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Creating the Software Art In Tron Legacy
hownottowrite writes "A software artist has posted an overview of the coding behind the tools used to create Tron Legacy's special effects. 'In Tron, the hacker was not supposed to be snooping around on a network; he was supposed to kill a process. So we went with posix kill and also had him pipe ps into grep. I also ended up using emacs eshell to make the terminal more l33t. The team was delighted to see my emacs performance — splitting the editor into nested panes and running different modes. I was tickled that I got emacs into a block buster movie.' Ok, it's mostly a lot of awesome images, but there's a nifty reveal about an homage to Bit."
Can't post anything intelligent about the article, (MCP seems to have locked me out), so I'll say something about the movie: I mostly loved it, but it needed more TRON. He should have been a much more important character. Users' sake, his name is half of the movie title!
This might be helpful... http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PDbfWzLJrQUJ:jtnimoy.net/workviewer.php%3Fq%3D178+http://jtnimoy.net/workviewer.php%3Fq%3D178+cache&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com
You're exactly right. It doesn't change how bad emacs is.
Stallman and the FSF may now insist that the movie be released on DVD as GNU/Tron Legacy.
...but can it edit text yet?
Aside from the fact that Encom is/was a free software company.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
Well, it does prove one thing. In the future, humans will have evolved more hands so that they can actually USE emacs.
Monstar L
poor, shallow storytelling.
Who cares. The Net showed off Jasik's Debugger!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I spit on your keyboard, noov ctrl-x ctrl-x ctrl-i b ctrl-dd...awe, damnit...
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
It was running "SolarOS"
No, we won't evolve them, we'll build them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkyZGZRnQb4
Perfect for emacs.
--
BMO
meta-x move-one-character-to-the-right ...... excellent (rub finger tips together)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKUOB8MN4Kc
... who used emacs.
While I do see the GNU blend of 'top', various programs associated with the Linux kernel, and the 'Xorg' server that was not released until 2004, I don't see anything to distinguish from one blend of Linux to the next, unless are you making the incorrect assumption that all Linux is a blend of Ubuntu? I would be more impressed about that old ass computer that has been sitting in storage since the 80's had 2GB of memory.
ps | grep? I've been happy since pgrep was added (to Solaris first, but then reimplemented on Linux and FreeBSD/NetBSD). I thought I'd mention it here in case some people reading haven't run into it yet, 'cause even though it's a pretty minor thing, it's neat :-)
Since there is nothing to see here I've got an interesting Tron story. I must have watched the original at least 25-30 times through the years, I own a 12" laserdisc and DVD's of it, and never really noticed before, but after re-watching it on TV the other day due to sheer boredom, I finally noticed a name at the end credits I never recognized before - Peter Jurasik. It suddenly dawned on me that was the actor who played Londo Molari on Babylon 5 - you know, the Centauri ambassador with the Peacock / Bozo hair. I tried to think of who it was in the movie, and realized it's the accounting /actuarial program that gets imprisoned at the beginning along with ROM? CROM?. He says of the MCP - "Who does he calculate he is, anyway?". That's him! Just thought I'd share that bit of trivia with everyone.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Well, now everyone will copy and paste the output from the DVD, but I saw it in the theatre.
And I saw Flynn key in "uname -a" and I tried to parse the listing for interesthing things.
Alas, all I caught as the OS was named "SolarOS" and the arch was "sun4m". A tribute to ye olde SunOS, I guess (SunOS/sparc).
Though, I'd love that nice popup history window...
If emacs had ctrl alt shift meta laserbeam I'd switch. :laser is too clunky.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Can anyone comment on what the blog post author means by the "Processing" community? What's he talking about?
I was tickled that I got emacs into a block buster movie.
Always good to see Emacs getting some screen time.
... I'll come back to that one) but I imagine even regular people can subconsciously detect the difference between realistic computer stuff and "I'm going to virtualize an inverse Java applet to localize the virus!"
I'm reminded of the line from The Social Network "It's definitely necessary to break out emacs and modify that perl script." Anyone who's done screen scraping could totally relate to that sequence (PHP and redirects
... also, I can kill you with my brain.
In the theaters I laughed when he ran top and I saw XOrg running from the 1986 computer. HA.
Try running that on a machine from 2004 and see how much resources it eats up.
http://saveie6.com/
TFA is totally slashdotted..
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
Bah, who needs emacs! I'll stick with vi anyday! :wq
I don't think it counts as a slashdot if the editors link the site wrong. Furthermore, it looks like the images are hosted at amazon web services. So I think the site (when linked to properly) will handle the traffic just fine.
...someone did it right. Now somebody needs to go back and digitally alter the original film so that Flynn is entering legitimate Unix commands into the terminal instead of the made up BS they put in there.
Hey, at least it doesn't make me enter a new mode to start editing text - you know, the 'delete everything' mode instead of the other one, 'beep constantly'
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
We write apps for Nokia Symbian phones and publish them on Ovi Store:
http://store.ovi.com/publisher/BITIMPRESS/
After liking Tron Legacy alot we wrote a screensaver which mimics the behaviour of the door code unlocker app Flynn is using:
here is a video of our app in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FhvPpIF_zM
here is the Tron Legacy trailer where the N8 is used to unlock the door (Nokia product placement), starts around 0:49
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkFErfVoBW0
You can get our app for free on Ovi Store:
http://store.ovi.com/content/99490
(the Ovi Store link does not work yet on N8 and other Symbian^3 phones since the Symbian^3 app is currently in Nokia QA so it should be up in a few days).
You can download it directly too (on the N8 too) from our site:
http://apps.bitimpress.com/codeunlocker_installer.sis
The app is enjoying quite nice success, several thousand downloads per day, last peak was 16k per day :)
PS: if any of the Tron creators read this, how was the original footage created ? The N8 just playing a video of the code unlocking sequence or was it a custom app written for the N8 ?
thanks,
BitImpress
http://www.bitimpress.com/
not enough 1's and 0's.
And certainly never enough screw-sorting!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Nice! Now all we need is a port for the N900... Or better yet, hook it into John or a wep-cracker; Make something both cool -and- useful!
All joking aside, cudos to you guys for creating - and releasing for free - something as cool as that. Good work!
I saw Tron: Legacy in theatres long before my current project which involves loading CPU images into an FPGA bank and running software on top of that.
Though I've always wondered how that would translate to the TRON world - after all, I can take down the soft-CPU (it's an ARM core) with a click of a button, reload it with another ARM code (and peripherals) with another click, etc.
Always wondered how that would translate. (And while I don't load Linux on them, others apparently do load Linux on them as well).
Yeah, it makes no sense, but sometimes it's fun to consider what happens.
Impressive as his graphics may be, it seems the author fails at basic physics:
"Fireworks, mmmm. I started with a regular physics simulation where a particle has an upward force applied at birth, sending it upward while gravity pulls it back down resulting in a parabola"
Didn't he mean "where a particle has an upward VELOCITY applied at birth"?
I get that you don't like the plot. I won't argue that (even if I *did* enjoy it). Get over it. This is an article about the cool nerd-effects that some of the art team did, with high res screenshots that many of us won't see unless we pause a high-def movie on an HDTV, and even then might not notice.
- technically accurate computer use, a rarity in most films.
- geometrically-shaped fireworks. Wow. I never even noticed the fireworks in the film, but there's something cool about that
- talking about the various background-ish effects and how they were made (in not-enough-detail).
This was an awesome article, presented by someone who put a lot of effort into making software-generated effects that are very different (?) from the typical modeling of artificial humans or CGI spaceships. I found it tremendously interesting, and want to learn a lot more about it. It's petty of you to dismiss the article (and the work that the visual effects team did) simply because you think that the movie was "easy" to make.
Having seen both movies and played 2.0, I have to ask... where did you get that idea?
In the opening scene when Flynn is talking to Sam, he states that He, Tron and CLU developed a system where all information was free and open and about how beautiful that is.
At the Encom OS 12 release in Legacy Allan asks about the prices charged for Flynn OS, renamed Encom OS, and is then told that the idea of sharing or giving away the software disappeared with Flynn.Then the source is released, which makes the OS open source, even if just due to malicious reasons.
Then Sam is arguing with the security guard on the roof and says "You can't steal something that was designed to be free."
I'm relatively sure there are also other references in Legacy and 2.0 which talk about free and open systems.
I doubt there's anything about it in the first movie though.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
In the opening scene when Flynn is talking to Sam, he states that He, Tron and CLU developed a system where all information was free and open and about how beautiful that is.
Unfortunately, the system to which you're/Kevin was referring was the System that TRON and CLU were in; Flynn's standalone "sun4m" in the arcade's basement; without even so much as a serial port connected to it. The only ways in and out were the CD drive (from Betrayal), the Laser (and whatever bodgied-up USB port Sam apparently used to connect his Nokia smartphone to a 1980s computer). You've actually made CLU's point - Flynn locked them into this "digital Galapagos Island" and left them to rot for their equivalent of (assuming the director's stated 50:1 ratio of) a thousand years.
At the Encom OS 12 release in Legacy Allan asks about the prices charged for Flynn OS, renamed Encom OS, and is then told that the idea of sharing or giving away the software disappeared with Flynn.
The Disney chronology says Flynn retired from game design (and hence, software production) in 1985 to focus on his "research"; then disappeared in 1989. So for 24-odd years, Flynn was not in charge of Encom. If you read Betrayal or listen to what Alan said in Legacy, Kevin left the running of the company to the Board.
We can very safely assume that the behaviour Mackie displays in the midnight boardroom meeting is Standard Operating Procedure for Encom - commercial software.
Even before all of that, we only ever saw Flynn's game software in arcade machines. Before the real world's Fuzebox or Pandora, how many open-source arcade games have you seen?
Then the source is released, which makes the OS open source, even if just due to malicious reasons.
Richard M. Stallman and his katanas would like a horribly painful word with you. Steve Ballmer will smash what's left of you with a chair.
The source was stolen. For Sam to have made Encom OS12 "Open Source", he would have to have re-licensed it as Open Source.
Which, by the way, shows how little Kitsis and Horowitz know. Dillinger Jr.'s solution to "say it was the plan to release it free all along" would collapse the very moment the TRON-world's version of Slashdot were to download the torrent and inspect the licensing terms inside.
Then Sam is arguing with the security guard on the roof and says "You can't steal something that was designed to be free."
"Licensed". Not "designed". Thank you for providing yet more evidence that Kitsis and Horowitz are clueless, pathetic, incompetent hacks who couldn't be bothered doing an ounce of research, let alone critical thinking, before being paid thousands of dollars for their ignorant scribblings inscribed upon a beautifully-graphically-polished, well-musically-scored, yet-still-excrementally-stinking turd.
I'm sure she doesn't need me to; but I would weep for Bonnie MacBird. I would love dearly to be able to read a copy of her original draft of TRON before sellout-Lisberger, Disney or Charlie Haas got to it.
I too, quasi-worshipped Lisberger, until I heard what he did to MacBird's original script (and noticed how he'd gotten behind the new movie too, after comparing it with his statements in the 20th Anniversary DVD).
I'm relatively sure there are also other references in Legacy and 2.0 which talk about free and open systems.
I doubt there's anything about it in the first movie though.
Actually, by the criteria you're using, there was. TRON, in trying to convince Dumont to hide them from the System Guards and let him access the I/O Tower, told Dumont that "this could be a free System again"; that Dumont would have "Programs lining up to use" the Tower again.
It was indeed, as you say, an awesome article about the awesome graphics.
What a shame the computer use wasn't THAT technically accurate. Or that the plot - THE KEY COMPONENT of the movie - could've had a fraction of that skill and talent put into it.
And Slashdot hasn't done a lot of Legacy discussion (there's probably more Original discussion here). So, given that we're not bagging the article itself, please let us express our disappoinment with the incredible disparity of works and efforts here.
While I admit that it must've sucked for the programs inside the grid to be locked there for 1,000 years, that doesn't change that the system was designed to be "free and open." Which to me means, free and open. Whatever happened to the system after CLU took over, and after the board ousted Allen, the system was designed to be free and open. The intent behind the system, prior to Flynn getting trapped inside it, was that it was to be free and open. Which, I guess doesn't mean that Encom was in support of the concepts of OSS, just that Flynn believed in them and wanted information to be free. The physical box that the system was stored in doesn't really mean anything either, as it was just the research station Flynn was using and shouldn't be taken as the final form that the Digital Frontier would eventually take.
Your arcade game point is also totally valid.
My comment about the source being stolen and released was nothing but my being glib.
But, at any rate, after reading your points, I agree, Encom in present day Tron-land, is not a FOSS company. I also tip my hat to you, your knowledge is impressive.
I will offer, that once Flynn took over, it was supposed to be. Barring his being trapped, the principals that Kevin and Allen held would've made it so. Note, that this is just me trying to get any points in a debate with you in which I am clearly outmatched in terms of background knowledge, and thus interpretation of the facts.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
Sir, you are congratulating me for, what is effectively a silly almost-obsession on my part. I just find too much enthusiasm on this topic; I should be grateful it doesn't make me dysfunctional in this society. You are most gracious.
I should also point out that you're right regarding Flynn's principle; having experienced what a "free and open" system should be like, he would design such a system - to the point where the Programs don't even have to respond to User requests. I think you're entirely right.
What this means though is that I too am also entirely right - Kitsis and Horowitz screwed up. The TRON-Sector website supposedly has, posted in one of its forum pages, an e-mail interview with Bonnie MacBird - original writer of the TRON story... which was then "polished" by Lisberger, Haas and others. Apparently, if it's true, MacBird's story was much more thorough in working through the story logic.
If someone like MacBird (who interviewed, then eventually MARRIED an actual programmer) had written Legacy, she almost certainly would've gotten the whole damn thing MUCH more right.
My hat, sir; it is tipped to you.
I 100% advocate debates like this. Especially ones about trivial and fictional matters.
I really love Tron, and Legacy and 2.0. But unlike some of my other fictional obsessions, I don't know enough about it to actually debate the 'factual' aspects of the universe.
You've made me search out the book now, because I am interested in furthering my knowledge of the canon.
I don't doubt that had someone who /knew/ something about computers would've been able to put more accurate nomenclature in the movies, but as is, we get what we get.
Hats tipped to civil debates all around! Had I any mod points, your arguments would've got them +1 insightful.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me