Brick Customs

Eurobricks Vassals
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  1. Oh! Really good to know. I was sure I read something about Stud.io not being LDraw based. I like it even better now. Sometimes overstating your position makes for a better thread. Preach! This. A learning curve is not equal to "hard to use". It's only hard to people because they never learned it in the first place. I'm always shocked that people ignore the most powerful Lego building programs just because they don't want to learn them. Especially people building large MOC's. A lot of extra pain for no reason.
  2. Lack of Mac support is annoying. I'm a Mac user as well, but run a dual-boot Windows/Mac installation. LDCad is one of the major reasons I maintain a Windows installation. I would abandon OSX before I would ever go back to LDD. LDCad has parts snapping that works very well most of the time. Lego without parts snapping just feels wrong. The grid is often a essential lifesaver though. It took me a few weeks to learn LDCad. I went through the tutorials methodically and researched a few things the tutorial didn't cover. LDD is indeed considerably more simple. However, after the initial learning curve, LDCad's ease of use generally far surpasses that of LDD, even for the most basic assembly tasks. Most of LDCad's commands are keyboard shortcuts. This makes it extremely fast to use. Manipulating bricks is easy, fluid and reliable. Interesting that the LDraw system is so archaic. That's probably why the Stud.io developers chose not to use it. I hope Stud.io continues to be developed. I like what I've seen of it, but it's still missing some features that I use regularly. Also, mad props on trying to write a CAD editor. EDIT: Stud.io does use LDraw. My bad. Fair enough. I've only just dabbled in rendering a bit, so I can't speak on that too much. My final goal is always a real life build, so the actual function of the program takes precedence over rendering quality. Also, many of my builds are simply impossible to create in LDD, so a rendering advantage is lost on me. I'm not very familiar with Bricksmith or Stud.io. LDD was my go-to for a long time. I switched when I found myself unable to execute certain building techniques in LDD. I actually like LDCad's handling of colors much more than LDD. They have a lot of non-Lego colors for some reason, but all you have to do is add the colors your want to your favorites, and then you never have to think about other colors ever again (unless you need a weird one). The parts library sorting does take some getting used to. I don't know if it's better or worse, but most LDD users probably won't like it at first (I didn't). Good point. Ball joints suck in LDCad. Hinging in general is more difficult as you'll often have to adjust the hing point manually. It's annoying. I do remember some really annoying hinging behavior in LDD as well. LDCad's hinging is very manual, but LDD's is buggy sometimes. I've actually never used a CCBS part (I had to Google what it was lol). It's usually pretty easy to find a missing unofficial part for LDraw. I've never looked for a CCBS part, however.
  3. Why do skilled builders use LDD? I understand there's a smaller learning curve, and that it's official and more well known... but those are all really bad reasons for a serious builder. LDD sucks. It's bad. Really, really, really bad. I mean sure, I can build a small 300 or 400 piece set without much trouble. Even then, it's still necessary to export to LDraw to produce any kind of real instructions. But the big models. How do you guys do it? I've seen some crazy stuff done in LDD. It boggles my mind that anyone would put up with LDD's infuriating idiosyncrasies when it comes to assembling larger models. How do you organize without sub-models? Grouping is ridiculously limited. How do you work without a grid system? I've been using LDD since I was a kid, but made the switch to LDCad a few years ago when I started building more "adult" level stuff. I have over 1000 hours in LDCad now. I'll occasionally open a project in LDD (old files, downloaded models). It's horrifying to work with. Even just a little bit. I feel like someone stole my iPad and handed me a stone tablet and chisel. Why is LDCad not the gold standard?
  4. Brick Customs

    [MOC] UCS Jango Fett's Slave 1 - Instructions!

    My goal with this model wasn't to build something completely new. I took the official UCS and did my best to improve upon it. I ended up changing about 60% of the original design. The main parts of the fuselage remain about the same (aside from color changes), but the entire lower "dish" as well as the fuselage around the cockpit and the "wheel wells" are all my own work. I guess you could say it's more of a MOC/Mod. :P
  5. Brick Customs

    [MOC] UCS Jango Fett's Slave 1 - Instructions!

    Do'h! Fixed.
  6. Hey guys! This is an older creation of mine, but I just realized I hadn't yet posted it here. This set takes inspiration, of course, from the official Boba Fett UCS, as well as from an old partially completed MOC by Flickr user Maelven . The set started after the official release of the UCS Boba Fett Slave 1. I didn't like some of the transitions on the Official UCS, so I set about modifying the set. My favorite set that I owned as a kid was the Jango Fett Slave 1 (7159), so naturally I had to have a Jango Fett color scheme. A lot of the parts on the lower dish of the official set are not available in dark blue, so a redesign was required. However, I also felt the official design was a bit blocky, so I hoped I could make some improvements along the way.
  7. Dang! I had no idea the official Lego ships were that far off scale. This is an incredible build!
  8. Brick Customs

    [MOC] The X-Wing Strikes Back

    Wow! This is the best X-Wing moc I've ever seen! Very good chance I'll build one of these in the near future.
  9. Brick Customs

    [MOC] Jedi Council

    That is extremely well done. I wish Lego made sets that felt more complete like this. The official sets always seem like skeletons. Then again, I probably wouldn't in most cases pay the $200+ it would cost for the extra detail so...
  10. Awesome! I would love to see pictures when you get it completed!
  11. I've sold 4 or 5 copies so far. Haven't received any feedback yet. It's around a 60 hour build, so I would expect that most haven't finished it yet.
  12. Yeah, the cockpit on 10179 has always bugged me. I remember looking at the set in the stores when I was a kid and thinking some of the details didn't look very nice.
  13. Good find! Yeah, I've noticed that the movie doesn't take consistency or accuracy (never-mind logic) nearly as seriously as the fans tend to. It's sometimes hard to tell which "official" version of the Falcon to reference. lol Still, cool to see that the "headlights" are actually a thing.
  14. Haha, yeah, your radar design is brilliant! When I ordered the parts for Falcon, I "fixed" the 6L bar mold variation on my final parts list to avoid using the old short stopper version. I assumed I had just accidentally inserted an old version somewhere when I was building. When I finally got to the radar, I was like "oohhhh." Good to hear about your Falcon (love your interior, btw). I was just super nervous about using that technique. Also, for the record, you are credited in the descriptions of all my Falcon Flickr photos (I may have forgotten in a couple other places though). ;) I'll have to look into it more. I don't have the model with me now but here's a look under the digital version's hood. You can see that the hood is about as far down as you would want it to go. I could - as I understand your suggestion - change the angle of the plate separate from the hood, but that seems like it would negatively affect the nice lines between the hood and plate. :\ A New Hope Falcon didn't seem to have any lights. This is from Empire Strikes Back. Seems that one red and one white is "correct." Although, these lights only appear in this landed scene. Perhaps they were just landing markers or something?
  15. Thanks guys! Agreed on the details part. I left of some of the 3mm rigid hose details and forgot a couple of front detail pieces in my excitement to get it done and take pictures. Most of these details are easily added (will be adding them to mine eventually). I approached my build with a slightly different design philosophy. There are a few areas were I opted to keep the strength of the assembly rather than added extra details and sacrifice strength. Most notably, I left out some of the 1x1 rounds around the gun turret because the assembly was already a bit fragile. If you see Marshall's model from the right angle there is indeed quite a gap. There is not much of a way to avoid this. The panel must be two plates thick. You must also consider that the plate is hinged off of the front "hood" so the gap is unavoidably going to increase as it meets the hood. The deciding factors on the gap are the appropriate hood placement, and where the far corners of the panels touch. I'm pretty sure I got it right. Yeah, Marshall's photography kills mine. It is a grey area for sure. For the record, even Marshall Banana didn't entirely originate the design. His model is based on Mike Psaki's incomplete MOC (below). Frankly, I wouldn't be putting the instructions out there if there wasn't some incentive to do it. I only amassed enough motivation to finish the instructions because people kept asking about it. I believe even the Cavegod AT-AT instructions are sold by an individual other than Cavegod (although admittedly with Cavegod's permission). Cavegod made the LDD file available in the first place, so all the instruction designer did was import into LDraw, step the model, and organize the pages in LPub (still a sizable amount of work, to be sure). Anyway, if Marshall says something, I'll worry about it then. It's better to ask forgiveness than permission. :P