Regarding Tron and the recollection of friend-of-a-friend-who-worked
there anecdotes, it reminds me of what's still happening in the
computer graphics business today: everyone wants to take credit
for what's on the screen.
For example, the company I work for, Viewpoint DataLabs
<
http://www.viewpoint.com>, did the modelling for the recent
movies Godzilla and ANTZ. What does this mean?
It means our artists and 3D modelers created some of the data used
by some other company's animators. Of course, our PR people
trumpet the fact that Viewpoint made Godzilla. Well, we made
the computer model by digitizing and finesse-ing some big rubber
scale models made by someone else. And it goes on and on...
some other company does the animating, someone else does the
rendering, someone else does the compositing of real and fake
images, someone else produced it, someone else funded this or
that, someone else's 3D software was used to render it.
At Siggraph, the industry's big trade show, the Kingston memory chip
booth wasn't far from our booth, and they spent the week telling
people to buy their memory because it was used in the machines
that rendered scenes from Titanic.
Back to Tron, though - three-four years ago, I remember meeting
someone at a Siggraph who claimed to have worked on Tron, and who
still had a copy of the original computer 3D models. I think he was
a Caucasian wearing a robe and Sikh-like turban, but my memory
may be faulty. If the truth is ever documented, I'm sure Tron
was assembled using what equipment they could afford, and whatever
could get the job done to the satisfaction of those paying the bills.
- John
Received on Mon Oct 05 1998 - 10:09:30 BST