Renderbricks

RENDERING SITREP There's a polygon error inside the front of the cockpit. Investigation in progress... Due to the rounding effect the LEGO logo is fine so far. Making it thinner would not help and it looks actually really good. Thanks!

That's not simple. The studs need to be a part of each model and not separated. When you import the Millennium Falcon UCS with over 3000 bricks you don't really want to replace them in MODO.

OK. I replaced the studs with the beveled ones but it looks like they are just available in low-res. And the top will be interpolated smooth and not flat. A pre-bevel of the studs had been fine to adjust the rest of the models with a thinner edge what is better for the LEGO logo. The LEGO logo model is anyway a bit too bold compared to the real ones *:-)

Thanks for the info. I am using the color table from MLCad/LeoCAD what will be converted automaticall. But I will take a look into the materials later. I am importing with a script what is using a cleanup. If I don't use the cleanup the mesh has bad normals and flpped polygons. The problem was that the basic measure for the import is set to 0.05 what is perfect for the real scale in MODO but I have to set it to 0.1 to prevent that the cleanup will merge close points and destroy the small scale LEGO model.

FIXED! But I can't set separate roundings for the bricks and logo. It should have a less rounding to look less bumped and more displaced. Well. Better than nothing.

Morning. Thank you. For what are the files t01o0714.dat, t02i3333.dat, t02o3333.dat? Because I just need an simply extruded LEGO Logo onto the normal hi-res studs. When I use the original files I receive a bad result, too. The studs are replaced with bevels but the bevels are broken as the LEGO Logo. I would like to know what tool was used to generate those .dat files. Here's my modified file of the extruded LEGO Logo what doesn't work: http://lego.virtualr...ssues/logo3.zip +++ UPDATE +++ Interesting. I tried to load in MLCad and the LEGO Logo looks correct there. Investigation in progress... +++ UPDATE +++ I found out the reason. It was my importer using a cleanup and I have to set the scale of the model when importing from 0.05 to 0.1.

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I know all these sources. It's just amazing. I will check out more models and do some insane stress tests soon. Actually I try to work out how to get the LEGO logo on all studs. Unfortunately the studs.dat replacement I found on LDRAW doesn't work properly. Getting the studs top faces for a displacement might just work with some scripting. Here's an example what is broken:

At home I have an older Alienware M17x and a newer ACER for around EUR 800,00. The renderer of MODO (also available for MAC) isn't using the GPU for rendering. The DELL is ofc a very fast machine but with a normal PC it's still fast. Forget POV-Ray *:-) I tried to replace in the LDRAW library some .dat files responsible for the studs. There's a guy who did some files with different LEGO logos in 3d. But unfortunately the geometrie is broken and weird. I have no idea what kind of software is used to create those files. The format is text but too confusing to fix that by hand. Here's a link about the studs: http://forums.ldraw....?19,11439,11504

It's a DELL Precision T5610 2x Xeon 6 Core (12 Cores) 32 GB RAM Nvidia GTX 780. Yes. POV-Ray is not the best choice. The renderer is extremely slow. MODO is using a modern rendering technology and the speed is insane. The top close-up view took 8 minutes to render on my DELL.

More LEGO RENDERP*RN *:-)

Another test with depth of field on black (macro shot). Rendertime in HD is around 4min 30sec.

Update: - reduced SubSurfaceScattering from 80% to 60% - reduced bevels from 500 um to 300 um - bevel set to "round same surface only"

Thanks for all the comments and critics. The beveling is done by a shader and not real geometry. So it's more a visual fake. It's not possible to modify the bricks manually and add bevels by geometry or define different scales of bevels. Probably it's possible by scripting and analysing the geometry. I'll check this out. I will render another version now with smaller bevels and a bit less SSS and we'll see how it looks like.

Yes. But LDRAW will not support all models from LDD. So you get an incomplete model in many situations.

Hi, thanks for the reply. Actually the plastic might be a bit too translucent but this looks more interesting. Yes. The bevel edges are too big. Unfortunately you just can set them to one general value and not separately for the studs etc. Probably I will work out a way. Next steps would be a more "used" look like roughness on the edges and surfaces. I will post updates and test out other models. The cool thing is that this picture will render in a few minutes what is great for animation ideas.

Hi, I am a pioneer in 3d animation and LEGO is the mother of all 3d. When I found LDRAW a long time ago on the internet I started to do some research with digital LEGO a long time before the LEGO movie. Due to my limited time as a company owner I just made some tests and that's it. Now I am testing with MODO and could unlock a new level of detail and realism which is worth to share. LDD2POVRAY is a nice toy but not really useable for more complex stuff like handling bigger scenes with animation, simulation, effects etc. The actual result looks quite promising. I need to find a way to get the LEGO logo on the studs. The fun part is now that I can import everything coming from LeoCAD or MLCad and setup the materials and shading in a few minutes to get this quality. A rendering of this Snowspeeder in HD will take a few minutes on my 12 core DELL. I wished LEGO would allow an export from LDD. I will update this thread with more results. Have fun.

LEGO IS MORE! Great work!

I am a 3D animator for 20 years but running a studio for a long time now and more stucked to business tasks. LEGO is of course the mother of all 3D *:-). I just found your impressive website and I was wondering if it's possible to get my models I want to create with Mecabricks into Blender. I am asking this because I am playing with digital LEGO time by time and used LDRAW to import my models into Softimage via Blender what works pretty nice. Here's one stress test I did with a basic simulation: https://vimeo.com/84670417 I was hoping to create models in LDD and get them into Softimage via LeoCAD or MLCad but the LDRAW library doesn't support all LEGO pieces what is a bit annyoing. I wished LEGO would give us access to their LDD models. *:-) When I read that Mecabricks is based on Blender models I was hoping that there will be a way to export our creations to Blender. From there I just use FBX to get the pieces into Softimage what works perfectly. And my simple example on Vimeo rendered with ARNOLD shows that this is a pretty nice method to animate and render in another 3d software. Unfortunately the bricks aren't beveled and the models in Softimage can't be modified easily due to their polygonal structure due to the export/import. The bevel tool in Blender is nice but needs a lot of manual work what isn't an option. There's a tool called LDD2POVRAY where you can render your LDD creations with POV-Ray what does all the nice details like the LEGO logo on the studs. But this is a secondary thing. I hope you can help me and the community to do more nice things with the Mecabricks creations. Keep up the impressive work. Michael