Photoreal LEGO Rendering

[legolijntje]

Wow, the new colors really look better. It's like a perfect render

And, I added that 3840px image to my wallpapers folder The car misses the flexible hoses though, maybe someone could add them?

[Superkalle]

The topic is becoming really picture heavy (for natural reasons ), but to be inline with the EB recommendations, can you post lower res pics (like 800x600 or 1024x764), and link to the high res ones? Thanks.

[Renderbricks]

The topic is becoming really picture heavy (for natural reasons ), but to be inline with the EB recommendations, can you post lower res pics (like 800x600 or 1024x764), and link to the high res ones? Thanks.

I will do. Thanks for the advice *:-)

Wow, the new colors really look better. It's like a perfect render

And, I added that 3840px image to my wallpapers folder The car misses the flexible hoses though, maybe someone could add them?

The model seems to be incomplete due to missing parts. I will check this out again. Is the model coming from LDD?

[legolijntje]

I believe (so I'm not 100% sure) the missing parts MLcad (and LDview) are talking about are the springs in the suspension and some electronic detail stuff. This might be because of a part change in Ldraw (but I don't think so). I think the model is made in SR3D Builder, which does something strange with suspension and electronic parts that MLcad can't really handle.

What I was talking about are the flexible parts, and they just aren't in the file at all

[Renderbricks]

Here's a screenshot of the missing parts. Btw: LDView shows the LEGO logos onto the studs correct. I have to find out why the importer is showing some of them mirrored.

http://lego.virtualrepublic.org/issues/8070_Technic_Car_Missing_Parts

[Philo]

Ah, the old problem of unofficial parts that have been renamed... This occurs when the official LEGO part number is discovered after the part has been put on parts tracker, but before it became released as an official part. LDraw maintains compatibility (using "moved to" parts) when number is discovered after part is official, but no while it's still on parts tracker.

There is nonetheless a way to check the history of such parts, using this kind of query (change the part number in url according to your need):

http://www.ldraw.org...parts/u9113.dat

x882 -> 70038 (shock absorber spring)

u9112 -> 59143 (PF medium front)

u9113 -> 59142 (PF medium back)

58124s03 does exist in official library, but it's a subpart in the part\s folder so it should be referenced as s\58124s03 (that's a bug in SR3Dbuilder, dunno if it has been corrected).

About mirrored studs: this occurs when the "lazy" (*) model builder create one half of a symetric model and uses mirroring to create the other half. LDView has built in code to restore studs in normal orientation when this occurs

(*) no offence intended. I know very well the length of time taken to create a big model!

Edited May 1, 2014 by Philo

[Nachapon Lego]

Your renderings are more realistic than TLG's product renderings. :thumbup: TLG's product renderings (with Maya?) are too perfect.

Only the accuracy of brick geometry that we have no chance to beat TLG. Because seems like they use actual bricks dimensions used for making plastic moulds for rendering, too. For example, LDD's minifig arm is better than LDraw's.

I suggest adding more roughness on all the slope bricks (roof tiles).

Did you remake all the decals to vector format? They look very sharp.

virtualrepublic 's Photoreal LEGO Rendering by Nachapon S., on Flickr

Edited May 1, 2014 by bbqqq

[Renderbricks]

I wished there would be a coverter for the LDD files. But I guess that the models and studs from LDD have not the detail I need for a realistic rendering. My model for the rendering is an import of a ldr file using the ldraw library. All decals are in vector format there. What is good because it would need some work to scan pictures and texture them manually. I am aware of the missing roughness for the slope bricks and I know that POV-Ray can do this. But I need an automatic way for this because the idea is to import every model without doing manually steps. Especially very complex models would end up in heavy work because everytime you import the ldr files you end up in untextured models again. You must create your own library for those models to replace them by a script.

Edited May 1, 2014 by virtualrepublic

[Alcom1]

I wished there would be a coverter for the LDD files.

Well there is. Kinda. It's weird . I've been able to extract LDD models using 3dvia printscreen and import the resulting .3dxml into 3dsmax using something like this.

[Superkalle]

Please note though that the geometries in LDD doesn't have bevels, stud logo or anything - they are very "sparse", so in that sense of little value for high quality rendering like we talk about here.

Side note: the reason that Hrontos can make such nice renders from LDD is that he programatically adds these bevels, logos etc to the LDD geometries. Also note that Hrontos have special permission from the LDD Team to be able to access the LDD geometries directly, and hence the virtual file system driver that is installed with LDD2PovRay.

[Alcom1]

Please note though that the geometries in LDD doesn't have bevels, stud logo or anything - they are very "sparse", so in that sense of little value for high quality rendering like we talk about here.

LDraw's isn't? Actually before I type anything else, where are people getting their LDraw conversions? Whenever I do a conversion through LDView (which has been 3 times across a 2 year period), the resulting model is a mess of backfaces and weird geometries.

Edited May 2, 2014 by Alcom1

[matt_one]

Well there is. Kinda. It's weird . I've been able to extract LDD models using 3dvia printscreen and import the resulting .3dxml into 3dsmax using something like this.

How do you preserve original LDD colors in resulting 3dvia's .3dxml file?

[Alcom1]

How do you preserve original LDD colors in resulting 3dvia's .3dxml file?

Colors disappear if you have high quality bricks enabled in LDD. Disable that and colors should be captured.

Edited May 4, 2014 by Alcom1

[matt_one]

Colors disappear if you have high quality bricks enabled in LDD. Disable that and colors should be captured.

Great! THank you so much Alcom1!!!

Edited May 4, 2014 by matt_one

[Renderbricks]

Here's another test to add some bump noise to the faces and edges. The top picture is using more reflective materials without any bumps. The bottom picture is using a scaled noise for the faces and a smaller scaled noise for the round edges. I think this needs more adjustments to some kind of subtle level. The bump shouldn't be too extreme. What also could make sense to use a specular map to vary the look of the reflection to let the bricks look more used. Finally the bricks are all perfectly aligned what wouldn't happen in reality. But to create this automatically isn't that easy because the bricks would start to intersect each other. At the end I want anyway an idealized picture what looks realistic and clean.

What is important for me to put these effects on top of the shader list to add them to any model automaticall without readjusting it.

Clean and Perfect // click on picture for 4K

With Noise Bump // click on picture for 4K

Edited May 22, 2014 by virtualrepublic

[legolijntje]

It looks nice (as always ), but in my opinion the bricks are a bit too reflective and shiny. It almost looks like they're made of glass.

Also, when you open both images in a tab and quickly switch between them, you can see that the one with the noise bump is a bit vague and lighter... I don't like that, it looks a bit washed out.

[Renderbricks]

It looks nice (as always ), but in my opinion the bricks are a bit too reflective and shiny. It almost looks like they're made of glass.

Also, when you open both images in a tab and quickly switch between them, you can see that the one with the noise bump is a bit vague and lighter... I don't like that, it looks a bit washed out.

Ah, yes. Good eye. It's because the top image was a bit color corrected in After Effects what I turned off in the bottom image.

[Renderbricks]

It looks nice (as always ), but in my opinion the bricks are a bit too reflective and shiny. It almost looks like they're made of glass.

Yes, I agree. I checked some real references like this: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mostlytechnic/8182189261/in/photostream/

LEGO surfaces are very reflective depending on the lighting and perspective. I guess I need to darken the reflection color a bit and work out the perfect fresnel value.

[matt_one]

Maybe my eye is not so good, but these images are wonderful.

[Renderbricks]

Maybe my eye is not so good, but these images are wonderful.

Thanks. And I will try to make them more perfect.

[matt_one]

Thanks. And I will try to make them more perfect.

You're running in "God" mode!

[Zerobricks]

These are trully amazing! Few more renders and you wont be able to differentiate between real and computer images.

[Renderbricks]

Final adjustments of today. Something between low and high reflective.

Click on picture to take a look at the 8K version what took 4 hours to render. At this resolution the LDRAW bricks look still fine.

Edited May 24, 2014 by virtualrepublic

[The_Cook]

The texture on the opaque slopes doesn't look rough enough; there should be a fairly distinct stipple pattern.

Some form of bump/normal mapping on those faces should be enough.

[Renderbricks]

The texture on the opaque slopes doesn't look rough enough; there should be a fairly distinct stipple pattern.

Some form of bump/normal mapping on those faces should be enough.

The texture on the opaque slopes doesn't look rough enough; there should be a fairly distinct stipple pattern.

Some form of bump/normal mapping on those faces should be enough.

Yes. There is no texture like this. The problem is that I can't do that automatically because there's no texture information when I import the models. What I need to do is to tag the polygons for a procedural bump texture. But when you have a model with hundreds of slopes it makes no sense. I hope the next importer supports instances. Then changing a few master slopes manually should be worth the little time.

Edited May 24, 2014 by virtualrepublic