Custom LDD bricks and fixes

[BrokenEye]

Here's a couple more Power Shield, and one non-power shield that I forgot to include in the last batch.

Spoiler

 

<- the lion looks more like a second badger on this one, but it looked that way in the original too

 

[jester]

New updated parts for you guys)

[PicnicBasketSam]

1 hour ago, jester said:

New updated parts for you guys)

-snip-

These all look great, but I am especially excited to use these Mandalorian helmets! That piece and the paint tool have never gotten along at all.

[Jason C. Hand]

4 hours ago, jester said:

New updated parts for you guys)

-snapshot-

You are lighting it up, bro! Good stuff!!

[jester]

21 hours ago, Jason C. Hand said:

You are lighting it up, bro! Good stuff!!

Thanks a lot, bro!

[jester]

The most annoying part (for me) updated too)

[BrokenEye]

Niiiiiiice

[BrokenEye]

Here's all the red Power Shields. Also a decal for 85961 (Armor Breastplate with Back Stud) and some for 6177 (Tile, Round 8 x 8 with 4 Studs in Center).

Spoiler

 

 

[suenkachun]

Awesome job on all the LDD Decorations above everyone! Before I post about the process of creating LDD Decorations again, here’s a fresh bug report regarding newly added LDD Parts I just discovered tonight.

Collision Data is currently missing for the following list of Bricks (in order of appearance in LDD):

All five elements of the Mini Accessory, No. 7 (Batman Accessory Pack, 377201-377205); Part 32606 Flower, W/ 3.2 Shaft, 1.5 Hole, No. 1; Part 71183 Bar 1L with 1x1x2/3 Light Holder; Part 71184 Bar 4.5L with Stop Ends; Part 3613 Arm Piece with Tow Ball Socket; Part 32607 Plant Plate, Round 1x1 with 3 Leaves; Part 35646 Design Brick 1x1x1 1/3; Part 3612 Arm Piece Straight with 2 and 3 Fingers; Part 51270 Pumpkin; Part 35366 Lattice 2x6 W/3.2 Shaft; Part 30219 Bar 16L with Open Stud, Tow Ball, and Slit; Part 30034 Panel 3x5 Solar/Clip-on/Deltoid; Part 20455 Deco Half Sphere 5x9x5 1/3; Part 98107 Half Dome W/ 4 Snapø87.7 Multi Colour, Part 24869 Wheel Roller Coaster; Part 45800 Train Tyre For 4.5VAnd 12V Wheels, Motor, Conical and Part 45801 Train Tyre For 4.5VAnd 12V Wheels, Wagon.

Due to the missing Collision Data, all of the above Bricks can currently be placed incorrectly in many ways, such as being able to be inserted into any Bricks, have sections sink into other Bricks and so on. I haven’t produced a screenshot this time, but the above information should be sufficient enough for the experts here to know which Bricks need to be fixed for the next update. Keep up the great work as usual!

[BrokenEye]

It's not a decoration, but I threw together a little something to make my life easier in the future when making decorations, and I thought I'd share it so that others might benefit.

It's a set of color swatches for Adobe Illustrator, featuring all current LEGO brick colors (according to Bricklink), organized by type, with black and white color corrected to match LDD's black and white. Even though these are brick colors and not decoration colors, it seems to me that most decorations tend not to stray very far from this palate.

To install, just download the file from the link below and place it in "C:\Users\[YOUR NAME]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator [VERSION NUMBER] Settings\en_US\x64\Swatches". Once in Illustrator, open the Swatches window, and from the dropdown in the corner of the window choose "Open Swatch Library>User Defined>Lego Colors".

Download

PS: Where'd be the best place to post this on the forums?

Edited August 23, 2021 by BrokenEye

[jester]

2 hours ago, BrokenEye said:

It's not a decoration, but I threw together a little something to make my life easier in the future when making decorations, and I thought I'd share it so that others might benefit.

It's a set of color swatches for Adobe Illustrator, featuring all current LEGO brick colors (according to Bricklink), organized by type, with black and white color corrected to match LDD's black and white. Even though these are brick colors and not decoration colors, it seems to me that most decorations tend not to stray very far from this palate.

To install, just download the file from the link below and place it in "C:\Users\[YOUR NAME]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator [VERSION NUMBER] Settings\en_US\x64\Swatches". Once in Illustrator, open the Swatches window, and from the dropdown in the corner of the window choose "Open Swatch Library>User Defined>Lego Colors".

Download

PS: Where'd be the best place to post this on the forums?

Can you make the same for the Photoshop? 

[BrokenEye]

12 minutes ago, jester said:

Can you make the same for the Photoshop? 

I've actually gotten started on one, but Photoshop's swatch system is a bit clunkier (I don't know why it needed to be different), so I'm still hammering out the details. It won't let me color-correct the black and the white, so I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have to go back and re-do the entire Solid Colors section from scratch.

[BrokenEye]

1 hour ago, jester said:

Can you make the same for the Photoshop? 

Alright, here you go. The Photoshop swatch system doesn't allow for color groups, so each catagory is its own swatch file.

Download

Unzip the file and drop the *.ago files into "C:\Users\[YOUR NAME]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop [VERSION NUMBER]\Presets\Color Swatches". Then go to the dropdown menu in the corner of the Swatches pane and select "Replace Swatches", and pick the one you want.

[BrokenEye]

Here are some baby faces for 33464 (Minifigure Baby / Toddler Head with Neck) and all of the orange (and reddish-orange) Power Shields. Don't call me Baby Face.

Spoiler

 

[suenkachun]

Great job above as usual everyone! Since I posted the massive LDD Decorations PDF Guide and ZIP file, I have made a number of additional discoveries regarding LDD Decorations. The main issue is that even with the latest method to output LDD Decorations from Microsoft PowerPoint, it still can’t handle Decorations applied onto three larger LEGO Brick surfaces including Flat Tile 1x6, Brick 1x1x5 Vertical Surface and Brick 2x10 Front Vertical Surface. The alternative as suggested in the PDF Guide was Microsoft Publisher as it can handle page sizes larger than A3, but Microsoft PowerPoint Shapes can’t be directly copied into Publisher as original Shapes, and drawing Shapes in Publisher was found to be much tricker and had more restrictions.

As a result, another better universal method involving the free and open-source Vector Graphics editor “Inkscape” was developed to successfully output PNG images of any LEGO Brick surface successfully for use in LDD. By utilising the advanced features under the “Export PNG image” option, the image quality of the resulting PNG image file can be enhanced greatly, even if the image Dimensions and “Bit Depth” remains the same.

Key points to remember: produce the Decoration Shape in Microsoft PowerPoint; scale it up completely and copy over to “Inkscape”; rotate, resize and compress Shape within “Inkscape” if necessary then use the “Export PNG image” option (four settings include Bit Depth: “RGBA_8”, Compression: “Z_NO_COMPRESSION”, pHYs dpi: 1200.00 and Antialiasing: “CAIRO_ANTIALIAS_NONE”) to output the final Decoration PNG image file. This will produce an optimised PNG image file with “Bit Depth” already set as 32 but the file size of each PNG image is greatly increased to around 2 MB-4 MB, which should not be a problem for regular users of LDD.

As using plain text to explain this process is more difficult, I have prepared a 20-minute video on my YouTube channel to explain everything in detail which is shown below. The video incorporates detailed instructions and text on PowerPoint Slides together with screen recordings of three examples to demonstrate how using “Inkscape” can produce PNG images with much better display qualities. The only two programmes used include the latest Microsoft Office 365 (PowerPoint) and the free and open-source Vector Graphics editor “Inkscape” (plus the Windows Calculator in the first example to calculate the scaled-up Border thickness of the Decoration, although I usually use my phone to do this); as it was later discovered that further modifying any Ultra-high-definition PNG images outputted from “Inkscape” using other programmes will result in a major reduction of the image file size from up to 2MB-4MB back to tiny values such as 16.7KB, and the smaller PNG images also appear to be more pixelated.

Feel free to drop a comment or post additional suggestions regarding this new and improved process. Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

[suenkachun]

On 8/10/2021 at 6:01 PM, BrokenEye said:

One of the window pane decals includes some Japanese characters in a calligraphic-looking font that I don't feel I was able to do a very good job of replicating by hand (see above), and WhatTheFont doesn't seem to play well with non-Latin character blocks, so if anyone knows anything about Japanese-language fonts, I would be greatly appreciative for their help in identifying this one so that I might make a better, more accurate version. Worth a shot, right?

Nice work on the Decorations! I can understand these Chinese characters: the black characters “忍者” translates to “Ninja” directly; while the Red characters should be “迴転” which I believe you got wrong, roughly translating to “rotating”, a common term used to describe the moving belt of a Sushi Train Restaurant. I also used a Chinese Website for identifying fonts and successfully located the exact Japanese font used in this Decoration: “HGGyoshotai”, used as the default Font of all the Chinese/Japanese characters found within Set 2504: Spinjitzu Dojo. I downloaded the Font file as a “TTC” document from an online source and uploaded it here, just download and install it into the appropriate location for use. This Font file contains three separate Fonts after being installed: “HGGyoshotai”, “HGPGyoshotai” and “HGSGyoshotai”, and the first Font is used in the Ninjago Set, not Bolded. Hopefully, this information can help to correct and perfect this Decoration. Thanks for all the hard work!

Edited August 25, 2021 by suenkachun

[BrokenEye]

7 hours ago, suenkachun said:

Nice work on the Decorations! I can understand these Chinese characters: the black characters “忍者” translates to “Ninja” directly; while the Red characters should be “迴転” which I believe you got wrong, roughly translating to “rotating”, a common term used to describe the moving belt of a Sushi Train Restaurant. I also used a Chinese Website for identifying fonts and successfully located the exact Japanese font used in this Decoration: “HGGyoshotai”, used as the default Font of all the Chinese/Japanese characters found within Set 2504: Spinjitzu Dojo. I downloaded the Font file as a “TTC” document from an online source and uploaded it here, just download and install it into the appropriate location for use. This Font file contains three separate Fonts after being installed: “HGGyoshotai”, “HGPGyoshotai” and “HGSGyoshotai”, and the first Font is used in the Ninjago Set, not Bolded. Hopefully, this information can help to correct and perfect this Decoration. Thanks for all the hard work!

Righteous. Thanks, man. I'll get started on that right away.

[BrokenEye]

Here's the updated ninja wall. Watching the contents of the text box fall perfectly inside the contours of the characters in the source image was oh so satisfying.

[jester]

On 8/26/2021 at 12:43 AM, BrokenEye said:

Here's the updated ninja wall. Watching the contents of the text box fall perfectly inside the contours of the characters in the source image was oh so satisfying.

Please don't forget to upload ai's to drive folder 

[BrokenEye]

27 minutes ago, jester said:

Please don't forget to upload ai's to drive folder 

Done

[jester]

3 minutes ago, BrokenEye said:

Done

I mean all decorations 

[BrokenEye]

10 minutes ago, jester said:

I mean all decorations 

Oh, okay. I didn't know that was something you wanted, but will do.

Done

[jester]

15 hours ago, BrokenEye said:

Oh, okay. I didn't know that was something you wanted, but will do.

Done

I can't fix Nexo shields
Can you adjust them to this uv map?

[BrokenEye]

26 minutes ago, jester said:

I can't fix Nexo shields
Can you adjust them to this uv map?

Probably, but I've got no idea how long it'll take. I'll report back when it's done.

[suenkachun]

I just completed three more Decorations for LDD and they can be downloaded from my Bricksafe page as included below. I used the largest image sizes in the previews below, so these images should be already useable in LDD directly, but just in case they do not work, they can also be downloaded as a ZIP folder here.

 Shown above is the existing Decoration 58858 in LDD, more commonly known as the standard Warning Tile and used on a 1x4 Bright Yellow Flat Tile. As this version was compressed into the old standard of 128 Pixels times 128 pixels, I decided to remake it using the source image of this Part from Bricklink. The new version shown below has dimensions of 256 Pixels times 1024 Pixels which is optimised for use in LDD, and the Colour of the stripes is LEGO Black (RGB Values: 27/42/52). The entire shape was created in Microsoft PowerPoint and saved as a PNG image directly to better preserve the slanting edges of the stripes, and the Bright Yellow Background was removed.

After remaking the 1x4 Warning Tile, I decided to create the 1x2 Warning Tile used on a 1x2 Bright Yellow Flat Tile which is not yet present in LDD, and its source image on Bricklink was used as a reference. Shown below is Decoration 24075 with dimensions of 512 Pixels times 1024 Pixels which is optimised for use in LDD, and the Colour of the stripes is LEGO Black (RGB Values: 27/42/52). The entire shape was created in Microsoft PowerPoint and saved as a PNG image directly to better preserve the slanting edges of the stripes, and the Bright Yellow Background was removed.

The third and final Decoration 14875 is the official LEGO Logo, used on either a LEGO White (RGB Values: 244/244/244) or LEGO Black (RGB Values: 27/42/52) 2x2 Flat Tile. I first downloaded the official LEGO Logo SVG image file here, then I used “Inkscape” to modify all Colours into official LEGO Colours (including LEGO Black, Bright Red and Bright Yellow) before inserting in Microsoft PowerPoint for further editing. The Logo was resized and positioned carefully using the source image of the LEGO White version on Bricklink, then I decided to use the “Export PNG image” function in “Inkscape” to output this Decoration to preserve all of the curved text as detailed as possible (please refer to my previous post with video tutorial regarding how this new process works). Shown below is Decoration 14875 with dimensions of 1024 Pixels times 1024 Pixels which is optimised for use in LDD, and Colours used include LEGO Black, Bright Red (RGB Values: 180/0/0) and Bright Yellow (RGB Values: 255/200/10) with the LEGO White/LEGO Black Background removed. Please note that the file size of this LEGO Logo Decoration in Ultra-high Definition is 4.00 MB, much larger than the usual LDD PNG images (over 240 of my own custom LDD Decorations were already upgraded into Ultra-high Definition images then successfully added and used in LDD, so this one should also work without a problem).

I will post more Decorations images once I find the time to create them. Thanks in advance!

Edited August 28, 2021 by suenkachun