[Software] LDD2PovRay

[RyanardoDaVinci]

Could you, please, be more specific? Where did the standard instructions failed?

Basically: I am not well versed in computer stuff; I use it for the most basic functions. So when there's talk of directories, app data, and program stuff, I have no idea what's going on, lol.

I was getting an error saying LDD was still open when it wasn't, I could get around that by checking "don't generate includes" but then it would give a parse error, I think, something about default colors. I unistalled and redownloaded twice but still had the same problems.

I used this: http://triangle717.wordpress.com/tutorials/ldd/ldd2povray/ but that eldos thing it mentions never came up for me, maybe that's the reason?

[Sunder]

Finaly I've solved problem by modifing ldd_brickset_index.xml by deleting string with spoiled detail.

[hrontos]

I was getting an error saying LDD was still open when it wasn't, I could get around that by checking "don't generate includes" but then it would give a parse error, I think, something about default colors. I unistalled and redownloaded twice but still had the same problems.

This sentence seems to be important. You cannot run LDD2POV and LDD at the same time, since LDD locks the brickset data and they are needed by the LDD2POV.

Checkbox "don't generate includes" is there for cases, when you have successfully converted a model to POV-Ray and POV-Ray is able to render it, but you would like to change a camera view or do some other minor change (recolor a brick, move a brick etc.). In these cases is it not necessary to use a brickset data, since you are not adding any new bricks. It is annoying to open/close LDD all the time, so at least for these cases there is that checkbox.

Finaly I've solved problem by modifing ldd_brickset_index.xml by deleting string with spoiled detail.

Yes, that is also good solution. But more advanced than a simple delete, so I did not suggested it, since it is hard to judge what is considered too complicated for a user.

This XML contains list of all includes, that were already generated.

[RyanardoDaVinci]

This sentence seems to be important. You cannot run LDD2POV and LDD at the same time, since LDD locks the brickset data and they are needed by the LDD2POV.

Checkbox "don't generate includes" is there for cases, when you have successfully converted a model to POV-Ray and POV-Ray is able to render it, but you would like to change a camera view or do some other minor change (recolor a brick, move a brick etc.). In these cases is it not necessary to use a brickset data, since you are not adding any new bricks. It is annoying to open/close LDD all the time, so at least for these cases there is that checkbox.

I never had LDD and LDD2POV open at the same time but I would still get that error.

[hrontos]

Ok, please, post a picture of the error and a LDD2POV main screen and your LDD2POV settings. Thank you.

[RyanardoDaVinci]

Here's a picture of both errors: http://i.imgur.com/ZpKLE1Q.jpg The only other thing I had open was Firefox.

The settings are:

db.lif location: C:\Program Files\LEGO Company\LEGO Digital Designer

Output path: C:\Program Files\LDD Tools\LDD to POV-Ray Converter\LDDIncludes

POV include path: \\.\LDDIncludes

[hrontos]

Here's a picture of both errors: http://i.imgur.com/ZpKLE1Q.jpg The only other thing I had open was Firefox.

The settings are:

db.lif location: C:\Program Files\LEGO Company\LEGO Digital Designer

Output path: C:\Program Files\LDD Tools\LDD to POV-Ray Converter\LDDIncludes

POV include path: \\.\LDDIncludes

LDD2POV main screen and file system driver seems to be ok, but your paths are wrong.

Saving includes into a program files directory or subdirectory requires admin rights which are not used by the LDD2POV and db.lif is probably also wrong.

So, please, try to follow these steps:

1. Open My Computer (Windows Explorer window will be opened - not the IE). You can also use Run command from the Start menu.

2. Type %appdata% into address bar (including the percent signs). It will open for you a folder - if you click in the address bar, you will see a real path - something like: C:\Users\Martin\AppData\Roaming.

3. Go to "LEGO Company" folder.

4. Go to "LEGO Digital Designer" folder.

5. You will see there a db.lif file.

6. Copy the full folder path from the address bar to the LDD2POV as a path for the db.lif file - in my case it is: C:\Users\Martin\AppData\Roaming\LEGO Company\LEGO Digital Designer

7. Create a new folder in the C:\Users\Martin\AppData\Roaming\LEGO Company\LEGO Digital Designer named LDDInc.

8. Go to the newly created LDDInc.

9. Copy the full folder path from the address bar to the LDD2POV as a path for the includes - in my case it is: C:\Users\Martin\AppData\Roaming\LEGO Company\LEGO Digital Designer\LDDInc.

[RyanardoDaVinci]

YES, that worked!

Thanks for the help. :)

[hrontos]

YES, that worked!

Thanks for the help. :)

You are welcome, I am glad it works.

[JaseTJ]

Argh... So I'm having some of the same issues I saw in the first and last couple pages... but I can't get around them.

-I'm not sure if anyone can help me based on this really... but I already rerouted everything as explained above, as well as adding the "Library_Path=\\.\LDDIncludes" into the POVray.ini thing.

Edited July 30, 2014 by JaseTJ

[hrontos]

Could you, please, show us the content of the messages tab?

[JaseTJ]

Well I could... but it appears to be working now that I've got the programs up and running again. Closing them out for the night seems to have done the trick. Thanks anyways :)

[Lego Otaku]

Sometimes just restarting works.

For future reference, be sure that LDD is not running, LDD2POV is up first and stays up when POVRay is launched to render. If an error pops up, try rebooting your PC.

[TheOneVeyronian]

Hello all

I'm having a bit of a puzzling problem with regards to chrome renders using LDD2POV-Ray, and was wondering if someone would be able to help me with a simple, easy to understand explanation or solution. For reference, all the following renders were done under exactly the same conditions (original LDD geometry only, 55% lights, no ambient light, hidden reflecting objects to the left of model, base plane absent, transparent background and 2 additional light sources where the eyes light up), but in each case just the sky sphere used is different. The images are small since they're test renders, but they should illustrate my problem well enough. In case it helps, these were done using latest version of LDD2POV-Ray, POV-Ray 3.7, running on Windows 7.

Image rendered with no sky sphere (just for comparison purposes):

Image rendered using "Factory Catwalk" sky sphere (from this website):

As you can see, it renders with all these colour blotches (artifacts?) and it plagues most of my renders on nearly every sky sphere I've tried. The chrome itself isn't too bad, but it's the artifacts that are really annoying me.

Image rendered using "Milky Way" sky sphere (from website linked above)

This appears to be the only sky sphere I've used that doesn't cause the artifacts like the ones in the previous image to appear, but here, the chrome is a bit dull (but as you can see, parts of it do work perfectly, like the four legged beast's ankles). Otherwise, this render is about the closest I've got to a successful chrome render.

Any help that can solve this rather unusual problem would be much appreciated. Both me and my friend seem to be at a loss as to why this is happening... especially as my friend's (rancorbait) chrome renders have never had the problem in the second image.

p.s. I did try to find a tutorial for this type of rendering beforehand but couldn't actually find any that made sense to me, so please forgive any ignorance I may show in this post . I'd provide the LDD, but I haven't actually got any means of sharing them just yet.

[hrontos]

It looks like your radiosity settings are not good enough for this image. Skyspheres showing just skies are not so sensitive to radosity settings, that's why your render is more or less ok. But the first skysphere contains many colors and light sources and that makes it more sensitive to errors and quality settings. Also your global tresholds adjustments may help, since chrome is very reflective and require higher max. trace level.

[TheOneVeyronian]

It looks like your radiosity settings are not good enough for this image. Skyspheres showing just skies are not so sensitive to radosity settings, that's why your render is more or less ok. But the first skysphere contains many colors and light sources and that makes it more sensitive to errors and quality settings. Also your global tresholds adjustments may help, since chrome is very reflective and require higher max. trace level.

Fair enough, the "why" makes more sense now. I am sorry if this is going to sound like a dumb question (I'm still relatively new to rendering software despite some of my already complex looking renders like my Balrog), but what are these "global threshold adjustments" and how do I go and presumably adjust them? Also, would you recommend a different radiosity setting to the one I was recommended to use (2Bounce)?

But anyway, with more conversing with my friend Rancorbait who is also working on chrome renders, it turned out that he had used PNG image files while I had used HDR image files. So I tried the same render again under almost the same conditions (just added a base plane to this one) but using a PNG version of a sky sphere I originally had the problems seen in the second image of my last post with instead. And, somewhat surprisingly, it actually made a significant difference (though it's still not perfect, but it's good for now...):

[hrontos]

Fair enough, the "why" makes more sense now. I am sorry if this is going to sound like a dumb question (I'm still relatively new to rendering software despite some of my already complex looking renders like my Balrog), but what are these "global threshold adjustments" and how do I go and presumably adjust them? Also, would you recommend a different radiosity setting to the one I was recommended to use (2Bounce)?

There two global settings:

max_trace_level - it is number of surfaces light ray can hit during tracing. When light is not reached within this limit, pixel will be black. Higher might be better, but takes longer.

adc_bailout - minimal amount of change each reflection must bring - when change in computed pixel color is less than this value, tracing of the pixel is stopped and pixel is drawn - each pixel can have 256 levels of RGB components so minimum change is 1/256 = 0,0039, value of 0.01/2 = 0,005 is a bit more. Higher value means earlier stopping of tracing and less colorfull image. Sometimes the max_trace_level is useless, if changes in colors are minimal - adc_bailout helps to end before max_trace_level is reached, to speed up rendering while keeping possibility of deep tracing some pixels when it makes sense.

Try to render without conventional lights. Only HDR and your 2 eyes lights.

HDR can be made brighter for example by changing assumed gamma of the HDR.

image_map { hdr "foo.hdr" gamma 1.8 }

But anyway, with more conversing with my friend Rancorbait who is also working on chrome renders, it turned out that he had used PNG image files while I had used HDR image files. So I tried the same render again under almost the same conditions (just added a base plane to this one) but using a PNG version of a sky sphere I originally had the problems seen in the second image of my last post with instead. And, somewhat surprisingly, it actually made a significant difference (though it's still not perfect, but it's good for now...):

The key feature of the HDR format is the amount of image info you have there. HDR contains much more lighting levels than standard PNG. HDR much more behaves like human eye - for light parts of the scene eye consumes less light, for dark part more light. Standard digital camera takes some average and this is stored in JPG or PNG. As a result, dark part of the image is not lit enough, light part seems to be overexposed. With HDR you can nicely make a picture of a person standing in a room in front of the window. You will get all details on the face. With JPG or PNG, face would be too dark, window too bright.

When HDR is used as light source, light source seen on the image really behave as light sources on your scene.

[opn2]

Edited September 27, 2014 by opn2

[SeptemLego]

Hi,

I´m really new to this and I installed everything like the tutorial.

Now my problem:

I to convert a LXF to a POV and everything is fine.

When I now run the POV Ray everything starts fine as well BUT when it is loading the files on SOME I get a read/write excpetion?

When I skip these the rendering will begin. But this cant be normal?

Is there something I did miss?

[benonemusic]

Hi everyone! I'm a new user. I learned about Eurobricks last weekend at BrickFair Virginia, an annual fan festival in the U.S. There was a very nice seminar on LDD, and at the seminar I learned about rendering models in POVRay. So I set out to render the LDD model of our BrickFair MOC with POVRay.

I've gotten very far, but each time, the program stops at 47% of the second rendering pass, regardless of whether I render at 720p or 1080p resolution. I've left the computer on overnight, and during the day, but it doesn't move past 47%. Could someone possibly help? (And if this isn't the proper thread, please let me know.)

Here are the details. I have a Core2Duo E8500 CPU running Windows 7 64-bit with a GeForce GTX 560 Ti. I used LDD 4.3 to render the model, and LDD2PovRay 1.2.11.42814, and POVRay 3.7.0.msvc10.win64

I followed the instructions on this excellent tutorial exactly:

http://triangle717.w...ldd/ldd2povray/

EXCEPT I answered "yes" in LDD2PovRay when given the option to start rendering the model in POVRay. (The instructions for what to do after entering "no" weren't clear to me in the tutorial.)

Any suggestions for things to try, and test out? I saved the POVRay messages log, in case it has anything useful in it (in each case it ends with "Building Completed," and the valid bevel count.

Many thanks,

Ben

Edited August 9, 2014 by benonemusic

[hrontos]

When I now run the POV Ray everything starts fine as well BUT when it is loading the files on SOME I get a read/write excpetion?

When I skip these the rendering will begin. But this cant be normal?

Is there something I did miss?

POV-Ray has some feature that protects some files from being read. It can be deactivated. If it is not that case, it would be good to share more details as it quite difficult to guess what can be the reason for such messages.

I've gotten very far, but each time, the program stops at 47% of the second rendering pass, regardless of whether I render at 720p or 1080p resolution. I've left the computer on overnight, and during the day, but it doesn't move past 47%. Could someone possibly help? (And if this isn't the proper thread, please let me know.)

Is it possible that there are some transparent parts in the area being rendered at 47%? They are really slow to render.

[benonemusic]

Is it possible that there are some transparent parts in the area being rendered at 47%? They are really slow to render.

Great point. There is a stack of transparent bricks that must be highly difficult to render. I'll simplify the LDD model and let everyone know what happens. Thank you so much.

[hrontos]

Great point. There is a stack of transparent bricks that must be highly difficult to render. I'll simplify the LDD model and let everyone know what happens. Thank you so much.

There are some tricks how to make it faster. Either by composing the result as mentioned here or by rebuilding the transparent area from smaller transparent bricks (8x8 transparent plate renders much more slowly than 64 1x1 plates). "Don't bevel transparent parts" will also speed things up.

Edited August 9, 2014 by hrontos

[benonemusic]

Thanks so much for the reply and the link. After slightly simplifying my LDD model, I've rendered several versions now, and I'll post a sample or two shortly. My friend who taught the BrickFair seminar on LDD kindly offered to render the file too, and to share his suggestions. Indeed, when I changed some of the "Rendering" settings on LDD2POVRay, the rendering times became dramatically faster. I'll also try the "don't bevel transparent parts" setting too. This is very informative, and will serve me well for rendering next year's MOC, which we are already planning (and will have a lot of transparent parts!).

Ben

Edited August 10, 2014 by benonemusic

[benonemusic]

Hi everyone, Here is the POVRay version of our bookstore MOC. I successfully rendered it in the end, but my friend Stuart Roll, who taught the BrickFair Virginia 2014 seminar on LDD, kindly rendered this nice composite version using Nachapon's technique of making a composite image by rendering the entire model with and without the transparent parts.With Nachapon's method it took 1 hour and 45 minutes for Stuart to render this model.

Stuart noticed that the LDD model was floating, because of a plate underneath the bookstore! So, here is our floating bookstore. Many thanks to all and I'm looking forward to continuing to use and learn LDD2PovRay!

Floating LEGO Bookstore by benonemusic1, on Flickr

Edited August 12, 2014 by benonemusic