Something else I just noticed...


Your rear wheel intersects your chassis. I don't think it should. I believe it only appears to from the bottom view of the MAGI model because of perspective. If you move the plane I have circled in red forward so that it clears the rear wheel and turn on perspective you'll see what I'm talking about as you move the camera closer to the light cycle.

Carl

P.S. Just moticed you can also move your rear wheel back just a bit. It should be centered in the same plane as the plane that defines the rear of the chassis. Again I think perspective is throwing you off just a bit. Look at this image:


The high point of the fender should be in the same plane as the center of the rear tire. The red line shows that it is. You can't use the front edge of the chassis as this point is closer to the camera and thus affected by perspective.

Yeah, I would never expect anyone to actually do something like write a simulator/emulator or anything, that would have to be done via a project like MAME, MESS, or such.  But system details would be required.  Also, if MAGI created their own software and renderer, access to that software would be required, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that one.  But just having information about the system and software would be fun to know.  I find it hard to believe that a company like MAGI can exist and then die, but nothing of its existence still remains...  I know it happens all the time with companies, but if I can keep 5.25" disks for 23+ years with programs I wrote as a teenager, I would think the man who created MAGI would still have something kicking around in his basement.  But I suppose it would be up to him to share any of it as well...

I'm not really seriously expecting anyone to step forward with any new information, it would just be nice to get some bits here and there so we can satisfy our unknown desire to accurately reproduce these models.  Just seeing the entire assembly clip (which we saw a part of in "Beyond TRON") would be enough for me, or even just screen shots similar to what I did for the assembly of my model.  Just some better inside details.

I just find it sad that the information may be sitting some where, and the owners care nothing of it (Disney, etc.), yet they refuse to make anything available to those who have an interest.  Yes I know this gets into all kinds of copyright issues, intellectual property rights, and such, so let's not digress into that.  However, it is not like anyone is trying to do any of this to make money, a new movie, or anything like that, so what's the harm?  We're just fans having fun and appreciating the work.  And after all, imitation is the highest form of flattery.

Anyway, back to the lightcycles, what do you think about those explosions and hovering lightcycles?  :-)

Matthew

matthew180 Wrote:Yeah, I would never expect anyone to actually do something like write a simulator/emulator or anything, that would have to be done via a project like MAME, MESS, or such. But system details would be required. Also, if MAGI created their own software and renderer, access to that software would be required, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that one. But just having information about the system and software would be fun to know. I find it hard to believe that a company like MAGI can exist and then die, but nothing of its existence still remains... I know it happens all the time with companies, but if I can keep 5.25" disks for 23+ years with programs I wrote as a teenager, I would think the man who created MAGI would still have something kicking around in his basement. But I suppose it would be up to him to share any of it as well...

I'm got 5.25" disks with programs I wrote 23+ years ago as well. However I haven't tried to read any of them in the last 20 years. What are the odds they are still readable? I don't think 5.25" disk are considered permanent storage media. Oh well... I don't want to get too far off topic either... I have it hard enough just finding the time to deal with the on-topic stuff.

matthew180 Wrote:I'm not really seriously expecting anyone to step forward with any new information, it would just be nice to get some bits here and there so we can satisfy our unknown desire to accurately reproduce these models. Just seeing the entire assembly clip (which we saw a part of in "Beyond TRON") would be enough for me, or even just screen shots similar to what I did for the assembly of my model. Just some better inside details.

Stuff like that may be out there. For example:

http://www.tron-sector.com/gallery/default.aspx?do=gallery§ion=1&category=4&group=Printouts
But how to get those that have this stuff to share it is anyone's guess.

matthew180 Wrote:I just find it sad that the information may be sitting some where, and the owners care nothing of it (Disney, etc.), yet they refuse to make anything available to those who have an interest. Yes I know this gets into all kinds of copyright issues, intellectual property rights, and such, so let's not digress into that. However, it is not like anyone is trying to do any of this to make money, a new movie, or anything like that, so what's the harm? We're just fans having fun and appreciating the work. And after all, imitation is the highest form of flattery.

I certainly agree.

matthew180 Wrote:Anyway, back to the lightcycles, what do you think about those explosions and hovering lightcycles? :-) Matthew

I think you hit the mother load with those expolsion pics. GREAT JOB. I had a ton of stuff I wanted to say yesterday even before you posted those I just simply didn't have enough hours in the day. I'll try to reply to that post now and with luck be able to make another post or two today.

Carl

wwwmwww Wrote:Well if you get right down to it CSGs don't have wireframes. At least they don't in POV-Ray and I doubt they did in what MAGI used either. Only meshes have wireframes.

The software I use (realsoft 3D) has true primitives and they represent them with a minimum number of "wires" for wireframe modeling, like this:


This is an ellipse acting like a sphere. ;-) There are setting to increase the number of wires used to represent the primitives, which starts to make them look more like a mesh, like this:


But that just slows down the modeling, and I pretty much model in Top, Left, or Front views instead of the isometric view. My lightcycle looks like this most of the time:


I wonder if the MAGI software had any similar options? We at least know they can do shaded with outline, similar to this:


But obviously their software worked a little different in this aspect.

wwwmwww Wrote:I think you hit the mother load with those explosion pics. GREAT JOB. I had a ton of stuff I wanted to say yesterday even before you posted those I just simply didn't have enough hours in the day. I'll try to reply to that post now and with luck be able to make another post or two today.

Thanks! And I know what you mean about time. I'm scraping in every available minute I have to this conversation, but I'm also enjoying the heck out of it. Take your time, I'll just continue to pummel you with images, questions, and comments. :-)

wwwmwww Wrote:I'm got 5.25" disks with programs I wrote 23+ years ago as well. However I haven't tried to read any of them in the last 20 years. What are the odds they are still readable? I don't think 5.25" disk are considered permanent storage media. Oh well... I don't want to get too far off topic either... I have it hard enough just finding the time to deal with the on-topic stuff.

My first computer was a TI-99/4A that my dad bought me in 1983, just after TRON was released, and the first thing I did was write a lightcycle game (after I learned to program.) :-) Long story short, recently I dug that computer back out and have been getting back into it (retro computing and all that) and I'm finding the floppies from back then are more reliable than ones I bought a few weeks ago. Not that this has anything to do with lightcycles, just that those 20+ year old disks (computers, and drives) are still ticking along just fine.

wwwmwww Wrote:As for the hovering... I just don't see it. In the res-up footage the camera is very low to the ground and with the software MAGI used the white lines on the game grid don't narrow with distance from the camera the way they should. Its something between maintaining a constant width regardless of distance from the camera and the correct behavior.

The camera is low, that's for sure, and again it could be the perspective making it look that way. But it sure looks like they are floating, just slightly. If you single step he blue lightcycle res-up sequence, right in the last few frames before they start moving you see what looks like the shadow adjusting to the height, or something like that. I didn't capture those frames, but I'll try to get them sometime.

As for the jet walls themselves, yes, I agree they do sit right down on the game grid, there is no doubt about that and plenty of footage that shows it.

But as for this picture:


I'm still not convinced that the rear tire is cutting the jet wall there along the bottom. If you follow the na

matthew180 Wrote:I made one of the easiest kinds of animation (a rotation) and thought it would be fun to share it.

Very very nice... Atleast you didn't ask any more questions as I'm already far enough behind. Life has just been crazy the last 2 days. I've got about 45 minutes now and I'm rendering something now as I type. I hope to have a another post up soon...

Carl

matthew180 Wrote:The software I use (realsoft 3D) has true primitives and they represent them with a minimum number of "wires" for wireframe modeling, like this:

That's a nice little feature. I wish POV-Ray could do that. By the way, I've been meaning to ask how you did the torus? On page 1 you had said Realsoft 3D didn't have a torus as a primitive. Is that part a mesh... if so I can't tell.

matthew180 Wrote:But that just slows down the modeling, and I pretty much model in Top, Left, or Front views instead of the isometric view. My lightcycle looks like this most of the time:

Interesting image. Can you move that "wire frame" for lack of a better term around in real time? That must be great for camera placement, etc.

matthew180 Wrote:I wonder if the MAGI software had any similar options? We at least know they can do shaded with outline, similar to this:

I'm pretty sure they didn't. There is a part on the DVD where they talk about Sark's carrier going through the de-rezzing square (I think that's what its called at the moment). In that discussion they talk about how hard it was because the red wire frame didn't exist and that it itself had to be modeled. I assume they did exactly what I had to do to get the red wire frame of my tank.


If you want to know how MAGI did their outlining read this:

http://www.wwwmwww.com/TRON/NehGat00.pdf
I'm about 99% sure this is exactly how they did it.

matthew180 Wrote:But obviously their software worked a little different in this aspect.

Agreed... see above.

matthew180 Wrote:Thanks! And I know what you mean about time. I'm scraping in every available minute I have to this conversation, but I'm also enjoying the heck out of it. Take your time, I'll just continue to pummel you with images, questions, and comments. :-)

I love conversations like this. If you pull all my discussions about light cycles together that I've had here at TRON-Sector you may have enought for a dissertation on Lightcycles and Lightcycle Mechanics.

matthew180 Wrote:My first computer was a TI-99/4A that my dad bought me in 1983, just after TRON was released, and the first thing I did was write a lightcycle game (after I learned to program.) :-)

I went to computer camp the summer before my freshman year of high school. That was in 1983. I learned enough in that one week that later when I took a computer class in high school I knew more about them then the teacher did and I in effect ended up teaching the teacher so she could teach the class. Prior to that year she simply tought typing and I guess the management of the school at the time thought computers were just fancy typewriters. Anyways I too got my first computer in the summer of 1983. It was a Sanyo 555 and its claim to fame was that it was 99% IBM compatible. Which in effect meant that any program over 100 lines of code wouldn't run on both systems making it 0% IBM compatible in my opinion. I too typed in a very simple lightcyle game back in that time frame. I didn't write it myself I think I got it out of one of the Sanyo 555 user magazines I was getting at the time. The light cycles were simple square blocks that left a wall that was as wide as they were where ever they went. It was a rather simple 1 or 2 page program as I recall. Two people could play and both used keys on the keyboard to control their block. Hmmm... I wonder if any of the Tron collectors here have that issue. I might still have it somewhere but I'd have to dig through 20+ years of stuff to check. My favorite Sanyo 555 game at the time was CashMan. I wonder it anyone else even remembers that game today. Ahhh... those were the days. I even had an all amber monitor which was 10 times better then the all gree

wwwmwww Wrote: matthew180 Wrote:The software I use (realsoft 3D) has true primitives and they represent them with a minimum number of "wires" for wireframe modeling, like this: That's a nice little feature. I wish POV-Ray could do that. By the way, I've been meaning to ask how you did the torus? On page 1 you had said Realsoft 3D didn't have a torus as a primitive. Is that part a mesh... if so I can't tell.

Well, most modelers are going to have a wireframe view for working, as well as a solid view, which in Realsoft 3D is done via OpenGL. They have a 60-day trial download, you should check it out. Of all the programs I have used, I find modeling with Realsoft the most intuitive.

http://realsoft.fi
As for the torus, I made a cross-section nurb circle and rotated it around an axis to make the torus. Here is the construction process, frame 1 is the cross-section circle and the axis, frame 2 shows the wireframe after construction (which simply required pushing the "rotation" button), frame 3 is the OpenGL real time view, frame 4 is rendered (no lights, no materials).

wwwmwww Wrote: matthew180 Wrote:But that just slows down the modeling, and I pretty much model in Top, Left, or Front views instead of the isometric view. My lightcycle looks like this most of the time: Interesting image. Can you move that "wire frame" for lack of a better term around in real time? That must be great for camera placement, etc.

Yes, the wireframe and OpenGL rendered views are real time and it is very helpful for many things, camera placement (as you mentioned) and animation preveiw are among them. I find it difficult to model at arbitrary angles though (but you can do it), so I'm constantly switching the view to top, left, or front for modeling and the rotating to see how it looks. You can set many views, and each one can show your work a different way. The only thing that is not real time is when you render the view with the raytracer. But there are also many settings for the raytracer as well, so you can get a quick render to see how things are looking, all the way up to a full blown super high quality raytrace complete with anti-aliasing and caustics. It is a very powerful program even though it is somewhat of an underdog. The user-base is small (compared to something like Maya or Max), but dedicated. Check it out, you might like it.

wwwmwww Wrote:I'm pretty sure they didn't. There is a part on the DVD where they talk about Sark's carrier going through the de-rezzing square (I think that's what its called at the moment). In that discussion they talk about how hard it was because the red wire frame didn't exist and that it itself had to be modeled. I assume they did exactly what I had to do to get the red wire frame of my tank.

Okay, just stop right there for a moment of silence... That tank is freaking awesome! Did you use the modified POV-Ray (as described in that paper you linked) to get that outline? I would have a hard time coming up with raytraced outlines, but I've already asked in the Realsoft forum, so we'll see what the gurus have to say. I'm going to do the tank next, after we beat the lightcycle do death, agree on all the geometry (heh), and determine what all the parts really are.

wwwmwww Wrote:If you want to know how MAGI did their outlining read this: http://www.wwwmwww.com/TRON/NehGat00.pdf I'm about 99% sure this is exactly how they did it.

I read it, but it was late. I don't understand enough yet to be able to actually implement what they are talking about, but I asked the Realsoft users if someone might step up and make a material or script to do it. Since the development team is small, they may find it interesting and bu

wwwmwww Wrote:I'll try to check it out one of these days.  I was first introduced to POV-Ray back in the mid 90's.  Upon first seeing it I told myself that is something I HAVE to learn how to use one of these days.

Yeah, I learned about POV in like 1992 and have always wanted to give it a shot.  Being a programmer the low-level and exact control over the objects is appealing.  But, having a real-time modeler is really nice too, since that's more how humans interact with real-world objects.  I think there are some GUI modelers for POV, no?

wwwmwww Wrote:In POV-Ray I think that would be called a surface of rotation.  I haven't used that feature so much but I think the exact same thing can be done.  Its just not a point and click interface.

For me it was my only choice (or use an SDS object, but the nurb mesh is easier to construct) since Realsoft does not provide the torus primitive.  The nice thing about Realsoft is that the parts used to construct the mesh, i.e. the circle and axis, are retained and can be modified, thus modifying the resulting mesh.

wwwmwww Wrote:You are too kind.  And no I don't have access to the modified POV-Ray mentioned in that paper.  I emailed the authors once and asked if they still had their modified source code and they didn't.    And modifying the POV-Ray source code is well above what I'm able to do.

Well, it's a great model!  A lot of hard work went into that and I think people these days take computer graphics for granted because they are used everywhere.  I have the same problem with writing software, people think it should be cheap and instant, the "dot-com crash" is proof of this general naivety towards computers, software, and the Internet.

wwwmwww Wrote:The oultine you see there is actual geometry.  The strait lines are cylinders, some of the curved lines are tori, etc.  Note they even cast shadows.  If I had used the method in the paper there would be no way to show the outline by itself without the cannon present and even if you could it wouldn't be actual geometry and thus wouldn't cast a shadow.

Wow!  That is a lot of work, but the results are fantastic.

wwwmwww Wrote:By the way, that image was first posted at TRON-Sector here: http://www.tron-sector.com/forums/default.aspx?do=top&id=268618 My second attempt at humor fell much flatter then my first.

Haha, that was funny enough to get a chuckle out of me...

wwwmwww Wrote:Sounds good.  Some of your part names I don't particularly like but I do think that was a GREAT idea.  It sure makes things easier to talk about.

Well, let's change them then.  I could not see trying to have a conversation about lightcycles if everyone was calling the parts by a different name.  Here is my list and some reasoning, let's get something we both like.  I call anything used in a boolean operation that removes geometry from another object a "cutter".  We can change that too.  I tried to come up with names that seemed logical and that would give each part a purpose other than "upper side effects", "lower side effects", etc.:

1. Canopy (does not include windshield or shoulders)
2. Canopy Shoulders (the tori)
3. Canopy Sides (now includes what I was calling the "side lower" and "side toe" as one polygon.  So I suppose this name should simply become "Sides".)
4. Foot Rest (only thing I could come up with)
5. Trim
6. Windshield
7. Wings (that's just what they look like...  at little... )
8. Chassis (the rest of the lightcycle is built on this)
9. Engine (maybe should be changed to power supply, battery, capacitor, wheel cone?)
10. Transmission (can't have an engine without a transmission.  But the lightcycles go from zero to top-speed instantly, so I suppose a transmission would not be required.)
11. Light Jets (the jet wall has to be made by

wwwmwww Wrote:I'm sure there are. In fact its posible to port meshs into POV-Ray so one might even be able to use Realsoft as a GUI front end for POV-Ray if you wanted to bad enough. I just haven't played with them much.

I probably could, but then everything is a mesh, and I so do like to use primitives!

wwwmwww Wrote:Yes, it took longer to model that outline then it did the rest of the tank. However since its real geometry it adds a ton of time to all of my tank renders. I can now render most light cycle pics in a few seconds. My tank shots still are taking hours (if not days) so I'll have to revist this if I'm going to try and animate my tank.

Hours? That is a long time for just one frame. I would not expect times like that unless I was rendering caustics or a scene with a lot of transparent and/or reflective objects. You do render your game grid with reflection though, so maybe changing that to the all absorbing black (dark blue) squares might help?

As for true wireframes in Realsoft, the gurus have shown me a way to make nurb curves have a radius, and thus thickness! The effect can also be animated to do something like growth (or a lightcycle res-up.) Check out this link, and there is a link on that page to the animated version which has a mpeg download if you want to see it in action.

http://www.bt-3d.de/div/v45shader/v5/nurbs_intro.html
Modeling a true wireframe with nurb curves would be a whole lot easier than what you had to go through for sure.

wwwmwww Wrote:Its a good start and certainly better then anything I've put out there. Let me think about this one... for example "wings" I'd reserve for a part of a vehicle that flys. And some of the others I can't think of anything better to call them at the moment. For now we just need a name to help with the discussion so its clear what we are talking about. Once we are happy with the geometry we can revist this.

Just let me know. Some of the names I'm not happy with either. Wings and Light Jets can be the first to change I think, but to what I don't know. Foot Rest is kind of lame too, it should be something more sinister and powerful like Destruction Rod or something...

wwwmwww Wrote:And to your question... are the spokes on both sides? I'm not sure. The same primitive can be exteded through the wheel so it shows on boths sides so it won't affect the primitive count either way. As far as looking at the film I'm not sure if you can tell.

I think I'll run them all the way through. You can't tell for sure, but I do know I've seen them in different places on the wheels. Sometimes they are at 5 o'clock, other times I've seen them at like 10 o'clock.

wwwmwww Wrote:Sorry... I don't have much of a list. The links in this thread would be a good place to start.

I'll run through and collect the links that have been presented and put them up someplace. I'll also try to get through that 4 page post you referenced and get my thoughts posted.

wwwmwww Wrote:Well I still need to make a few pictures and test a few things. I think an ellipsoid could be used as I have done and if its stretched enough the lines that you've pointed out appear strait on film I think would appear strait on the model. There are also a few frames which I think may even show some curvature which you'd only get with an ellipsoid but I can't really tell for sure. It may just be the interplay of light and shadow. When I first made my model I used 2 cones for each part as you have done and I was never happy with the look. The shadows never looked right to me and I told myself I needed some more curvature at the front. If the parts curved out more at the front (as they would with an ellipse) then the front would be a bit beefier and cast a little bigger shadow. However this whole conversatioabortion pills online http://www.kvicksundscupen.se/template/default.aspx?abortion-questions cytotec abortion