[Jahooba]

Hey guys, this is my Tron mod for winterboard. So far the battery and sliders are complete, but I'm thinking I'm going to release it along with the lockscreen, wallpaper, and possibly new springboard icons (if I can figure out how to edit them!).

The orb inside the pattern was going to be "Bit"; that thing from the movie that could only say "yes" or "no". From screenshots it seems to be an icosahedron inside a decahedron, or the other way around. I made the decahedron by hand in the computer, but the icosahedron was hard as sh*t to make from nothing. Perhaps I'll find one already made somewhere..

All the patterns and designs I'm going to custom-make. I build the lightcycle in 3D from images found online -- this way I can light it and texture it in glorious high-resolution. The lightcyle is an illusion; it's a bunch of flat, 2D planes layered on top (or behind) some 3D objects. One day I'll make a fully 3D version, but this will do for the purposes of the theme.

Also, if any of you know a good source for how to edit springboard icons let me know! I've searched around a great deal and haven't turn up much.

Any comments or suggestions welcome!

[zinjen]

This theme looks ******* badass! Can't wait for the release.

[Jahooba]

I decided to go ahead and make a fully 3D Lightcycle. This way I can get more dynamic angles instead of just from the right side.

I underestimated how difficult it would be. In the end, however, I now have one of the most accurate 3D lightcycle models ever reproduced! And I'll have it forever! I feel like I've somehow come full-circle -- Tron is what made me want to get into 3D to begin with. Perhaps in 12 years I'll be able to reproduce one of the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park

Here are the bare-bones models. Oh how sweet they'll look once textured and rendered!

The last one shows some of the splines I used for measurements.

[Jahooba]

OK. So turns out, after referencing many, many pictures online, that I had build the tail-end of the lightcycle wrong. I spent a few frustrating hours getting it as accurate as I could. In the end, I'm very happy with the way it turned out. Although, now that I look at my test render I'm thinking I need to deepen the wheel-well a bit. That shouldn't take too long....

[SourKraut]

Hi Jahooba,
Its looking great, hope we don't have to wait too long for it...lol
Keep up the great work you do

[Jahooba]

I completely rebuilt the back end (again) after popping in the DVD and pausing it at crucial moments. It's about 98% accurate -- some areas of my inaccurate model I left alone -- I figure that the original artists would have liked the subtle changes I made considering the limitations of their software at the time (hey, it makes me feel better about myself).

So, after a shitload of tweaking textures by incredibly small degrees, I'm finally getting close to where I want for the final lightcycle render. I still have to add another couple of lightcycles, texture them, put them in an exciting scene, texture the logo, add an explosion and flying bits, build the walls to the game grid, re-render the lightcycle slider with the new model, and finally render the whole thing out in high resolution and hope I have enough memory to handle it!

I suppose the proper way to do things would be to worry about rendering when all the modeling is complete -- but how I work, sometimes I don't know if the model will actually work until I start building the textures and lighting the scene. Often I'll have to go back and tweak the model a little here, a little there, and then re-import it. My method is a time-consuming one, but I often end up with beautiful results.

[Jahooba]

Phew, lots more to do. Been out of town for a few days, need to get back into gear and finish this up. Hopefully it'll be done by the end of this weekend, or early next week.

Here's a test render with an orange bike and some motion blur!

[Jahooba]

Finished the walls today. I only did two of them, because that's all anyone will see. If I decide to make an animation I can always go in later and copy/paste/mirror these two into however many I need.

Also finished my new slider icons. The color and shadows look better than the old ones (I used the new 3D models).

The "Tron" logo is textured. Now I have to figure out how I'm going to light it and incorporate it into the final image. I guess I'll just composite it in in Photoshop? I'm happy with the way it looks -- the original Tron logo is a little darker, but I've decided to brighten many of the dull original colors.

Oh, yeah -- I did a test render at 1900x1080 today. My first reaction was, "Holy ****". It looked pretty beyond words. I cringe when I think of the resolution I want to render in. I wouldn't be surprised if it took over 5 hours on my quadcore.

[soto806]

wow, just amazing

[Jahooba]

"Aaaahh-!" *BOOM*

[Jahooba]

Almost done. I haven't gone over this with a fine-toothed comb yet, and I may still change the position of the green and blue bikes in the background, but I'm very close. I'll render this out at 480x320 for the theme -- this will be my lock-background picture.

I still need a background wallpaper, I need to combine all my mods together, and a few other things -- and then it's on to Cydia!

[Jahooba]

It's done! It's been done for a few days now, but I forgot to post that here. Go here for a preview, and head on over to Cydia do download it and use it!

Currently I'm working on some icons for the springboard. So far I have about 14 or 15 fully completed. Some of them have gone through 8 or more iterations, starting over from scratch each time. Phew. Some of them were a pain in the butt. It's sometimes hard to find a balance of colors, while also making them visually interesting and Tron-like.

Eventually I "cracked the code" on what I wanted stylistically. Now that all my textures and color palette is established, all I need worry about is creating the geometry in 3D, texturing and rendering now has a much faster turnaround: it took me 6 hours or so to develop the first 3, and it's taken me 5 hours or so to develop the next 12!

[Jahooba]

The Recognizer!

Hopefully by the end of the week I'll have my Recognizer Lockscreen completed.

I like the way the glowing lines on the "head" of the Recognizer turned out. I have to completely redo the "body", but that should be easy considering it's about 4x less complex than the head.

You know, I never noticed before I started making it, but the Recognizer has a face! It looks like some kind of golem or Easter Island-type thing. See it? It's hard to notice in the movie because most of the shots of the vehicle are far away and the details are blurred.

I got most of my reference shots from pausing the DVD about 100 times within the same 1 minute of the chapters "User Power" and "Rough Landing" -- where Flynn resurrects a beat-up Recognizer and makes his way to the Hub.

As I was watching this scene over and over, I couldn't help but notice how beautiful the special effects were when it showed the bridge of Flynn's Recognizer. It seems the production company spent some extra time on this scene -- all the blues are brilliant and the designs are beautiful and blinking here and there. I wish the whole movie was like that!

Anyway, next up I have to build an environment for it -- it's not going to be on the game grid, that's just a test render.

[LittleScooby]

Hey Jahooba. Great lightcycle renderings!

You're not using Lightwave to render them by any chance are you?

I've been looking for the most accurate lightcycle model available in Lightwave and so I thought I would ask just in case that is what you are using.

[Jahooba]

Originally Posted by LittleScooby

Hey Jahooba. Great lightcycle renderings!

You're not using Lightwave to render them by any chance are you?

I've been looking for the most accurate lightcycle model available in Lightwave and so I thought I would ask just in case that is what you are using.

Hey LittleScooby,

I use Cinema 4D for all my rendering, and Rhinoceros for most of my model-making. I export as a .obj (wavefront) fron Rhino into C4D. It takes an extra couple of steps, but I am far more accurate within Rhino. Some things are easier to model in C4D, so I pick and choose between the two, depending on the shape.

If you have any more questions, fire me an email (jahooba@gmail.com)