Hi Jamestown,
I assume you have “Tron Legacy” in mind, not “Tron (1982)”
There are many objects in the movie, and I assume here again, the bikes are the main interest?
From my point of view the bikes appearance is based on three key components. The context, as everything in the dark parts is reflected. This context needs a specific care. Secondly, the objects have a smooth organic, but technical appearance, so the modeling becomes important, in other words the design. Which goes with the first points “hand in hand”. After that is done, teh textures are relatively simple, it is a) an black maerial with reflections enabled or b) just self illuminated material with glow enabled.
I do not believe that any of these work as in the movie without post-processing, like a blurred copy on top—one time added (or screen if the 32bit/c is updated) and one time multiplied, both perhaps with 10% opacity only.
A good color correction seems clearly part of it.
The textures are clearly one of the other, there are some silver metal parts, but again nicely separated. So the textures could be done separated as well and use polygon selections, to be only on the parts needed.
The images work with a clean black as “background” in that way the flare is not as much visible as it practically would. The light streaks can be done as typically “Motion Graphic elements” or just in post with tracking or using specific parts from the bike itself.
I hope the list of points made my impression clear that I got from the movie, they work with light to shape everything. It is not so much a texture question, beside the qualities needed that I mentioned above. It is an thinking about the whole scene and workflow to get it.
If I had to deliver some thing like that, I would take cube and create a capsule like shape, with a slim line middle part. Then a night panorama of a city, with some lights. (HDRI!). The object becomes some polygon selctions and two materials for the start, “Illumination+glow” and Black-color and Reflective.” some visible lights in the scene, perhaps some illuminated and animated Sweep-objects.
This goes then into Photoshop or AfterEffects, or any finishing tool that you use, and get the look with the more than classical two layers that I mentioned above (Calssical means here that they are in use since (?) two decades, perhaps longer.
In a nutshell, the esthetic of Tron looks simple, but from my point of view, to get it right, it is not done with textures alone. It is light and a very nice as well specific handling of it. I recommend to work in floating point/linear space for best results, integer with a clip at 100% would need tricks and that shows more and more.
All the best
Sassi
©2010 Disney, used for educational purposes/fair use.
