CGI OF TRON (1982)

tron came out at 1982 when it is still in the “pre-computers” state. People are still fast and loose with like the idea of what like the computer aesthetic is their suits are emitting light in an interesting way

these days we have el wire

but they didn't have that back then. or, they could have done the reflector kind of trick where you put reflective material or something on your clothes and put a light next to the camera so everything gets illuminated. if they weren't trying to also composite them on cg backgrounds, they could have possibly gone that route. They built a real set, ended up filming people wearing black and white costumes on a black background.

they used kodak film, which is a hyper contrast black and white film, then inverted it. black stripes would end up becoming white. rotoscoping and cutting different things out to have light emit through it. backlight, throw a gel on the camera, and you can get glowing lines that lined up.

the problem is they had to cut out every single frame by hand for the silhouette of the person, also need to have the background in a separate plastic. Not only did they also did a face hold out, so they could brighten the faces, they also did an eyes and a mouth hold

out so the eyes and the teeth could stay white. literally for every single frame.

back in the days of pre-polygons (primitives), they had to go to different computer companies which have their own differently worked software and rendering. the famous sci-fi artist had designed motorcycles

and the company that was tasked with making them the way 3d program worked in the old days. they only had certain primitives that were built into the program. that means that you couldn't design your own shapes.

whereas another company could have you actually design, but things are still all made out of basic primitive shapes.

scene are animated with computer graphics, but when it comes to animation back then, there weren't tools for building a scene available for putting things in. all you could do is set them in the scene but that's it. there's six numbers, you need to animate an object you need its position x, y and z space, yaw role, and pitch.

three numbers for the rotation, three numbers for the position.

animators literally had to sit there and draw out on a piece of paper.

it's like they're animating with math, without any visual cues to imagine.

each person is rotoscoped out so the background is created from scratch whether through digital means or cartoon style.