Quote: "Tron had post fx for the characters suits, but I think most of the rest of it was models, there was about 15mins of computer animation iirc, and most of that was the light cycle race and the grid bugs, the rest was standard special fx, last starfighter used a lot more computer graphics."
tron was well over 50 layers of acetone and photographic material in very large sizes layered on top of each other, composited in korea for cheap, but this process created problems with wet bubbles in between the cells. they apadted those irregular problems to be apart of the scene by adding a small sound to them as if its data bits flying by.
as for the CGI in tron it had to be created with a similar language akin to povray 0.01
it took months to render the scenes and the models were basically boolean 3d operations to create the shapes. the scenes were just black painted movie studio warehouses and a few blocks made of wood which could be moved around to simulate ledges or background obstacles.
Ive watched the creation of tron many times.
ILM and thomas knoll is how photoshop got its full fledged wings before adobe systems bought it out. ILM (George.L) and the university of UTAH have a lot to say for todays photoshop incarnation. as well as post production techniques.
the latest state of the art packages to work with is shake and maya in combination for advanced compositing as featured in the matrix and moulon rouge, lord of the rings etc..
'massive' the program was used to create the army scenes in LOTR but composited using shake.
most of the disney work created 70 years ago is still more alluring then some renders.
however stuff like reboot was amazing in its timeframe.
If no-one gives your an answer to a question you have asked, consider:- Is your question clear.- Did you ask nicely.- Are you showing any effort to solve the problem yourself 
