My first LDD & Blender animation - Microfighter AAT

[BrickRemix]

I'm learning Blender and this is the first video that I've come up with. I'm going to try and keep improving, maybe emulate stop motion like the LEGO movie. Please let me know what you think.

Link if embed doesn't work:

[Phoib]

It had me smiling. Nicely done!

[Jody Meyer]

This is really well done, keep up the good work

[Cjd223]

Very nicely done! As a VFX artist and 3D animator I love the plastic texture that you created, it is photo-real Lego!

[BEAVeR]

Awesome work, BrickRemix!

I've been working with Blender for a while now in order to improve my renders (but I find myself constantly programming to create a smoother workflow, resulting in a lather low output of me ), so you can trust me if I say this small movie is amazing. The renders look close to perfect, with the nice addition of the LEGO logo, tasteful gaps between the bricks, finely tuned transparent materials and high quality geometry (often I see renders that look amazing but have low-res bricks, spoiling it when you look up close). Even without taking the animation into account, you can see how much work went into this, so hat off to you!

The one thing that slightly bugs me, is the animation. Don't get me wrong, in no way could I do better, but there's something that looks slightly off and gives it that digital look. Animation is a tricky thing, and it's hard to pinpoint what's awry. In this case, I think it would help if you gave the pieces more weight. This would mean not slowing them down too much when they near the model, but letting them actually hit it, with big parts possibly making the model rock a bit back and forth. I think giving more weight to everything, including the droid, is key. Going for the stop-motion style might also resolve the issue (in that case, don't forget to turn off the motion blur, as that can't occur in stop-motion shots!), so I'm curious for your future work.

That being said, I'm also really curious about your workflow. What do you use to get the LEGO bricks into Blender? Do you model the bricks or import them in some way (I've been working on the LDRImporter myself, so if you would happen to be using that, I'd appreciate your feedback as well)? Do you do anything special with the materials except for a mix of a diffuse and a glossy material (possibly with a fresnel node?)? And how do you achieve the LEGO logo? Normal maps? Have you been thinking about how to add the mold mark? Sorry for the slew of questions, but watching your amazing results just makes me so curious and enthusiastic!

So keep building, animating and torturing your graphics card, because the results are worth multiple viewings!

[MontyPython]

Wow, well done!

[KevinYoung]

Very cool .

[BrickRemix]

Awesome work, BrickRemix!

I've been working with Blender for a while now in order to improve my renders (but I find myself constantly programming to create a smoother workflow, resulting in a lather low output of me ), so you can trust me if I say this small movie is amazing. The renders look close to perfect, with the nice addition of the LEGO logo, tasteful gaps between the bricks, finely tuned transparent materials and high quality geometry (often I see renders that look amazing but have low-res bricks, spoiling it when you look up close). Even without taking the animation into account, you can see how much work went into this, so hat off to you!

The one thing that slightly bugs me, is the animation. Don't get me wrong, in no way could I do better, but there's something that looks slightly off and gives it that digital look. Animation is a tricky thing, and it's hard to pinpoint what's awry. In this case, I think it would help if you gave the pieces more weight. This would mean not slowing them down too much when they near the model, but letting them actually hit it, with big parts possibly making the model rock a bit back and forth. I think giving more weight to everything, including the droid, is key. Going for the stop-motion style might also resolve the issue (in that case, don't forget to turn off the motion blur, as that can't occur in stop-motion shots!), so I'm curious for your future work.

That being said, I'm also really curious about your workflow. What do you use to get the LEGO bricks into Blender? Do you model the bricks or import them in some way (I've been working on the LDRImporter myself, so if you would happen to be using that, I'd appreciate your feedback as well)? Do you do anything special with the materials except for a mix of a diffuse and a glossy material (possibly with a fresnel node?)? And how do you achieve the LEGO logo? Normal maps? Have you been thinking about how to add the mold mark? Sorry for the slew of questions, but watching your amazing results just makes me so curious and enthusiastic!

So keep building, animating and torturing your graphics card, because the results are worth multiple viewings!

Thanks for the kind words.

I create the models in LDD and then use some secret sauce to export to collada. The lego logos on the studs in the video are actually geometry (that my exporter provides) but I don't think i'll be doing that in the future because it really upped the render time and stopped me from using a bevel modifier. I've tried exporting from ldraw and it works almost exactly the same.

Here is my material that i'm using:

The bump map is from: https://github.com/r...e/LEGO-Textures

I didn't use the bump map for the video but going forward I will be.

To light the scene I use an environment map from: http://zbyg.devianta...Pack-1-97402522

I'm using this python script to clean up the exported collada:

import bpy
C = bpy.context
scene = C.scene
C.tool_settings.mesh_select_mode = (True, False, False)
for ob in C.selected_objects:
if ob.type == 'MESH':
 scene.objects.active = ob #set active object
 bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT') #switch to edit mode
 bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='SELECT')
 bpy.ops.mesh.remove_doubles() #remove doubles
 bpy.ops.mesh.tris_convert_to_quads() #tris to quads
 bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT') #switch to object mode

And this python script to add a bevel modifier:

import bpy
C = bpy.context
scene = C.scene
C.tool_settings.mesh_select_mode = (True, False, False)
for ob in C.selected_objects:
if ob.type == 'MESH':
 scene.objects.active = ob #set active object
 bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='BEVEL')
 mod = ob.modifiers
 mod[0].width = .3

I hope that answers all your questions

[Smitty500]

Even though it was rather short this was great. I just took a class on Blender and it is the most challenging program to learn, (I just wanted to model for 3D printing) but I gave into using other programs that are more catered for 3D design, not animation. I would have to say this is a step below Doodle Pictures using Maya. Kudos to you!