here?

Cheers,
Martin
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: Henry Blewer on November 17, 2010, 08:12:55 AM
Awesome news. I watched the 1080 trailer; you really need to view it in this resolution! All I can say is wow!

Looking forward to the next release. The trailer was a teaser in more ways than one.
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: rcallicotte on November 17, 2010, 01:00:17 PM
What's really cool about this news is to see TG2 used in this way - without trees and valleys and mountains.  It's changing how I see TG2 can be practically used.
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: FrankB on January 30, 2011, 06:52:22 AM
I've seen the film yesterday, and was very impressed. I think I have been able to tell exactly when TG2 was used, and it looked much better on the real screen than on the internet previews and trailers.

Besides TG2, the film was a great cinema experience and awesome sound effects going with stunning visuals. The story... rather dull, but that didn't bring down the joys of actually watching the movie. A lot of it was 2D, and when there was 3D, it was used in a way that doesn't provoke a lot of headache. Overall, I can recommend the film for the theater... probably not the same though on your home screen.

- Frank
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: Njen on February 04, 2011, 03:49:57 AM
Talking about Terragen use in movies, I am using Terragen to produce reference material on a movie (can't say which yet) I am working on at the moment. It is helpful to illustrate a continuity on how much haze / atmosphere there is at certain heights across shots.

I am trying to possibly get it used in production at the VFX studio I am working at, in fact I am giving a company demo / tutorial next week :)
Title: Re: Tron Legacy
Post by: rcallicotte on February 04, 2011, 11:34:31 AM
Please let us know what you can let us know.   ;D



Quote from: njen on February 04, 2011, 03:49:57 AM
Talking about Terragen use in movies, I am using Terragen to produce reference material on a movie (can't say which yet) I am working on at the moment. It is helpful to illustrate a continuity on how much haze / atmosphere there is at certain heights across shots.

I am trying to possibly get it used in production at the VFX studio I am working at, in fact I am giving a company demo / tutorial next week :)