How to apply custom decals on LDD renders

[BEAVeR]

You may have encountered it: you built a nice model in LDD, but it looks surreal because it lacks decorations on e.g. the minifigs. This tutorial is here to help you with that.

In this little tutorial, I will try to explain how you can enhance the POV-Ray renders of your LDD models with custom decorations. You can design entirely new figures for example, or you can apply the decorations that aren’t available in LDD.

My example in this tutorial will be a stormtrooper minifig. This figure lacks all decoration in LDD, and is commonly used in digital Star Wars builds. It gives me the opportunity to explain how to decorate surfaces that aren’t directly accessible in LDD, how to fit custom decals and explain the general principles.

This method doesn’t involve any hacking and doesn’t require any sick programming skills (although the custom decorations might need your artistic talents…). And the best of all: all programs I use here are entirely free! I’ll be using Lego Digital Designer, LDD2POV-Ray, POV-Ray and Inkscape. So let’s get started!

1. Decorate the target pieces in LDD
   

LDD2POV-Ray, the program that will eventually place your custom decorations, can only replace already applied decorations. So firstly, you need to give the pieces you want to decorate a replacement decoration in LDD. Make sure to use different decorations for each surface, so that you later can keep track of which filler to replace with which substitute. Also, taking a screenshot for reference is not a bad idea to support your memory.

But wait a minute… Some parts don’t allow for any decorations at all in LDD! Minifig torso’s are not a problem at all, but things like helmets are a whole different story. But luckily, there is an easy way to apply decorations that will work in most cases (no guarantees though!).

You have to export your .lxf file to the LXFML format (File -> Export Model).

This .lxfml file is actually a textual representation of your model. Among others, it contains a list with the placed parts, including their color(s) and decoration(s). To find your part, use the search function (Ctrl + F / Cmd + F) and type in:

in which you replace 30408 (the designID of the storm trooper helmet in this example) with the designID of the part you desperately want to decorate. You can find this ID by clicking on the part in LDD and looking at the bottom left corner. If multiple of these parts are available, you can give the specific part a different color and check for the one that says

materials=”26”

in which you replace 26 with the number of the color you used (you can find this number by hovering over the color in the color menu in LDD).

The key part is then to change the part that says

decorations=”0,0,0”

in which the amount of zeros dictates the amount of surfaces that you can decorate. If the line isn’t present at all, you’re out of luck and won’t be able to decorate your part. Otherwise, replace the zeros with valid decoration ID’s. It’s best to take decorations that are square and detailed (I will explain why later), so I suggest using the decorations of the 2x2 flat tiles. You can find these ID’s by placing some of these decorated tiles in your model, and check in the LXFML file what number is filled in in the decorations line of those parts. To make it easier for you, here are some handy decoration ID’s you can use:

73023, 63708, 99825, 55350, 63404, 601245

Then, save your file, and open it with LDD. You’ll see your parts are looking very ugly with those random decorations, but you’ll be happy to have decorations. You can copy these parts to a ‘normal’ .lxf file, and get rid of the parts you used to find the decoration numbers. Now we can move on to step 2!

2. Open your model with LDD2POV-Ray

LDD2POV-Ray is a program that converts your LDD model into a file that can be rendered with POV-Ray, a ray tracer that simulates the behaviour of real light to simulate a realistic effect. You can set lighting etc, but more importantly, you can set your own decorations. To do this, go to the “Decorations” tab, and check the box “Use custom decorations”. A list will appear at the bottom, showing all the decorations you used. Clicking on them will reveal a thumbnail. Now you’ll be happy that you used different decorations to know which is which.

You’ll notice that the decorations (unless they are square) are a bit stretched out. That’s because the program only accepts square decorations. So to load your own decorations, you’ll have to make sure they are square. Otherwise, they won’t cover the whole area you intended. If you already have your decorations (you found them on one of the indexes of the customisation forum here, for example), you can skip to step 4. Otherwise, I’ll give a brief account on how to make your own decorations in step 3.

3. Create your own decorations

Personally, I make my decorations with Inkscape. It’s an easy to use vector based program. That means you can easily create very clean, smooth and crisp shapes. I’ll leave it to others to educate you in this nice software, but I’ll show you some general strategies to make accurate decorations.

When working on complex curved shapes, like the storm trooper helmet, you won’t know for certain how your image will be mapped to the surface. That’s when the screenshot you took comes in handily. Because you have used decorations with a lot of detail (if you’ve been following properly!), you can easily see how the image is deformed and placed on the surface. You can identify the regions where you want your details to come, look to what part of the placed decoration it corresponds, see what it looks like in its flat state (you can see this in the thumbnail in LDD2POV-Ray), and place your detail in the according place.

So in the example of the storm trooper helmet, you can see that the mouth should somewhere at the center of the graph. LDD2POV-Ray shows that that graph is a bit above the, so now you know you have to place the mouth around the center of your decal.

When you’ve finished your decoration, you have to make sure your decoration is square. This will most certainly occur when you’re designing decorations for minifig torsos. If you leave it in its actual proportions and plug it in LDD2POV-Ray, you’ll see that the image doesn’t fill the whole area, compared to the stretched out decoration you have to replace. So you resize your decoration. In Inkscape, simply go to the top, where you can enter dimensions. Then you go to File -> Export Bitmap and a dialogue box will pop up. Make sure to select ‘from selection’, and that the amount of pixels of your image is high enough. Otherwise it will look pixelated in the render. Finally, chose .png as file format, and remove the background color of your decoration. Because it might look like the right color in Inkscape, but in your render it will look like the decal has a different color than the body, which isn’t what you wanted.

So now you have your parts temporarily decorated, and you got your custom decorations ready. So time to replace them and render them.

4. Render your decorated model

Firstly, you have to load your new decorations in LDD2POV-Ray. There are multiple ways to do this, but the easiest method is to select the decoration you want to replace and then click on the empty canvas. A window will pop up to allow you to select your decoration. Just select it. Repeat for the other decorations, making sure you replace the right decoration with the right replacement (that screenshot will come in handy now, especially since you can’t have both LDD and LDD2POV-Ray open at the same time at this moment!).

Then you can fiddle around with different settings like lighting etc. For test renders I suggest to place in the first tab the slider on the lowest positions: ‘LDD geometry’. This will result in slightly less good, but much faster renders, allowing you to quickly get feedback about your decorations, so that you can adjust placement and proportions. For flat parts this won’t be necessary, but it can help for curved parts. That’s why I included the TIE pilot in the render. You can see the ensignas are slightly deformed. That’s not my intention, but I already predeformed the circles in the decal, so that it looks more or less round on the surface. You’ll have to experiment a lot with these ones. Anyway, when you're satisfied and feel the need for a more glamorous render, you can turn 'render with visible bevels' on in the slider bar, and wait for some time. You'll get something like this.

Hopefully now you know all about rendering your custom minifigs, making your models more realistic. I hope to see some around! Anyway: happy rendering of your minifigs!

If anyone is interested in downloading the decorations I designed for the stormtrooper (for now without back printing) and the TIE pilot (torso printing already present in LDD), have a look at this page. Hope you've found this useful.

Edited May 20, 2014 by BEAVeR

[Daiman]

This will help a lot of people out and thanks for the access to your decorations.

[Bob De Quatre]

Thanks BEAVeR!

We should build a library (if it didn't already exists) of the Star Wars decals that aren't in LDD... Like the Rebel troopers torso...

[BEAVeR]

Thanks and your welcome!

Thanks BEAVeR!

We should build a library (if it didn't already exists) of the Star Wars decals that aren't in LDD... Like the Rebel troopers torso...

Well, I found this topic in the minifig curomisation workshop. But the list only seems to contain torso's, and they don't seem to have a transparant background, which often looks off in renders. So maybe there's still room for a decoration list that includes more then just torso's?

[rancorbait]

Thank you BEAVeR!

Do you know if it works to use scans of minifigs?

[BEAVeR]

Thank you BEAVeR!

Do you know if it works to use scans of minifigs?

Thanks for your interest! I haven't tried it with scans before, but my guess is that it won't look as good as these vector decals. That's because you'll need a pretty good scanner to get a scan with enough pixels (not easy considering the sizes we're talking about) so that it won't look pixelated in the render. My second fear is that the colors won't match up very nicely.

So you could try, but I think it will not look very good. You can always use those scans as a blueprint for a more detailed picture you have to produce yourself, e.g. with Inkscape or GIMP...

[rancorbait]

Thanks for your interest! I haven't tried it with scans before, but my guess is that it won't look as good as these vector decals. That's because you'll need a pretty good scanner to get a scan with enough pixels (not easy considering the sizes we're talking about) so that it won't look pixelated in the render. My second fear is that the colors won't match up very nicely.

So you could try, but I think it will not look very good. You can always use those scans as a blueprint for a more detailed picture you have to produce yourself, e.g. with Inkscape or GIMP...

I might give that a try. Thanks!

[rancorbait]

So when I hit 'Ctrl + F' I should get a part list correct? Nothing happened when I tried it...

[BEAVeR]

So when I hit 'Ctrl + F' I should get a part list correct? Nothing happened when I tried it...

Ctrl + F is just a basic command that evokes the search (or find) function (it works almost everywhere, including pdfs and internet pages, so that's a very handy shortcut). So when you go to the LXFML file, and you open it in a text editor, and you press Ctrl +F, you can search for a specific combination of letters that appears in the text file. So when you enter the part ID, the function will show you where that ID is present in the text. It doesn't exactly give you a list, but lets you search in it. So my guess is that either you weren't in the text editor (like notepad or word) when you pressed that key combination, or that your editor doesn't support that key combination.

[rancorbait]

Ctrl + F is just a basic command that evokes the search (or find) function (it works almost everywhere, including pdfs and internet pages, so that's a very handy shortcut). So when you go to the LXFML file, and you open it in a text editor, and you press Ctrl +F, you can search for a specific combination of letters that appears in the text file. So when you enter the part ID, the function will show you where that ID is present in the text. It doesn't exactly give you a list, but lets you search in it. So my guess is that either you weren't in the text editor (like notepad or word) when you pressed that key combination, or that your editor doesn't support that key combination.

Okay, problem solved, didn't open it with a text editor!

Thanks again.

[Zerobricks]

Awesome tutorial, thanks!

[rancorbait]

:D

Edited June 8, 2014 by rancorbait

[BEAVeR]

Glad I could help you! It's looking really good what you did there. Did you come along any extra tips or techniques while you were making this?

[rancorbait]

Glad I could help you! It's looking really good what you did there. Did you come along any extra tips or techniques while you were making this?

Not really, just gave it a shot and this is what I got

[Zerobricks]

Now if only there was a way to apply decals to ALL bricks...

[rancorbait]

Does anyone have decals for Star Wars minifigs that LEGO has already made? Eg. Jedi, Clones, bounty hunters etc.

[BEAVeR]

I also have made decals for the rebel trooper and pilot. they can be found on the same page. Here's what it looks like:

Another tip when making colored decorations: It seems like the decorations in the render always turn out darker, so you should anticipate by going for lighter colors in your deocrations.

[___]

Now if only there was a way to apply decals to ALL bricks...

Ehm, there actualy is, I made it possible but it seemed like ppl just do not care or something...

Anyway if you are still interested in decorating bricks that are not decorable for model made made in LDD during POV-Ray render, here is my tutorial I made some time ago tho it did not get much attention for some reason:

[POVRay] TUTORIAL: Make any LDD brick decorable!

Edited June 18, 2015 by bublible

[Ordinareo]

Sorry for bumping but when i start rendering my model in POV-Ray it says that there is a parse error. Can someone help?

Edited February 27, 2016 by Ordinareo

[Ber Teh Unicern]

I want to learn how to make actual printing for LDD, not just pictures!

[BEAVeR]

I want to learn how to make actual printing for LDD, not just pictures!

If I understand right, you want to make creations that show up in LDD itself just like the already available ones? I found a method here, although I haven't tested it myself yet I'm afraid that it isn't possible without a bit of hacking, which goes against the rules of this website.

However, generally there is little use to have decoration in LDD itself, as you will rarely be presenting something straight out of the program: you'll always be rendering it. Bluerender also supports custom decorations, as illlustrated by this article.

Edited June 24, 2016 by BEAVeR

[KamalMYafi]

If I understand right, you want to make creations that show up in LDD itself just like the already available ones? I found a method here, although I haven't tested it myself yet.

This method is against LDD EULA and it's not allowed discussions or posts to tools that will crack or reverse engineer LDD (including adding homemade bricks or decorations) in here.

Edited June 24, 2016 by KamalMYafi

[Ber Teh Unicern]

Oh,ok.

[Ladondorf]

Does anyone think there's a way to somehow obtain decals used by LEGO in the Bricks and Pieces section of their website?

[Umbra-Manis]

35 minutes ago, Ladondorf said:

Does anyone think there's a way to somehow obtain decals used by LEGO in the Bricks and Pieces section of their website?

The images displayed in bricks and pieces are just images, not 3d models of the parts with the decals applied. So to answer your question, no it's not possible.