TRON 3 LIGHT CYCLE

As you are aware I am a big TRON fan. We went to see TRON 3: Ares and had to build the light cycle.

The project took 5 days (on-n-off).

I gathered some reference images from the net including a plan drawing of the TRON 2 bike as a guide for scale. Most refs were really dark, so it was hard to make out the detail. This is where I let my own imagination take over so part original, part me.

The entire bike was modelled in Plasticity 3D, perfect for vehicle design as it’s a NURBS modeler. Plasticity’s line drawing tools are so intuitive and simple to use, this is how I created all the cut patterns for the wheel cases, MAXON take note on this, your spline drawing tools are way out of date and too clumsy to use.

The only things modelled in Cinema 4D was the handle grip cages. Was much easier to do with polys as well as the light trail which I used a spline deformer on.

Once I had the bike done, I imported it into Cinema 4D for texturing and lighting using Corona Renderer. I used a very high ‘bloom & glare’ setting so the lights really glow. For the scene lighting I used a 5^th Broadway night HDRI with a single spotlight on the bike with a few coloured fill lights.