Back in May I stumbled across a CGTalk FX Wars competition with a Tron theme so I gave it a go.
Here's some of the models. First the lightcycle, initial modeling done in Houdini using NURBs:
Over to Modo for further refinement using sub d surfaces:
From Modo it was moved back into Houdini. Here's some animation tests:
Light Cycle Test 2 from Jim Crafton on Vimeo .
Light trail added:
Light Cycle Test 3 from Jim Crafton on Vimeo .
Light cycle test 4 from Jim Crafton on Vimeo .
First cut of the "rezz" effect, where the bike materializes out of thin air:
lc rez test from Jim Crafton on Vimeo .
Another version, with some tweaks to the timings of the various parts of the effect.
Light Cycle Rez test 2 from Jim Crafton on Vimeo .
The next model was the Recognizer, first cuts in modo:
Then brought back into Houdini
Quickie test animation:
Recognizer test from Jim Crafton on Vimeo .
Next up was the main character model, named "Sierra".
First cut in ZBrush. Base mesh was created with makehuman. Proportions not so good.
After a bunch of fiddling around and the addition of backpack:
More fiddling in ZBrush, added paint, hair, makeup, and some surface details:
Turntable:
Sierra ZBrush turntable from Jim Crafton on Vimeo .
Brought back into Houdini and composited to added glow effects:
After all this, some test shots. A run cycle:
Sierra Run cycle, version 2 from Jim Crafton on Vimeo .
A more complete shot, refinements made to run cycle:
Shot 2 test, running animation from Jim Crafton on Vimeo .
More refinements to the shot, at this point though I'm kind of running out of time. Learning character animation isn't so easy after all!
Shot 2 for tron fx competition from Jim Crafton on Vimeo .
Combination of the previous shot with a shot of the light cycle coming on line:
Tron FX shots 2 and 3 from Jim Crafton on Vimeo .
And that, unfortunately, is about as far as I got!
