{"id":1054,"date":"2025-12-08T17:43:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T17:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cogitateandpercolate.com\/?p=1054"},"modified":"2026-06-29T14:09:38","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T14:09:38","slug":"my-tron-build-part-2-light-cycle-solar-sailer-and-avatars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cogitateandpercolate.com\/?p=1054","title":{"rendered":"My Tron Build Part 2: Light Cycle, Solar Sailer, and Avatars"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Tron Light Cycle<\/h2>\n

There are MANY fan art pieces for the Tron Light Cycle (Sketchfab Tron Light Cycle search results<\/a>, ArtStation search results<\/a>) showing many styles, emphasizing different elements. I did giggle at a model out there that used a human with bare feet. There is even a significant difference between the Light Cycles shown at Comic Con<\/a> (green and blue) and in the Tron 2 movie (orange and blue). I picked the features that I wanted to for my 3D Light Cycle object which I made in blue and purple.<\/p>\n

The
\n Light Cycle was a two day build and I completely restarted it once.
\nRelatively, this was a fast build but I had a lot of fun making it. It’s
\n too bad that it does whiz past in the actual scene, but I<\/i> know it’s
\ncool. \ud83d\ude0e<\/p>\n

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Lightcycle – Work in Progress, first attempt<\/p>\n

In my first attempt, I started with the wheels which turned out pretty good. But I was primed by this video of a Light Cycle remake<\/a>. But I didn’t like that core which was a mesh cylinder.<\/p>\n

In my second attempt, I just used a mesh cube because that was easier to use loop cuts to get faces that I could pull the arms, legs, and head from. I did add in a mesh cylinder, however, for the light “engine”. I knew that it needed an added glowing tail, but I made the texture for the Solar Sailer and reused it for what Tron lore calls the Light Cycle Ghost Tail.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Work in Progress Light Cycle, second attempt <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

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Light Cycle in Hubs with the glowing tail. Transparent texture made in Gimp.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Similar but different<\/h3>\n

I realized after I pressed Publish (the world’s greatest proofreader) that I had not fully explained what I meant by this build utilizing negative space<\/i>. Also, I need to properly give credit for the light cycle animation, which goes to Hubs community member, Theanine. I did look at his Synthcity Blender file to find out how he animated his spaceships.  I was wondering: did he use a generator of some kind or did he use animation. The answer was animation.<\/p>\n

However, while I was there looking at his blend file, I realize that there was a some common “look” from his Synthcity build and my Tron build– both used glowing colors. However, I used a negative space idea and depended on my textures to carry the work and he actually HAS the heavy work in his build.<\/p>\n

Here is an example. In Synthcity, windows are added planes that have their own glowing material shading. In Tron, any windows are created as a result of rectangular shapes in the texture. So I didn’t build windows into my buildings.  I left my buildings (all of them) as plain shapes.  But when I applied the texture, I saw how Blender applied the 2D texture to a 3D shape and with little editing, I went with the results. The straight lines and dashes on the textures became apparent as windows and road paint.  So I didn’t bother with the details that Theanine had, but I got a very similar result!  Synthcity is going for a video game city look and Tron is going for a city as circuit board look.  But Theanine was gracious to comment favorably on my Tron build and that should make all artists happy.<\/p>\n

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Tron Solar Sailer<\/a><\/h2>\n

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In the Tron 2 movie (TRON: Legacy), it is implied that Sam and Quorra fall in love on the Solar Sailer– which I find a bit rich. \ud83d\ude15 But the scene of them on the Solar Sailer sailing into Tron city is beautiful and I wanted to replicate that.<\/p>\n

I used Blender make the shape of the solar sailer (easy, one day). I made the sail texture in Blender as well, which turned into what I call a happy accident when I’m making my art. I made a cylinder, shaped as a six-sided hexagon, made glowing beveled edges, duplicated it, snuggled them up to each other to fill the camera view with a good scale. I did a bit of tweaking to try to make the texture seamless but alas, no one really notices it so far into the sky.  But when I went to render a 2D image out of this 3D object set, you guessed it – completely black. I had not put ANY light into the scene so Blender was like “Nope, you get completely black as a result.”  So I threw a “light” source haphazardly over the scene while saying something like “Give me SOMETHING lit” and Blender rendered the texture I show in the Inspiration image—it’s a lit just a bit of left-center.  And I realized— YES! That’s how I see my Solar Sailer moving through the scene! It will float through on the right side of the city so it will be “lit” from the left.<\/p>\n

What a cool, happy accident! I ran with that texture. It’s actually one of my proudest accomplishments because instead of a flat texture, I had a texture that meant something real inside the scene (and I simply changed the color for a purple equivalent Solar Sailer). <\/p>\n

One Hubs note here: I thought about trying to put a waypoint on the Solar Sailer so that visitors could go up and sit on it (ride it?) just like the Inspiration image above.  But I did remember that Hubs doesn’t do moving objects to ride on. Later, I asked a Hubs expert about it and he said that a visitor could go to the waypoint (utilize it) but then they’ll stay on one place in space as the object the waypoint is attached to moves on.  Oh well, a future version of the software will accommodate moving waypoints, I’m sure.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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Tron Solar Sailer<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Tron Avatar<\/h2>\n

No Tron avatar is complete without an identity disk so I attempted that first. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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Sketchfab models in wireframe mode are very helpful for building. <\/p>\n

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My Identity Disk in blue<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
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I
\n customized an already available orange and white “Spaceman” avatar from Hubs, created by
\n Jim Conrad. <\/p>\n

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I changed the base texture using Gimp and added a Tron
\nIdentity disk on the back. I removed the air supply hose.<\/div>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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Work in progress: Adding my Identity Disk in Blender<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Space person blue<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Space person purple<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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I
\n made a blue avatar for all of my attendees by placing it up on my Hubs
\ninstance and taking all other avatars offline for guests via the Hubs Admin Panel. <\/i>Then I made a purple avatar for me to wear as host (and it was a hint that a purple Grid was coming).<\/p>\n

In Part 3<\/a>, I’ll cover the big reveal as this build was not even leaked to the public before the opening day, Halloween 2025.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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\n  Tron Light Cycle There are MANY fan art pieces for the Tron Light Cycle (Sketchfab Tron Light Cycle search…\n<\/div>\n
Continue reading “My Tron Build Part 2: Light Cycle, Solar Sailer, and Avatars”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[183,226,188,22,229,187,228,227,27,138,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-3d","category-art","category-blender","category-design","category-futuristic","category-hubs","category-sci-fi","category-tron","category-vr","category-webxr","category-xr","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cogitateandpercolate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cogitateandpercolate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cogitateandpercolate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cogitateandpercolate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cogitateandpercolate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cogitateandpercolate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1070,"href":"https:\/\/cogitateandpercolate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions\/1070"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cogitateandpercolate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cogitateandpercolate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cogitateandpercolate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cogitateandpercolate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}