smoothbit

Thanks for all the feedback and sorry for being a bit too vague in my initial post. What I liked about those two sets wasn't specifically that you could build three different models, (though that was of course cool), rather it was being able to motorise the car and make it drive around. I was hoping to find something similarly fun for my son and decided to get this: https://brickset.com/sets/42140-1/App-Controlled-Transformation-Vehicle There's also this really nice alternative build: https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-151271/brikdlego/rally-car-42140-alternative-model Thanks again!

When I was a child I really enjoyed playing with these two simple sets: https://brickset.com/sets/8034-1/Universal-Set https://brickset.com/sets/8720-1/9V-Motor-Set Is there a modern equivalent? All the "Powered Up" sets I see are considerably more complex and expensive.

Thank you very much, those settings make really good looking renders of the models 🙂

As a birthday present for someone, I've built modified versions of two birds from Thomas Poulsom's Birds from Bricks. I've generated instructions using the latest version of LEGO Studio and have a question about rendering an image to use on the cover: Does anyone know what settings would result in the most LEGO-like rendering of a model? Meaning in terms of the images LEGO use on the covers of their own instruction manuals.

My whole street has been dismantled and put into boxes in the basement, but if I ever rebuild I'll take that into consideration, thanks for the suggestion. I've long-since paused work on this. Until I pick it up again, maybe to attempt getting it rentable on PleyWorld, here's a slightly colour-corrected 1440p version of the whole build in one video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdoiBlpADkA

Yep, when I was nine years old I built my own, much smaller version, it made a cup of water fall onto the head of whoever opened the door. I'm considering including an even tinier version in my childhood home, now need to decide whether I base it on my own design or the one from the advert.

That's the very same one I was thinking of, thank you! I've been searching for it for a while now, what search phrase returned it to you so quickly? I tried various combinations of technic, robot, bedroom, sister, but none of them seemed to work.

Does anyone remember a LEGO TV Advertisement from the late 1980s / early 1990s, that featured a girl sneaking into her brother's dark bedroom and being scared off by a huge, Technic robot with red glowing eyes? And if you remember it do you know of anywhere online I can see it again?

Coming at it from the angle of having built many LEGO houses as a child, and then later having built the Modulars, I think I had it easier; I was thinking in terms of LEGO scale first. Shorter than human… or maybe the height of a child? I usually consider minifigures adults, but because this is my childhood home, they can totally be me and my siblings instead, I just need to use some Woody limbs for my parents.

Thanks for the mention, eurotrash. I've yet to update my thread with more details as intended, but in response to your concern of building larger than the official Modulars: Because I wanted a detailed interior, I made my initial model 16x48 instead of 16x32. I also built all the way to the back of the baseplate, rather than leave ~8 studs free for a back path. I also built each floor 8 bricks high to accomodate windows above the doors. I mention this because, if I wanted to build a version that would both look like my house and yet also be the proper 16x32, and not tower above the other buildings, removing the interiors and windows would achieve both of those. However, I did build at 16x48 (and then 16x96) with the idea that it can still fit in among the other Modulars, so long as it's part of a larger block, as in these photos: Anyway, the other big compromise I made was squashing the rooms to be less deep than the original floor plan: The core of the house is to scale, the stairways and bathrooms, but the rooms themselves are maybe 2/3 as deep as they should be. This meant I could not fit in as much furniture as I remembered, but when I started I didn't want to build at 16x64 as I considered that far too large. Maybe for the next version… Also, LDraw is a much faster alternative to LEGO Digital Designer, I can recommend Bricksmith if you have a Mac. Finally, what you've built so far looks very good, I look forward to seeing how your project develops.

I've finished splitting LDD's original LDraw export into steps, you can download a newer version of my LDraw file. It now consists of the following sub-models: Ground Floor (1769 parts) Fire Hydrant (6 parts) Traffic Light (26 parts) No-Ghost Sign (18 parts) Ground Floor Accessories (196 parts) Telephone (5 parts) First Floor (1281 parts) First Floor Accessories (253 parts) Bathroom (121 parts) Bathroom Sink (14 parts) Bathroom Toilet (9 parts) Bathroom Radiator (7 parts) Second Floor (1466 parts) Flag (4 parts) Second Floor Accessories (276 parts) Stairway (52 parts) Rooftop (204 parts) These are my intended next actions: Divide "Ground Floor Accessories", "First Floor Accessories" and "Second Floor Accessories" into further sub-models for each item of furniture, divide those sub-models into sensible steps too Add missing pieces and change incorrect colours the conversion from LDD to LDraw seems to have introduced Modify the original design to use both fewer bricks and have a stronger structure Once that's all done, if LEGO's official model is not yet out, I may even build this for real!

When I tried to generate the building guide in LEGO Digital Designer, my machine also choked. Because I prefer Bricksmith to LEGO Digital Designer, I exported Sergio512's model as an LDraw file and have started to divide the 5707 pieces into sensible steps. So far I've broken out: Fire Hydrant (6 parts) Traffic Light (26 parts) No Ghost Sign (18 parts) Flag (4 parts) Rooftop (201 parts) Telephone (5 parts) Stairway (52 parts) Bathroom (121 parts) Bathroom Sink (14 parts) Bathroom Toilet (9 parts) Bathroom Radiator (7 parts) That means 463 down, 5244 left to go. As for mismatches between LDD and LDraw, I only had to change the IDs of four parts: 4085d to 4085c - Plate, Modified 1 x 1 with Clip Vertical - Type 3 (thick U clip) 4697 to 4697b - Pneumatic T Piece New Style (T Bar) 64567 to 577b - Minifig, Weapon Lightsaber Hilt Straight Due to "Fish Ornamental" (30224) not yet being available in LDraw, I substituted it with "Minifig, Plume Feathers with Pin" (30126) For those who'd like to see, here's what I've done so far. Before I proceed further, has anyone else already done this? I'm enjoying peeling away the model layer by layer, but am happy to use someone else's version if they've already done the work.

Thanks. I wasn't sure where best to ask this, General makes more sense than Digital. That's how they appear in the inventory at the back of an instruction manual, plus another for hair or hat etc., so that would make sense. Do you think it's the same for levers and lever bases? They're two separate pieces in my LDraw file but I think they usually appear combined in instruction manuals too.

I've always put them studs-up, don't think I even thought of putting them studs-down until I saw it in the instructions for Town Hall. Because I prefer the look of studs-up flowers, I put them on that way in Town Hall, even though I usually follow instruction manuals precisely. In a bit of retroactive justification to myself, all the official photos of Town Hall have studs-up flowers, only the instructions themselves are studs down :P

I was just wondering; when you report the total number of pieces in a MOC, do you include Minifigs? And if you do, do you break the Minifig down into their tiniest components (hands and arms as well as torso, hips and legs separately)? Or is one Minifig one addition to the Piece Count? And does anyone know LEGO's own policy in this regard?

It can be useful to not know what you're capable (or incapable) of before you begin. That way you get to learn a lot :) 7-9 bricks per floor seems reasonable to me, though it depends on which buildings you plan to flank your own, and of course how many floors you intend on having. You can also have double-height floors, as in Fire Brigade. I built my first (and so far only) Modular building after Café Corner through Pet Shop, I later realised I got my garage design from Apple Tree House though I didn't know that at the time. As for design, I started with two smaller aspects of the larger model, the stairway that forms the core of the house: And then the sliding doors that feature all throughout: Working out those features warmed me up and then I began laying out the walls, making sure they were aligned through all three floors: Because I was building an existing place, I was concerned with making it accurate/representative of that place. This added certain constraints and kept me interested during complicated/boring parts of the design. It also kept me coming back after a few months abandonment :P Anyway, to be more specific, here's what I did: Spent one year designing the structure in Bricksmith BrickLinked ~2500 parts and built it for real Poked at it for another year, designing a garden and furniture in LDraw and moving all the walls around with real bricks BrickLinked another ~2000 parts Spent five days making a stop-motion video of the new build Worked out what parts needed changing BrickLinked 60 parts to make changes, plus minifigs and bricks to build a micro version too So it was iterative, I guess? With mostly everything in software and then two big rounds of physical building. As for my advice: Choose something you want to build, like your own home or maybe a building from a show/film/comic that you enjoy Prototype in software for when you don't have the parts When you get stuck, search for phrases such as "LEGO sliding doors" :P Use BrickLink to search for "Catalog Items" (meaning LEGO parts) that you may not know exist. For example, all the doors! When you get super-stuck, leave it for a few weeks :)

It's been longer than I intended since I last wrote about this model as I've been busy modifying the LDraw file, choosing minifig parts, and making several BrickLink orders. Once those new parts come I will take many photos and write many things, but until then here's an animation of the Micro model growing up and then shrinking down: As you can see, I've tiled the kitchen and carpeted the living room as in the full-size version, have also left open hallways so that light can pass through the top two floors. The custom garage and front door can be replaced with the stock carport, the house then looks like this: And then I made a mirrored version too, here's what the street looks like from the front: And from the back: I also took several photos of the full-size house in amongst the other Modular buildings. Here's how I currently have them displayed, with my own model at the front because it's freshly built: Here's the road I built to go between the two sections: Here's what it will look like when my model is hidden from view: And finally, as I'm wholesale copy-and-pasting what I already wrote in another thread, here's what it looks like when they're all smooshed together in one big block: With the garden my model is now 16x96, and so if I ever permanently display them like this I'll have a 16x32 and a 32x32 (or just 32x48) area to cover with garden/courtyard/park/whatever, which is nice. But for now they stay on the shelf. And finally finally, here's a view of my house looking through the back garden:

I did, yes. When I got it in between Town Hall and Palace Cinema I thought it would be more challenging to build it mirrored, flipping it as I followed the instruction manual rather than using a flipped PDF or even a real mirror. I intended to rebuild the previous modulars and then build all new modulars in this way, but then didn't take time to rebuild and didn't want them to mismatch. I did flip the Mini Modulars though, they were much faster to do :)

Here's how I currently have them displayed, with my own childhood home at the front because it's freshly built: Here's the road I built to go between the two sections: And here's what it will normally look like, with my chidhood home hidden from view: I took them all down off the shelf and, using the Haunted House as a fourth corner, here's a complete block: I've made a few alterations, such as placing all the lampposts on 2x2 black plates to match the Parisian Restaurant, using 1x2 tiles to join the curbs, and changing the US flag to the German one, but mostly they're stock. I do plan to populate the streets with minifigs soon though, it looks a little deserted right now.

My house fits into my street layout with the official Modular buildings, so I think I'll be keeping it built for the forseeable future. I don't like LDD either, but find building in LDraw using Bricksmith very satisfying. It's also much safer than having loose LEGO bricks in the house as I have a baby son rolling around the place. I designed the whole model in LDraw first, then ordered the bricks specifically for it. During the design phase I didn't worry about part colours or cost, just used what made most sense. Then, when it came time to buy the actual bricks, I made appropriate colour substitutions and changed pieces that were too expensive or rare. After the first big order I made a lot of changes using parts taken from other models, then once I'd finalised all those in the LDraw file I ordered all the new pieces I needed and rebuilt it again, hence the video. My sister has been visiting the last week and she's very impressed, has also convinced me to make minifigure versions of our family to live in the house. So when I order those I'll also buy the parts for my micro version and for the "final" tweaks I've come up with too (I'll be attaching the roof more securely and permanently connecting the garden to the ground floor). Will you be putting a minifig version of yourself in your apartment? Or of your parents in their house? When my son is older, I may help him build a model of our house, but I'll wait to see if he even likes LEGO first ;)

Thank you all for the kind comments. I do have fond memories of growing up there and my three year old nephew keeps asking to watch the video again and again :) Taking the photos actually convinced me to not bother with my usual practise of lining up those 1x1 tiles super precisely using bricks, so it was faster and easier than usual! And the end result, of the kitchen tiles and living room carpet snaking across the floor, is very fun to watch. I first saw your apartment MOC a few weeks ago and am very impressed by the detailing, so I hope you finish that. Did you do any digital design work on it? Or straight to the bricks? Nicely done, thank you! I also like how you also made a micro version of your large model, it catches the likeness very well.

I think sabertooth may just be taking the piss a little bit :) However, the text that accompanies the images is so over the top I find it quite funny. Also, I was totally inspired by their Micro entry: So much so, I went back in time and modelled both my own entries on it! Thanks for the time-travelling-inspiration, sabertooth!

I have all the Modulars except Market Street, the reason being that even when it was only £60 I didn't like the look of it. Later I looked at buying it second hand, for completeness, but several hundred pounds for something I don't even like made even less sense. As for Café Corner I did buy that when it first came out but then lost it a few years later, so I bought it again on eBay for four times its original price O_o But from Green Grocer on I've got (and kept) them all. I also made a base for the Haunted House, it can be either a corner building or one in the middle of the street depending on which tiles you choose to use on the edge. Maybe that was me? Here's the thread about my childhood home and of course it sits in among the other Modulars very nicely :)

I think my entry doesn't compare in terms of exterior looks to the others, but it's definitely smaller (only 16x48 for the house itself) and the inside has lots of nice details if you check out the LDraw file. I even made a micro version too, that (almost) fits in with the official Mini Modulars. However, it seems Flickr has made my images break, so they maybe don't appear anymore in the proper competition threads? I've updated the thread I made about the model itelf, so if people do see dead images please check that out. Or just go directly to flickr.com/photos/smoothbit.

It seems that way, which is fine but it's strange that the old URLs seemed to break. However, it may be a problem that Flickr's having right now, I found other people complaining of not being able to share supposedly public images: flickr "Sharing is restricted for this photo" But so I've updated all the image URLs in this thread, have made them link to the actual Flickr pages too in case they break again, so then the dead thumbnails can at least be clicked upon. Can either of you see the images now?