Custom LDD bricks and fixes

[jester]

47 minutes ago, Equilibrium said:

I have finished another update, main features:

• Improved brick outlines on pneumatics and some other bricks,
• 3 new parts.

Download links:

• My old LINK refers to all my updates merged together,
• New LINK refers to new/changed parts only.

Thank you so much for your work!

[Stephan]

Added version 20200708β, which include 1 new parts and 25 updated parts.
New Parts

Edited July 8, 2020 by Stephan
Updated link after merge of 202006α

[ThorsHammer9999]

Could we get AntiMatter's Helmet into LDD, seen here,

 

[jester]

Thanks a lot to @polymaker and @Equilibrium for the help!
I'm back in game with new toys)
@Stephan i will send you all my parts updated very soon)

[Jason C. Hand]

May I suggest Part No. 37191c01, 2x3 Brick Costume Torso?

 

[Takanuinuva]

I'd like to see this piece added

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=4745#T=C

Edited July 9, 2020 by Takanuinuva

[ProfessorBrickkeeper]

Hey there. I have a bunch of parts that I am ready to port into LDD, but am not having any luck getting @polymaker's tool to compile using the latest version of Microsoft Visual Studio. Would someone here mind sharing a built version of the LDD Brick Studio application? (I can't find one anywhere else in this thread.)

Edited July 9, 2020 by ProfessorBrickkeeper

[Stephan]

8 hours ago, jester said:

i will send you all my parts updated very soon)

Awesome!! I'm ready!

[polymaker]

7 hours ago, ProfessorBrickkeeper said:

Hey there. I have a bunch of parts that I am ready to port into LDD, but am not having any luck getting @polymaker's tool to compile using the latest version of Microsoft Visual Studio. Would someone here mind sharing a built version of the LDD Brick Studio application? (I can't find one anywhere else in this thread.)

An installer should be available soon on my github. Sorry for the absence I just got married and I haven't touched my PC for a while 

I'll let you know when it's ready.

On 7/3/2020 at 8:02 PM, zweifuss said:

don't know the trick to make the sides not have all those ugly outlines in them, I think Brick Studio draws outlines on areas where I don't want them, I'll have to play around with the mesh a bit more to fix it.

 

This can happen in some cases. Generating the outlines is very complex and my algorithm is not perfect.

As a proof, even some existing parts in LDD have similar issues .

I will add an option to export parts without outlines that will be useful when the result is too ugly otherwise,

Edited July 9, 2020 by polymaker

[jester]

@Stephan @Equilibrium @Calabar what do you think about collisions?
 

I have the following thoughts:

On the one hand, adding a collision is the right solution, because the parts will be complete

But on the other hand, this is a very time-consuming process for complex parts (for example, a fence or wigs) and the presence of collisions will not allow the use of illegal techniques in the construction, as well as complex sets (Creator Expert for example)

What do you think about this?

[Stephan]

21 minutes ago, jester said:

What do you think about this?

I am mostly a fan of collisions; they are helpful when you are rotating parts against each other.
But... they can also cause problems. Angles between parts in official (Expert) sets are often very, very tight and rely on the flex between part connections. These building section will not be possible when you have collisions. But are there a lot them these days?
The 2x3 Tiles on the hoods of the 10277 Crocodile Locomotive have this problem. But I can live with those issues in favor of collisions.

[SylvainLS]

You can turn off collisions in Developer mode.

You might want to add something in the file name to remember to turn collisions off before loading such a file 

[polymaker]

I'm a little late to the party but do you guys have a common list of currently created bricks?

As I understands there is a couple of people that creates custom bricks but I was wondering if everyone is doing what they want or if it is a little organized.

Because I have some parts made and I wanted to  now if they were already made or if it is already made, maybe mine is more complete (outlines, collisions, etc).

And more important, I don't want to start modeling and editing a brick that has already been done.

For example on my github I recently started a tracker file that list the currently finished bricks and those that are in development (https://github.com/Polymaker/ldd-modder/blob/develop/LDD Bricks/readme.md)

I also describe the progress like if only the model is done, if the collision and/or connections are missing.

I think making a common tracking like this could be beneficial to all of us.

With a system like that we could also list missing parts or issues with existing LDD parts.

Edited July 9, 2020 by polymaker
Spelling

[Stephan]

I don't know if there's a list, but we use this topic to list the new parts: 

.
Here you can also see if your parts is more complete (if the thumbnail image has outlines or not), if collision are present is listed as a note next to the specific part.

Maybe there should come an Open Office Excel sheet which lists the new parts, work in progress parts and wanted parts; only editable by the guys that work on the parts (and myself for adding them to a parts pack).

1 hour ago, polymaker said:

I just got married

Congrats btw!!

Edited July 9, 2020 by Stephan

[polymaker]

@Stephan thank you

Another reason that I would like a more detailed tracking system (like an excel/google sheet as you mentioned) is that I like to add support for culling in my parts (hiding portion of the mesh when connected to another parts).

This is very optional because it only improves performance a little and does not affect how the part works, I mainly do it because I'm a bit perfectionist 

So in a excel-like tracking there could be a column to tell if the culling support was implemented.

Also I was reading a bit on this thread and I found a discussion about adding authors into the files.
I also had a similar idea and I think I found a way to write that information in the G files also.

I have planned to add in my program a way to keep the authors and date of modification. This information could then be added to the xml when saving.

[M2m]

I guess Excel / csv table / Google docs tracking information like collision, culling, outlines, etc might be good. This could / should then also be part of the release pack data.

[polymaker]

15 minutes ago, M2m said:

I guess Excel / csv table / Google docs tracking information like collision, culling, outlines, etc might be good. This could / should then also be part of the release pack data.

Yup I agree.

 

And by the way I also have a neat LIF Viewer/Extractor in the works:

And if you are perceptive you can see that it can also edit (and create) LIF files!

[M2m]

27 minutes ago, polymaker said:

Yup I agree.

 

And by the way I also have a neat LIF Viewer/Extractor in the works:

And if you are perceptive you can see that it can also edit (and create) LIF files!

Seems to be better then my LIFCreator.py (which is quick, dirty, slow and RAM intensive - on windows)

[polymaker]

Here is the promised release: https://github.com/Polymaker/ldd-modder/releases/tag/v0.2-alpha

If anyone has issues or questions don't hesitate to hit me up.

[zweifuss]

@polymaker thank you for releasing the alpha .2 to github. One question - when you pick 'create from brick...', where does it populate that list from? Because all the parts the people have added throughout the last couple months and I've saved to the folders don't show up in this list, even though I can see them in LDD. When you pick 'Generate LDD Files', does it save the new part to some kind of a list?

Hope my question makes sense!

Thanks again for your work, this is awesome to have. I will try to fix the 32296 tire by modifying the mesh.

Another question about tires and hubs... can you explain the Connections? What do the SubType numbers correspond to? When I pick the pulldown meno in 'connection parameters' it doesn't pull in any numbers.

[polymaker]

Just now, zweifuss said:

@polymaker thank you for releasing the alpha .2 to github. One question - when you pick 'create from brick...', where does it populate that list from? Because all the parts the people have added throughout the last couple months and I've saved to the folders don't show up in this list, even though I can see them in LDD. When you pick 'Generate LDD Files', does it save the new part to some kind of a list?

Weird, it should list the bricks found in the LDD primitives folder. By any chance, do you have the db.lif un-extracted beside? (I ask but I don't think so cause LDD would use it and you would not see your custom parts)
I'll look into it.

1 minute ago, zweifuss said:

Another question about tires and hubs... can you explain the Connections? What do the SubType numbers correspond to? When I pick the pulldown meno in 'connection parameters' it doesn't pull in any numbers.

Sadly I haven't finished the window/panel to edit the connections. For now you must edit them manually in the xml. 

As for the subtype numbers, have a look at the documentation I started:

https://github.com/Polymaker/ldd-modder/blob/develop/Documentation/Primitive connectors.xml

[zweifuss]

@polymaker Only some new parts don't show up in the list... it's very odd. For example 41865 and 42862, the Wedge 3 x 3 Sloped left and right, don not. But the Monorail parts done by @Equilibrium all show up. I checked and the .G files are definitely in the Primitives\LOD0 folder and the XML files are in the Primitives.

edit - Ok just noticed @Stephan put in 41865 instead of 48165 in the 'LDD New Parts' list... the correct number is 48165. I actually created my own with your tool, and now it's in the list. 41865 is an actual part number that just so happens to not be in LDD as well, it's a 'Wheel Small Wide Hard Plastic Slick, Hole Notched for Wheels Holder Pin'. 

I re-created the 42862 and 48165 parts using Brick Studio and they now show up in the list.

Edited July 9, 2020 by zweifuss
Tried some new things after posting...

[polymaker]

13 minutes ago, zweifuss said:

@polymaker Only some new parts don't show up in the list... it's very odd. For example 41865 and 42862, the Wedge 3 x 3 Sloped left and right, don not. But the Monorail parts done by @Equilibrium all show up. I checked and the .G files are definitely in the Primitives\LOD0 folder and the XML files are in the Primitives.

I found the issue with 41865 and 42862 and it weird that LDD does not bother but the two files have a Custom2DField that has an extra comma at the end and my parser does not like that.

Il will add error handling but it should be fixed anyway I think (in the xml I mean).

Edited July 9, 2020 by polymaker

[Stephan]

20 minutes ago, zweifuss said:

Ok just noticed @Stephan put in 41865 instead of 48165 in the 'LDD New Parts' list

Yeah, I just noticed the numbers are not correct... I will fix that

EDIT: fixed. A fix will be downloadable in the next pack.

Edited July 9, 2020 by Stephan

[zweifuss]

@polymaker I know this is a 'pie-in-the-sky' request, but could an algorithm be developed to generate collisions based off the geometry? This is coming from a 3D-modeling noob here, so please ignore this request if it's ludicrous. I guess if that's ridiculous, would it be possible to import collision boxes from a similar part, so that the task of creating collisions can be simplified? I'm wondering how the LDD coders did these collisions, surely they had a script or program to generate the basic blocks, and then they just manipulated them by hand after...