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Arthuriel

1:1 scale L.M.S. Explorer

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Today I thought, that I should share this spaceship here, because despite its flaws (it may look a bit boring and repetitive) I think, that it's still a pretty decent ship, which fits into this part of the forum

(here are already some Rock Raider MOCs).

This post is similar to the one, that I have made on rockraidersunited, but without the development of rather bad pictures to pictures, that I have made in POV-Ray etc. XD, but since I haven't uploaded all

pictures on flickr yet, there is still some stuff in the rru-thread, that isn't here (like a separate model of the bridge): http://www.rockraide...file-available/

I will also post 4 other MOCs (3 smaller LMS Explorer models and one action-figure MOC) on eurobricks :).

Development Story (original Text from 2011 + 2013 Update):

Hi,

I want to show you my LMS Explorer MOC, which is maybe the best recreation of the Rock Raiders colony/miningship I`ve seen so far on the internet.

The crazy idea began around christmas last year, when I was playing LEGO Rock Raiders again after many years and watching the intro and the outro.

My first thoughts were: "Hmm, had someone from LEGO or another person ever build a 1:1 scale model of this ship? This would be very cool"

After searching some minutes on the internet the final assumption was: There was no L.M.S. Explorer model in the original size yet. Maybe some people

hat started with the construction and gave up, because it was too big, too expensive, too complicated etc.

That was the moment I had the idea that building this spaceship myself would be a funny idea. I had enough time and started with this crazy project on my computer.

Phase 1 "Okay, lets start!":

In the beginning I downloaded the LEGO Digital Designer from the LEGO Company itself, because it seemed to be the easiest way to start. The reason for this

were the easy controls and the possibility to build with a high speed, but there were also problems like non available pieces or pieces in certain colors.

At this moment I hadn´t figured out the biggest problem. I will tell you later.

Beneath a contruction program I needed picture sources too, because the LMS Explorer is a very big ship, it´s difficult to see all the details etc.,

if you watch the videos only a few times.

So I decided to look on youtube and began watching the intro and outro over and over, while I was building the ship in the LDD (LEGO Digital Designer).

The hardest part is to figure out, how long or high the different parts are, but with some exercise you will get it. Then you will know for example "Hmm, this

could only be a 1*2*3 panel. That means that this section is 48 studs long and three bricks high" and other stuff. All in all it´s just trial and error (or more

errors than trials in the beginning e345633.png ).

Phase 2 "Oh, that´s very "funny". Now I have to look for new solutions":

A month later the ship had around 16.000 pieces, but now the real "fun" (aka "Aaargh, WTF?!" or eternal damnation) began: LDD crashed more and more,

because the number of pieces was too high. With some tricks (lower details etc.) I came to a limit of ~18.000 bricks, but the program crashed again and

again (and again and again gallery_254_22_254.png ), when I was adding just one brick.

I concluded that I needed a better program to continue. There were only two interesting programs: LDraw and LeoCAD

I took the last one (maybe it was a mistake, because some colors were missing and it was much slower than MLCAD, but in my opinion it has the easier controls).

After this decision I tried to convert the LDD file in a lcd (LeoCAD)-file, but it wasn´t successful. The "pleasure" to build the whole ship in LeoCAD again wasn´t

very funny, but it gave me the advantage to change some construction mistakes, which I made in the LDD-Version.

Phase 3 "Building and building and building..."

It think that this decribes the situation very well, because you will know (while watching the videos on and on gallery_254_22_254.png ), how to build the different sections of the ship.

Sometimes the programm crashed (I don´t know, if it depends on the number of additional pieces, because it crashed sometimes after thousands of pieces or

only after five new bricks).

Phase 4 "Almost finished"

Now the ships contains (October 2011 is near^^) around 57.300 bricks (and it´s just the hull) and LeoCAD crashes very often, but I can still continue.

I will have only a few, but optional, things to do:

-changing the five slope rows on top of the ship front

-changing the black area in front of the brigde

-maybe changing the engines (they look a bit to small, but it´s hard to figure out the right scale)

-adding the teleporter

(-export the ship to MLCAD and changing the colors of almost all bricks, because the ships is brighter in reality. That means for example:

turguoise(I can choose this color only in MLCAD) instead of green etc.).

[Edit from 2013-05-09]: the only thing, that I've done from the points above is the reclouring part. I don't know, if I will do things like adding the teleporter etc. The reason is, that LeoCAD is too slow, MLCAD too complicated and LDD needs too much resources. Maybe it's easier to build a 3D-model with a real 3D program. The advantage would be, that you can probably use a obj-file for things like a new intro etc., which is much more useful.

Maybe I will realise only one point, because it´s getting very boring to complete the ship, but I think that´s okay:D.

Here are some data (I used the dimension tool in MLCAD) from the ship:

Length: 975 studs/ 773,44 cm/ 304,51 in.

Width: 134 studs/ 106,38 cm/ 41,88 in.

Height: 133 studs/ 104,93 cm/ 41,31 in.

pieces: 57.397 (with a stable inner construction it would have 300.000 and more pieces and if you would build rooms with details for the hole crew

(2000 until 3000 rock raiders in my opinion), it would contain one million until two million pieces.

building time: 9 months (or 10/11 in the end)

weight: in reality it would be very heavy. Maybe 200 kg/ 441 lb. or more:D

Update [2013-10-06]: I didn't really work on the model since Oct 2011, because that was very slow and boring. I also slightly updated computer (new OS and a SSD) and somehow I can't even load it in LeoCAD. The only option is MLCAD, but I don't really like the controls of this program.

There are also good news: I replaced the old pictures with POV-Ray renders, which look much better (I always thought, that it was impossible, because don't have much memory, but it worked anyways gallery_254_22_254.png).

10114539425_a04783828e_k.jpg1:1 scale L.M.S. Explorer (16k render) by Arthuriel, on Flickr

10119278056_4bec2ec063_o.png1:1 scale L.M.S. Explorer (HD render) by Arthuriel, on Flickr

10119175234_970b688ee1_o.png1:1 scale L.M.S. Explorer (HD render) by Arthuriel, on Flickr

10119231035_077b4cea18_o.png1:1 scale L.M.S. Explorer (HD render) by Arthuriel, on Flickr

10119183824_c97b221071_o.png1:1 scale L.M.S. Explorer (HD render) by Arthuriel, on Flickr

10119286176_853e3fdecd_o.png1:1 scale L.M.S. Explorer (HD render) by Arthuriel, on Flickr

Links

Main video sources, which were extremely helpful and I used to watch again and again (and often freezed to look at a single frame):

Lego Rock Raiders Intro Movie uploaded by rockraider13:

Lego Rock Raiders Outro #1 uploaded by rockraider13:

Also featured on mocpages, flickr and deviantart (although this RRU thread contains much more pictures, newer content and more awesome/helpful coments e342154.png):

mocpages: http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/289436

flickr: http://www.flickr.co...07/10114539425/

deviantart: http://arthuriel.dev...model-407672007

Download Link of the L.M.S. Explorer Bridge (via Mocpages): http://www.mocpages....1381164719m.lxf

Edited by Arthuriel

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Why is this in Sci Fi now? Rock Raiders is a part of the Action theme collection.

Well, it IS a spaceship, so this is probably the exception to that rule :wink:

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Yeah, good question, why my 1:1 model is suddenly in the Sci-Fi section now (the other versions are in the Action Theme section). Maybe because it's a relatively good recreation of the original in the pc game LEGO Rock Raiders, but that's just a random guess.

Anyway: Thanks for the positive reactions. It may not be the most detailed ship, but I still like the shape and I am also proud of the fact, that the main sources were only two youtube videos with a low quality (240p, although this is also the original video quality).

Edited by Arthuriel

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Yeah, good question, why my 1:1 model is suddenly in the Sci-Fi section now...

Sorry, I was being a smart-megablocks and wondering how this model can be described as "1:1 scale" when it is clearly not hundreds of meters long and capable of carrying real human-sized passengers and crew.

One would assume it is in the "sci-fi" section as it is a spaceship.

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And now it's back in the Action Theme section (Please stay in one section, thread! XD). Maybe that's the problem: it's a spaceship, but it is also part of the Rock Raiders theme ^^.

About the scale: Okay, that is understandable, when people don't know, that the original was actually a spaceship in minifig scale and not human scale, although it is still quite big for a Lego ship, when you consider the dimensions (copied from my text):

Length: 975 studs/ 773,44 cm/ 304,51 in.

Width: 134 studs/ 106,38 cm/ 41,88 in.

Height: 133 studs/ 104,93 cm/ 41,31 in.

pieces: 57.397 (it's only the hull except for the bridge)

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