02
Year 2, Apr 2026
3D environment
Tron Diorama
A living room made of glass, chrome and light.
When
Year 2, Apr 2026
What
3D environment
Tools
Blender
My part
Modelling, materials, lighting and rendering. Some furniture came from asset packs.
A diorama inspired by TRON: Legacy, recreating the living room where Sam Flynn and his father finally meet. I made it while I was first learning emission lighting in Blender, and how to compose with light.
Why I made it
I was first learning emission lighting in Blender, and how to play with light and composition.
The brief was for us to make a diorama, and I chose TRON: Legacy as my inspiration. I wanted to recreate the original living room where Sam Flynn and his father finally meet.
It was a challenge, but I loved the process of making it.
The whole room from the doorway.
The light-cycle on its plinth.
The cycle from behind, chrome and black glass.
Glass-framed chairs with emissive edges.
The modular sofa and the screen wall.
The pod seat, lit from inside its frame.
The console against the stacked-stone wall.
The bookshelf that makes people lean in.
From above: how the room is laid out.
The first render, April 2026.
Working view in Blender.
The scene before lighting.
The point was to see how much of a room is really the light.
The furniture was in place long before the room worked. It only came alive once the reflections, the glass and the emission were right.
How it moved
The proposal
Warm light for my own reading of it, or red to reference TRON: ARES.
The build
Glass, chrome, stacked stone and emissive floors, with a light-cycle and a wall of books.
The decision
Cool white and cyan won, against one dark stone wall. I had to be able to defend that.
What it started
Light stopped being the last step of a render and became the thing I wanted to study.
The work
Learning
Once the reflections, glass and emission were right, the room came alive. Film sets build mood from very few materials. And a diorama teaches through scale: people lean in to read the story in the shelf of books, the chair frames, the light-cycle.
Design
Design here meant translating a reference into my own scene. My proposal considered warm light, or red for TRON: ARES. The final renders resolve into a cool white-and-cyan room against a dark stacked-stone wall. I stopped copying a look and started defending choices.
Experience
It pulls you in by the glow, then you start noticing the furniture. I wanted people to feel they were standing in a film set. It has only ever been seen on screen, so I don’t know how it feels as a physical model or a walkable scene.
What others showed me
My main teacher here was the film, and how its set designers build a world out of so little. I kept wondering how they came up with it. I didn't record any peer feedback on these renders. That's a gap I'd fix next time.
Strongest at
Lighting and atmosphere.
Still growing
Modelling from scratch (some furniture came from asset packs) and managing render time.
Next
Proper lighting workflows, geometry nodes and baking. Then a short walkthrough, so the room has a path, a beginning and an end.