Bring 3D LEGO creations to Eurobricks

[jlenglet]

Hi everyone,

My name is Jeanne and I work at Sketchfab, the leading platform to see and publish 3D content. We have a community of 900k artists who posted a bunch of awesome LEGO 3D models.

I would be curious to hear your thoughts about showcasing LEGO models in 3D. Do a lot of you use LEGO 3D design softwares (like Ldraw or LDD?) to build your MOC?

It is really easy to embed our 3D viewer everywhere online - like a Youtube video - and I'd love to make that happen in eurobricks as well! (If an admin reads this message, he/she can contact me directly to make it happen)

[Jim]

Admin reading....check

Will move this to the LDD forum to discuss further.

[legolijntje]

It's certainly possible for LDraw. I've implemented an LDraw viewer using Brigl on the OMR. Example here. However, the performance of Brigl is not exactly great and it isn't very flexible. I'd love to write my own webviewer, but my knowledge of javascript and webgl is by far not enough. Not to mention the fact that my spare free time is kinda lacking at the moment.

Anyway, it's a cool idea, but I'm not too sure if it would work well on a forum (at least with currently available scripts/frameworks) 

[jlenglet]

Thanks!

Wow @legolijntje I've checked your implementation on the OMR it's cool! Webgl is developing fast Sketchfab has developed its own viewer and it can be embedded everywhere easily - our viewer is integrated natively in Facebook and Twitter and we're currently the only way to display 3D content in social media We just partnered with Stud.io to add Sketchfab support  so we'e going to see more and more LEGO models in the future hopefully! 
We're going to organize contests I will keep you updated if eurobricks community wants to be a part of it! @Jim

[legolijntje]

11 hours ago, jlenglet said:

Thanks!

Wow @legolijntje I've checked your implementation on the OMR it's cool! Webgl is developing fast Sketchfab has developed its own viewer and it can be embedded everywhere easily - our viewer is integrated natively in Facebook and Twitter and we're currently the only way to display 3D content in social media We just partnered with Stud.io to add Sketchfab support  so we'e going to see more and more LEGO models in the future hopefully! 
We're going to organize contests I will keep you updated if eurobricks community wants to be a part of it! @Jim

You're working at Sketchfab or something? Cause, if you guys made a stud.io viewer, chances are very high it would work with general LDraw models too. Stud.io uses the LDraw parts library (although sometimes slightly modified probably). 

[Jim]

12 hours ago, jlenglet said:

We're going to organize contests I will keep you updated if eurobricks community wants to be a part of it! @Jim

Always interested to hear what it's about! And possibly be part of it.

[msx80]

Hi there @jlenglet :) I'm the author of Brigl and Bluerender, i must say your viewer is super cool, awesome lightning and stuff! How do one upload an LDD or Ldraw model to Sketchfab?  Do you support these formats directly?

I noticed you have some differences in rendering, for example this one doesn't look like it's properly smoother:

(looks like i sucks at attaching images, i meant this model )

while this one surely is:

(model)

since i'm editing, i noticed i had an old account and tryed uploading some models, looks like you don't support the formats natively. It would be awesome to be able to upload some LDD files.

Edited May 18, 2017 by msx80

[jlenglet]

@legolijntje @msx80  @GREG998 Congrats on Brigl and Bluerender! and thanks our dev team has been working on the viewer for quite a long time and they've implemented some cool features like annotations, PBR and animation support, depth of field... I love this model for instance.

We recently partnered with Bricklink Stud.io to create a one click export from their software to Sketchfab. The goal is to make it seamless for their users to share their creations anywhere online using our player (since you can integrate the Sketchfab viewer in your blog, website, press article, and social media posts on Facebook and Twitter).

We support many 3D formats but we do not support Ldraw or LDD files. It takes time on our side to support new formats and our engineers are under water at the moment. Greg was able to upload to Sketchfab by converting a Ldraw file to .3ds. Is there any chance we could automatically export from Ldraw in one of the 30+ file formats we support? OBJ would be a good option. If we can achieve this we could easily add an option for Ldraw users to seamlessly export their creations to Sketchfab and share anywhere in 3D.

We really love what the LEGO community is doing around 3D designs and we're working on bringing this community together with community projects like creation contests. @Jim I will keep you informed about this once we figure out how to allow Ldraw users to publish on Sketchfab :)

 

[legolijntje]

Well, like I said, stud.io is using the LDraw parts. I don't know exactly how if you guys convert from stud.io (LDraw) to your preferred format or if Bricklink does that for you. If it's the first case, you can probably reuse pretty much most (if not all) of your import code.

It's also possible to convert LDraw models to other 3D formats yourself, however the quality of the results can vary quite a bit (also depending on which software you use to make the export). I know that LDView can export to STL and 3DS formats. I believe the stl export does not contain colors though, but don't quote me on that. There's also this plugin for blender, which allows you to import LDraw models into Blender. And from there, you can export it again into a wide range of formats. A (pretty big) drawback of the plugin is that I believe it lacks support for .mpd files and pretty much all LDraw files are .mpd...

Of course, you could also create your own LDraw > whatever exporter. The LDraw file format is completely documented here. It's basically lines, triangles and quads, shouldn't be that difficult (relatively speaking of course) to export to another 3d format.

I'm not really experience with LDD, so I can't give you any advice on exporting LDD to another 3D format. However, LDD is quite closed as opposed to LDraw so I don't think there are many options (if any at all). You can always export LDD to LDraw (make sure to use an updated ldraw.xml file), but LDD does contain quite a lot of parts (mostly minifigure parts) that don't exist in LDraw. LDD has a native LDraw export, but yesterday someone on the forum here released this handy tool too.

Btw, you might also be interested in Mecabricks, if you have not yet heard of it. It's a completely browser-based editor (and it has its own viewer too ). Their viewer is also being used on sites like Brickset, for example here (click on the tab '3D View'). It's not based on LDD or LDraw though, it's a completely separate format.

 

[The Mugbearer]

On 5/16/2017 at 1:13 AM, jlenglet said:

Do a lot of you use LEGO 3D design softwares (like Ldraw or LDD?) to build your MOC?

I do all of my models in LDD, then trace them in POV-Ray using the fan-made utility. See here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/cyborgs_workshop/

I tend to post a model every now and then, mostly in the Sci-Fi forums, but they don't attract any kind of attention, which greatly discourages me from further posting.

Edited May 20, 2017 by The Mugbearer

[anothergol]

I too work entirely in the LDD or Stud.io, this is something I'd totally use.

(only problem with renders is that the ldraw library varies a lot in quality. Some parts are dead accurate while some others are low-poly or have errors. But that's not really related)

[jlenglet]

@legolijntje Thanks for all your information! We have an upload API that Bricklink Stud.io integrated so It's the second case but thanks!

Eventually we would love to have a direct export from Ldraw to Sketchfab but thank you for all the tips on how to convert Ldraw format to other 3d format, very useful! Do you know anyone at Ldraw I could contact on that topic? And yes we're in touch with Mecabricks, they have a very cool tool!

@The Mugbearer @anothergol thanks for your feedback! We now have a direct export from Studio to Sketchfab. We think 3D is a more powerful way to show LEGO creations (rather than 2D screenshots) and that it drives engagement. Sketchfab was created for 3D artists to showcase their creations to the world, and I do believe there are plenty of super talented 3D artists in the LEGO community!!

@JimSkechfab viewer can be embedded pretty much everywhere online thanks to an embed code, would love to discuss that further with you!!

Thank you all!

[The Mugbearer]

@jlenglet Although I do see the benefits of demonstrating one's digital LEGO models in 3D, it would take too much effort to convert my LDD files into stud.io or ldraw, so I'd stick to tracing them in POV-Ray.

[Jim]

10 hours ago, jlenglet said:

@JimSkechfab viewer can be embedded pretty much everywhere online thanks to an embed code, would love to discuss that further with you!!

I have sent you an email 

[msx80]

@jlenglet do you plan on supporting LDD directly somehow? Conversion from LDD to LDraw works only for the simplest models and is not really a viable option.

[legolijntje]

2 hours ago, msx80 said:

@jlenglet do you plan on supporting LDD directly somehow? Conversion from LDD to LDraw works only for the simplest models and is not really a viable option.

Well, with this program it seems to work quite well. Or am I missing something?

Of course, not all parts in LDD are available in LDraw, but aside from that exporting seems to work relatively well.

[anothergol]

Note that Stud.io imports LDD's. With many errors, sadly, but generally for the same parts that you have to move around/realign. Takes a few minutes. Stud.io is still far from replacing the LDD IMHO, it lacks in efficiency/usability, but it has a few advantages - it looks better, it's possible (still a hack, but more possible than in the LDD) to add missing parts, and the "submodel" feature is pretty neat.

 

I'm trying it. Pretty nice actually, and easy to set up.
First attempt:
https://sketchfab.com/models/96ef5277be104bceb559d76a69607c9a
POVRay render for comparison.

I think the only major differences are soft shadows (doesn't seem possible in Sketchfab, is it?), and some normals problems that are (I guess) in LDraw's library.
While I don't see myself importing all of my projects to Stud.io, for the ones that are, it's a pretty nice option. I wish Flickr supported it.
Btw, the sharpen filter seems to give good results for Lego's, however it doesn't look very good during the rotating preview. Perhaps it should be disabled until the final render?

Edit: imported a more complex one https://sketchfab.com/models/3646df10b4804fc79ec4adcb91ba74a6

Edited May 24, 2017 by anothergol

[SylvainLS]

2 hours ago, legolijntje said:

not all parts in LDD are available in LDraw

All the missing parts are available at http://digital-bricks.de  They use LDD’s shapes, no LDraw primitives, no pattern. But you still get a nice placeholder while waiting for the part to be included in LDraw.

 

1 hour ago, anothergol said:

Note that Stud.io imports LDD's. With many errors, sadly, but generally for the same parts that you have to move around/realign.

It’s easier to export LDD to LDraw first then import the LDraw into Stud.io.

Using lxf2ldr, you even get submodels, flexible parts, and some of the decorations (some of which are even correctly translated by Stud.io into their BL patterned counterparts).

(Yes, I’m shamelessly advertising )

[jlenglet]

Thanks for all the information and tools everyone!!

Now we have plenty of ways to export from LDD or Ldraw to Sketchfab :

• LDView can export 3DS format from LDraw, which we support with colors
• We have this plugin for blender, which allows you to import LDraw models into Blender, and then we have a one click export to Sketchfab. 
• You can import your LDD or LDraw model to Stud.io and then directly to Sketchfab. Or export LDD to LDraw first because it works better ;) @SylvainLS

I would love to see both LDD and LDraw export to Sketchfab, because I understand all the export/import is not user friendly and time consuming for you guys. I need to find contacts there if you guys know anyone or can do anything all help would be immensely appreciated! Will let you know how it goes!

@anothergol cool models! Currently, ambient occlusion, sharpen filters dont work when we rotate, but we're looking into it!

 

 

 

[anothergol]

2 hours ago, jlenglet said:

 

@anothergol cool models! Currently, ambient occlusion, sharpen filters dont work when we rotate, but we're looking into it!

Ah, but they do! (SSAO as well btw)

And that's my point, I think sharpening shouldn't work while you rotate the model around, because it makes the pixelled previews even worse.

I would suggest a better default lighting when you export from Stud.io btw, because right now it's very bland out of the box.

 

[msx80]

19 hours ago, anothergol said:

Edit: imported a more complex one https://sketchfab.com/models/3646df10b4804fc79ec4adcb91ba74a6

It's just me or the colors are a little bit off? I mean the rgb values. I can't almost tell which Lego colors are.

Awesome model anyway! did you gave a slight rotation to the 1x1 tiles? :) lol well done!

 

Perhaps if i can find an afternoon to spare i could try and make bluerender speak with the Sketchfab API..

[The Mugbearer]

Another thing is, my laptop/browser is incompatible with a plugin that makes the Sketchfab work.

[anothergol]

4 hours ago, msx80 said:

It's just me or the colors are a little bit off? I mean the rgb values. I can't almost tell which Lego colors are.

That's another thing I noticed exporting to Sketchfab, things look a bit desaturated. While I used quite some sand colors, the results are still weirdly desaturated & I had to compensate with a saturation filter for one of them.
That said, the part colors in LDD, Stud.io & POVRay renders can be extremely different, I've noticed. Like, "sand green" appears nearly bright grey, not at all like real parts.

[msx80]

how about this? :P

https://skfb.ly/6r9FR

[jlenglet]

awesome how did you export it @msx80 ?1