[Software] MecaBricks - Online Design Tool

[Scrubs]

I added a Setting Panel to the model viewing module (used on mecabricks itself as well as external websites such as brickset or bricker).

Click on the top right button on the main window to make it appear.

You can then change the Field of View (FOV) using the slider and switch between 2 control modes - Trackball (default mode as before) and the new First Person. This last mode is pretty cool to visit the inside of the big buildings.

You can use the arrow keys to move forward, backward, left and right (works with Z, S, Q, D or W, S, A, D ). to go up and down use the keys P and L.

Try with the Parisian Restaurant for example. I generally increase the FOV to about 50 to get a better experience with the First Person mode.

Hope you like it .

Edited February 11, 2014 by Scrubs

[Calabar]

Very interesting.

Maybe you can add some preset for the FOV, for example a "default" one and a "fist person view" one.

[sprucerocks31]

Whenever I go on the workshop a pop up appears with icons of browsers and it they lead to non Lego sites. Why is this happening?

Edited April 2, 2014 by Superkalle
Moved to correct topic

[Calabar]

@sprucerocks31

This means that your system don't supporto WebGL, necessary for MecaBricks to work.

Sometime this is due to the browser (WebGL have to be supported by the Browser), so the website redirect you the the main pages of the browsers that supports WebGL.

To understand where is the problem, could you report here operating system, video card (and its driver version) and browser you are using?

[Renderbricks]

I am a 3D animator for 20 years but running a studio for a long time now and more stucked to business tasks. LEGO is of course the mother of all 3D *:-).

I just found your impressive website and I was wondering if it's possible to get my models I want to create with Mecabricks into Blender. I am asking this because I am playing with digital LEGO time by time and used LDRAW to import my models into Softimage via Blender what works pretty nice. Here's one stress test I did with a basic simulation: https://vimeo.com/84670417

I was hoping to create models in LDD and get them into Softimage via LeoCAD or MLCad but the LDRAW library doesn't support all LEGO pieces what is a bit annyoing. I wished LEGO would give us access to their LDD models. *:-)

When I read that Mecabricks is based on Blender models I was hoping that there will be a way to export our creations to Blender. From there I just use FBX to get the pieces into Softimage what works perfectly. And my simple example on Vimeo rendered with ARNOLD shows that this is a pretty nice method to animate and render in another 3d software. Unfortunately the bricks aren't beveled and the models in Softimage can't be modified easily due to their polygonal structure due to the export/import. The bevel tool in Blender is nice but needs a lot of manual work what isn't an option. There's a tool called LDD2POVRAY where you can render your LDD creations with POV-Ray what does all the nice details like the LEGO logo on the studs. But this is a secondary thing.

I hope you can help me and the community to do more nice things with the Mecabricks creations. Keep up the impressive work.

Michael

[Scrubs]

Hello,

I've been away from the forum for a little while - even if I've been reading some topics - but here I am :-)

I started to work on the 3rd version of the workshop - recoded from a fresh start - however I've been side tracked when I've seen that Threejs (the 3D framework that I use) is trialling a ray tracing renderer. I briefly played with it today and here is a picture that I generated from a scene built with mecabricks. It is not perfect, but very promissing. Maybe in a close future when this renderer is more advanced, I'll include it in the production version of mecabricks to render more realistic pictures of the 3D models.

[Scrubs]

I've been working for the past week on the new upcoming version of the workshop for mecabricks. I have a lot of ideas to try and code. After a couple of years, my experience and the feedback of users, I start to know what works and what doesn't. So with that in mind I started fresh with a brand new optimised code. Here is a quick video showing how the part/group snap function might work:

Edited May 11, 2014 by Scrubs

[legolijntje]

That's an interesting way of snapping the bricks...

I'm looking forward to see more progress reports

[Renderbricks]

This website is really impressive.

[Scrubs]

A quick overview of my work for the new revision of the workshop. Here is my work in progress for the template:

workshop rev3 by mecabricks, on Flickr

Edited May 14, 2014 by Scrubs

[Foton]

Hi ,

I try to use Mecabricks because I run on Linux and LDD or SR3D require some adjustment. So I look for online stuff which works imediatelly.

Mecabricks surprise me, they look great!

But I can not find out, how to make brick to snap to studs. It just go through.

Trying to make base of modular house with 32x32 baseplate and four 1x2 Technick bricks on 10-11 stud from border. And they are not catching the plate.

Is there any feature, I should know, that aligned them properly?

Snap selection to grid does not seem to do anything. Grid is measured in which units? Studs?

Edited May 23, 2014 by Foton

[Scrubs]

Hello,

There is actually no real snap function as such in mecabricks. The easiest way to align the parts is to grab and pull the arrows of the x, y or z axis with the mouse. Base plates are a bit annoying currently -i located the origin on the wrong side... and they have to be manually put down 3.5 unit on the y axis.

The new version i m working on shall simplify most of those issues as rotations/translations are independent from the part origin. However it might not be online before at least a month.

If you wish you can check this tutorial i made a while ago

Hope it helps

[Foton]

Hi Scrubs,

I watch both tutorials ("Frog"

and "Stand" in french

) before asking.

I used SR3D or LDD, so I expect from Mecabrick snapping to stud too.

I will try your suggestion.

[Scrubs]

Real part snapping is not so easy to implement plus it is kinda hard to get it right. I don't think that LDD is 100% successful either. You can also play with the grid size (small, medium or large) which will constrain the transformation (local or world) while pulling the translation or rotation arrows. Most of the time I use the medium grid - 1/2 a stud on x and z axis and 1/3 of brick height on y axis (= plate height).

Besides, I wouldn't recommend watching at the "Stand" on youtube anymore as it is obsolete. It was made with the very first version.

It just put online another video with a quick presentation of the progress made on the development of the next version. I'm in a hurry to finish it and use it as it looks so much better to me than the current one ;-) I'll probably make you guys try in a few weeks to see what you are thinking about it.

Edited May 26, 2014 by Scrubs

[Scrubs]

Here is another video showing a little bit more about groups and how they work. You can also quickly see how the snap function has been implemented. My to do list is getting smaller and I start to see the end of it :-)

[Scrubs]

I almost have a version ready for testing (I still need to work on the open/save functions). So if some of you guys are interested to test that, let me know. In the same time here is a video showing how to build and rotate a group of parts attached with ball joint bricks.

Edited June 8, 2014 by Scrubs

[Scrubs]

Hello,

I come back with a new short video which shows how to build a LEGO Minifig with the new workshop, add accessories, change the pose, etc. I just need to finish a couple of things and my goal is to make it available as a beta version by next weekend - both the old and the new version will be available but only the new workshop will be able to open the old and new models. Hope you will like it.

Edited June 15, 2014 by Scrubs

[Calabar]

Hi Scrubs, a pair of fast questions:

• will be possible to choose a size for the objects in the lower panel (where bricks are displayed) .
  
• will be possible to temporarily pep up (with a slide up?) the lower panel so that more objects will be displayed? The panel would collapse again in a single row when you choose a brick to insert in the scene.
  
• is the new UI tought for touchscreen devices too?
  

Edited June 15, 2014 by Calabar

[Scrubs]

Hello,

To answer your questions:

1. It's not implemented but if needed it could be done.

2. Same as 1, but it sounds like a very good idea i might have a look into soon :-)

3. Most of it shall work with touch screens but it's not the primary target.

[Scrubs]

Hi everybody,

You can now try the new version of the mecabricks workshop. It is still a beta version but in my point of view it is already pretty stable. I might still change a few things before it fully replaces the current version though. It has been re-written pretty much from the ground in order to make it more efficient in terms of resources needed as well as building usability. I hope you will like it! Don't hesitate to give me your feedback, I'll be more than happy to answer and take your comments into account.

In the next few weeks, I will regenerate the part icons, complete the reference points and re-organise the part library - pretty time consuming as there are about 2000 parts.

I will also spend some time to write a quick user manual that summarises the functions and shortcuts.

It has been 2 years now that I launched mecabricks as a google experiment and 1000s of hours spent in front of the computer later, I start to be pretty happy about the direction it is heading towards.

The links:

English -> http://www.mecabrick...n/workshop/beta

Français -> http://www.mecabrick...r/workshop/beta

A few shortcuts:

A - Select all / Deselect all

B - Select parts located in the area

C - Screenshot

D - Clone selection

H - Hide selection

ALT + H - Show everything

J - Group selection

ALT + J - Ungroup selection

M - Toggle between translation and rotation gizmo

P - Select Pivot Point

R + (X or Y or Z) + numerical value - Rotation along selected axis in the global or local space

S - Select snap point

T + (X or Y or Z) + numerical value - Translation along selected axis in the global or local space

V - Toggle between Global and Local Space

Z - Toggle between Wireframe and Texture render

ESC - Deactivated selected tools / Cancel rotation or translation

SPACE - Change camera orientation

CTRL/CMD + Click: Add or remove a part/group to the selection

Edited June 21, 2014 by Scrubs

[Renderbricks]

Unbelievable awesome!!!

[Scrubs]

I kept working for the past few weeks on this new revision of the workshop to remove the bugs and improve the user experience.

Selection of parts is now more visual with the edges and colours changing when a part is focused or selected (instead of bounding boxes) plus as a cool feature, I added a new display style - Shaded with edges. It gives the models a cool cartoony style by adding black edges to the parts.

Shaded with edges by mecabricks, on Flickr

Edited July 9, 2014 by Scrubs

[legolijntje]

That's looking realy good! Are you sure it's still in a browser?

[Scrubs]

Yep, it starts to look good - especially when the computer/browser support the antialiasing. I know that I could still optimise the speed and rendering. Threejs is really an awesome framework for WebGL!

[Scrubs]

I added a simple forum that I coded this weekend to improve a bit the support and be easily reached by the users: http://www.mecabricks.com/en/forum

It is still pretty empty but hopefully, I will include there posts containing tips, bugs, improvements, requests etc.