[Software] LDD2PovRay

[legolijntje]

I want to use LDD2PovRay again (I only did something like 2 years ago) and in the meantime I installed a new Windows, so I had to set everything up again.

Now, something that I can't remember seeing the last time, is another Hard Drive in MS File Explorerer.

I have a ssd and 2 hdd and I set the LDDincludes folder to a folder on my old hdd. Now, a third hdd has appeared with the name "LDD to POV-Ray Includes". It's has exactly the same size as the hdd I set the LDDincludes folder to (465 GB of which 140GB is full).

Is it normal for that thing to appear and if so, why does it has the same size? And, it doesn't appear in Disk Management, so what is it exactly? Some explanation would be appreciated

[roland]

It seems to be using some sort of virtual file system, namely:

https://www.eldos.com/cbfs/

That extra drive is basically only an alternative name for the folder on the real hdd.

Bit over engineered for a simple converter if you ask me :)

[legolijntje]

Yea, you're right. Now I see.

I remember that there was something about an agreement with the LDD team that this tool would be allowed if none of the brick data would be available to the user while the model is converted and rendered.

I believe that's why they use that virtual file system.

I think something went wrong though, because I was able to access that virtual filesystem (I'm not sure if that's a bad thing though), but since that first time this morning, I haven't seen it again.

[TheOneVeyronian]

Sorry to post again, but it feels like the questions I posted a little while ago on the previous page have just been (unintentionally?) skipped over. I'd especially like to know why my parsing time is suddenly unusually long... I guess I'm going to have to assume that nobody has a clue as to why or those who do know just aren't here at the moment... it is a bit strange and puzzling that a better performing computer actually has slower parsing times, I fear it's going to bug me

Or is it the case that I might be asking in the wrong place?

[roland]

it is a bit strange and puzzling that a better performing computer actually has slower parsing times,

Are you sure you are using the same exact settings?

POVRay's parsing can be very (very very) memory intensive, did your old PC have more memory so it didn't need to do swapping?

Did your old pc have a faster hdd (could make a huge difference if alot of mem swapping is going on)

[TheOneVeyronian]

Are you sure you are using the same exact settings?

POVRay's parsing can be very (very very) memory intensive, did your old PC have more memory so it didn't need to do swapping?

Did your old pc have a faster hdd (could make a huge difference if alot of mem swapping is going on)

Pretty sure I'm using the exact same settings (unless I have misunderstood your question), my new computer (should mention both old and new computers are Toshiba laptops) has the same RAM (4GB) and twice as much hard drive capacity as my old one. I can't remember the processor and hard drive settings of my old computer, but my new computer operates everything from a single 1TB hard drive whereas my old computer had 2 separate hard drives totalling 500GB, one for programs and one for data. Could that be a potential factor perhaps?

It's a complete mystery though since the actual rendering goes at the same speed as my old computer and doesn't heat the hard drive much either.

I'll try and see if I can find out the HDD speeds of my old and new computers in the meantime.

[legolijntje]

HDD speeds don't really matter a lot for POV-Ray rendering as far as I know.

The most important thing is the speed of your cpu and POV-Ray 3.7 also supports multithreading. So, your cpu speed and your cpu cores (and/or threads) are the most important factors here.

You also need enough RAM, but for a normal sized render, I think 4gb should be enough if you aren't doing too much while it's rendering.

[roland]

HDD speeds don't really matter a lot for POV-Ray rendering as far as I know.

Unless you are working on a large scene and POVRay runs out of memory and starts the swapping game :)

I've seen it use 80+ GB on a 16GB system.

[TheOneVeyronian]

The most important thing is the speed of your cpu and POV-Ray 3.7 also supports multithreading. So, your cpu speed and your cpu cores (and/or threads) are the most important factors here.

You also need enough RAM, but for a normal sized render, I think 4gb should be enough if you aren't doing too much while it's rendering.

Well, it;s rare I render models over 2,000 bricks, but I render Technic and CCBS quite a lot, but parsing is slow for all models of all sizes, relative to how many bricks are in the model of course. Actual rendering speed once it finishes parsing is good, even if I have a few applications open. I have 4 CPU cores in my computer and I imagine my CPU speed is quite good (slightly dumb question is how can you check that? Once I can report on that it might solve the question). So what's causing snail slow parsing but normal rendering speeds is still a mystery to me.

Also, as the hard drive that POV-Ray works from has something like 750GB free space, I don't think memory swapping is the problem either.

Thanks for helping anyhow, it's very helpful

[TheOneVeyronian]

Sorry, it's me again! I have a question about rendering with additional light sources. I'm trying to render this file with realistic spot light effects, but so far, all my efforts result in only small patches of light reflecting off objects and is hardly noticeable. Is there anything I can alter to create realistic spot light effects like what you'd normally see in a real-life equivalent of the MOC? I'd appreciate if someone could suggest some settings or is able to tweak my light source codes that will make what I'm looking for (to pretty much bathe the MOC in the 7 different light colours, emanating from the 7 "light" units). I'd rather complete the render myself otherwise.

Unfortunately, because parsing the model takes 20 minutes, it's hard to do trial-and-error renderings on my new computer

LDD2POV-Ray settings I'm using: Original LDD Geometry; Scene: only Base Plane is ticked; Light colour RGB 128, 128, 128; Light 1 & 2 30%, no Shadow, Light 3 45%, Shadow, Ambient Light 35%; Normal Radiosity.

Additional POV-Ray instructions I'm adding to the POV file to try to create the lights. I feel that these just need to be tweaked in order to get the effect I want:

light_source {< 11.865242004394531, 35.887954711914063, 20.189535140991211> color rgb <131.5, 32.5, 183.5>

fade_distance 3 fade_power 6

}

light_source {< 11.668018341064453, 35.582984924316406, -11.218708992004395> color rgb <0.5, 41.5, 207.5>

fade_distance 3 fade_power 6

}

light_source {< 11.432687759399414, 35.192951202392578, 40.747306823730469> color rgb <33.5, 118.5, 37.5>

fade_distance 3 fade_power 6

}

light_source {< 11.95881175994873, 35.658702850341797, 30.539575576782227> color rgb <235.5, 247.5, 45.5>

fade_distance 3 fade_power 6

}

light_source {< 12.058873176574707, 35.957691192626953, -0.92266333103179932> color rgb <215.5, 128.5, 25.5>

fade_distance 3 fade_power 6

}

light_source {< 11.471432685852051, 36.297462463378906, 9.5999784469604492> color rgb <16.5, 203.5, 49.5>

fade_distance 3 fade_power 6

}

light_source {< 11.551230430603027, 35.386505126953125, -21.70213508605957> color rgb <156.5, 0.5, 16.5>

fade_distance 3 fade_power 6

}

I would attach the POV file, but it's too big for the uploader.

[hrontos]

If you want to debug your light setup, simplify your model. Leave there only important bricks, leave out may be 90% of those less important. This will save you parsing time for debugging. Parsing is done only on one CPU core so power of the machine have almost no impact on parse time.

The light definitions you mentioned are point lights, not spot lights. Look into POV-Ray's help to see what you need to define a spot light (position, direction, cone size, etc.). It is quite tricky to make it look like studio light.

If you want more realistic lighting, try to find on the internet some sky sphere HDR image with studio lights setup. This may produce much better result than experiments with spot lights.

Edited February 21, 2015 by hrontos

[TheOneVeyronian]

If you want to debug your light setup, simplify your model. Leave there only important bricks, leave out may be 90% of those less important. This will save you parsing time for debugging. Parsing is done only on one CPU core so power of the machine have almost no impact on parse time.

The light definitions you mentioned are point lights, not spot lights. Look into POV-Ray's help to see what you need to define a spot light (position, direction, cone size, etc.). It is quite tricky to make it look like studio light.

If you want more realistic lighting, try to find on the internet some sky sphere HDR image with studio lights setup. This may produce much better result than experiments with spot lights.

Thanks, that helped very much. I did what you suggested and ended up using this light source code:

light_source {

<3.5512275695800781, 7.7165031433105469, 2.2978634834289551>

color rgb <156.5, 0.5, 16.5>

spotlight

radius 15

falloff 20

tightness 10

point_at <-8.4000005722045898, 0, 3.6000001430511475>

}

And it resulted in this render:

It's not perfect, but that was definitely what I was looking for, so thank you hrontos!

Edited February 21, 2015 by TheOneVeyronian

[binuche]

Hi, I'am new here, so before all, hello to everybody.

I'm trying to render a creation of mine. But render take sooooo much time, i think there is some issue. Example: after 12 hours of rendering only half of my creation is done. For a quite simple creation: 450 parts

I try with the defaults settings in ldd to povray converter. resolution is 1920*1080, my computer is a i5 4590 @ 3.3 ghz 8go ram (edit: win 8 64bits). Ok there is some transparents parts but it seems a bit excessive rendering time compare to what I have seen on this board.

First, the .ini file of my project has the wrong version number. Is it an issue?

Next can i stop a render to continue it later? (my pc is in my bedroom) I try the "+c" commande in the dialog box, but the result is bugged image.

thank you in advance :)

Edited March 27, 2015 by binuche

[binuche]

Well, il finally decide to decrease the radiosity level from custom to normal and disactivate the anti aliasing. The result is that the render time decrease to 2 hours although that I increase the resolution to 3880*2160. That's better, but now i have many black pixels and some stranges artefacts, already describe here (the "hollow stud bug").

I will continue to test differents settings.

Edited March 27, 2015 by binuche

[Shine]

Checking "Don't bevel transparent parts" in the Model tab can help. They're typically what takes the longest to render.

[binuche]

Yeap, i already have disable that.

[BEAVeR]

In order to be able to continue your render at a later time, just add the line "Continue_Trace=On" to the file (I dont remember whether it was the.pov or the .ini ... but I know its the shortest of the two files you need to add this line to)

[binuche]

Alleluia! Great thanks to you!!

It is in the .ini file. I tested. It works only with the finals pixels rendered. All that remains is restarting from the very begining. That's better than nothing.

[Shine]

Can anyone explain why the window behind the windscreen gets so heavily distorted? It would make sense for the sections behind the rounded corners to be like that, but I can't figure any reason the whole thing is.

File is here if it helps.

[GK733]

I can't get any part on any MOCs appear as transparent. On this simple MOC, all the olive green parts are supposed to be phosp-green tried later with transbright green and got same issue.

It also doesn't give any shine to it's silver parts (feet and tip of the tail)

Fixed by setting the quality bar more than half.

Edited April 18, 2015 by GK733

[Unknown Ninja]

Dear Readers,

I want to start spending an hour a day I have free making creations in LDD. I love it! I have been looking for something to vent my creativity and have found it!

I saw that there is a program called LDD to POVRay that makes rendered pictures of your creations. Around the internet I have seen a lot of pictures and they look awesome, mine don't. It seems to always create a jagged effect around the lines. It looks like the textures or resolution is too low. I treid a lot of settings out, spent the whole day trying different configurations but always get the same results. When I see a picture online, they are sharp and beautiful. My pictures don't look like that. Also, it takes like 5 to 10 minutes per render and some guys online are talking about days rendering. I have a pretty decent CPU (i7) but still, the difference is way too big.

Here is a picture I rendered. Hope I show it correctly.

Am I doing something wrong? I used the default settings with 1080p resolution.

Sorry if I overlooked something obvious. I am completely new to this.

Thanks in advance.

Edited April 23, 2015 by Unknown Ninja

[___]

you need to play with several settings in LDD2POVRAY, it'd be too easy just "hit and run"

So, for the start: try to play with anti-aliasing settings under Rendering tab...

Also the number and intensity of lights matters, background color, focal blur too etc..you just have to give it more time to learn

Edited April 23, 2015 by bublible

[Dardanel]

Maybe post your settings, I find it hard to believe that you put everything to max and rendered only 5-10 mins :D

Edited April 23, 2015 by Dardanel

[Unknown Ninja]

As I mentioned, on the default it takes around 5 minutes. I put everything on max on 4k and it took like 20 minutes. Results where the same as shown in my picture. Jagged edges around outlines of the bricks.

I will fiddle around with the program some more tonight.

[Unknown Ninja]

I now have new settings. Almost everything maxed. It is better but you still get some weird jagged lines on the forehead of the figure. Is that normal.

Also, it took 12 minutes to render this at 1920x1080p. How can it go so fast?