Rendering Digital LEGO Reloaded

[Renderbricks]

Hi,I stepped into my little Digital LEGO research project again and imported the 10221 Star Wars Executer Set. Here's a first impression:

Edited February 28, 2015 by virtualrepublic

[legolijntje]

That second picture looks very, very nice

But, it looks more like Megablocks to me than lego.

I have no idea why (I don't even know what's the difference in looks), but still, I have that feeling

[Renderbricks]

It's the extreme perspective and close-up. Here's another view.

Edited February 28, 2015 by virtualrepublic

[Lego Otaku]

Mixing old grey and bley would give it a bit of variety but Imperial fleets are supposed to be "clean" looking. If I were building one like yours, I would have mixed it all in.

[Superkalle]

Absolutely great work (as usual)!

Maybe the picture taken from the underside of the ship look a bit "megablock" becuase the material in the bricks comes across as a bit too translucent. There is sort of a glow about the bricks

The last picture (from rear/above) look better IMHO.

[garethjellis]

Sorry if this has been asked before but, wh

at are you using to render these?

[Scrubs]

Hello,

I spent some time today experimenting shaders with Blender for models exported from Mecabricks. I took virtualrepublic images as a starting point plus some of his advice.

I added a subsurface scattering shader and a rounding edge shader. I think I'm slowly getting there.

Blender Materials by mecabricks, on Flickr

Edited March 1, 2015 by Scrubs

[__________________________]

I've never heard of this rendering program before. I'll send you my LXF to be rendered as soon as I finish it.

[Renderbricks]

I am using a by myself modified database of LDRAW (some fixed parts and studs with a LEGO logo) and import the .ldr files into BLENDER with an open source script and from there into MODO by .fbx. Usually you can also export from LDD to .ldr but the problem is that LDD is using a lot of special and newer parts missing in LDRAW. Another method is to capture the geometry. Unfortunately the LDD bricks are very low-res and there's no easy way to bring a LEGO logo onto the studs for the realism. I wasn't able to convert the textures. But the capture method works also fine to archive nice results of LDD models. Actually MECABRICKS is the best option to get great results with less effort. You build your model and export it to OBJ. Unfortunately the LEGO logo is missing here, too, but you have wonderful textures. Maybe SCRUBS can fix this in the future. I have to say that MECABRICKS is very impressive work by a one man coding and modeling army. Amazing.

Edited March 2, 2015 by virtualrepublic

[Renderbricks]

I've never heard of this rendering program before. I'll send you my LXF to be rendered as soon as I finish it.

Looking forward to this.

[Palathadric]

I can't believe that I never dropped in to say how incredibly awesome this looks. Lovely work as always virtualrepublic.

I will make a point to pass all models through your rendering machine in the future. Just kidding!

[__________________________]

Looking forward to this.

I'm almost done with it, will send you the render soon.

[Zerobricks]

That looks really great! Did you slightly reduce brick sizes?