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Blakbird

Technic Regulator
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Everything posted by Blakbird

  1. Blakbird
    With 1600 frames done, I made a quick movie export to see how it looks. It looks pretty good! I am by no means an expert at controlling video settings, so I'm sure there is a better way to do it. Here's what we have so far.
  2. Blakbird
    I think some of that flickering is not just low quality radiosity, but also the reflective floor effecting the lighting due to the moving parts. Looking at the full animation I am working, the first 12 frames have no motion and I'm not seeing any flickering there. The best (most efficient) solution is probably to just use a good lighting setup and skip radiosity. Sure, why not!? I'm about 24 hours in and am at 1100 frames. Something like the old SETI@Home screen saver would be perfect. Keep in mind that those old tires were not rubber, but foam. The texture on the foam is really noticeable, and therefore the lack of it is also noticeable. Compare to this render I made a few years ago. Not urgent, but if the goal is to not only demonstrate the functions but make it look as good as possible, then I think the stud logos add a lot of realism. Without them, it immediately jumps out at you as not real. I think with your OpenGL capture it looks fine because you don't expect it to look realistic in that kind of view anyway. But once you go to a render with all the real lighting, it looks funny without them. My opinion. Probably will add a lot to the file size though. With LGEO, the logo is added as an include file and just copied everywhere needed, so it doesn't add much time or space.
  3. Blakbird
    No, they are larger than that. I am 90% sure they are these. https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=47676&idColor=5#T=C&C=5
  4. Blakbird
    I'm using an 8 core i7. 500 frames done so far, but it looks like it will take a couple of days.
  5. Blakbird
    This reminds me of sitting at a traffic light in a turn lane with my blinker on and watching as the frequency *almost* matches the car in front of me but then becomes syncopated. It is pretty mesmerizing. Are those X-pod lids? Where in the world did you get so many? When I was trying to get some for building Arvo brothers' Kaneda bike, they were impossible to buy at any price.
  6. Blakbird
    I've run a few tests. Here is the default file you sent me at 640x480 (I know, wrong aspect ratio). It has low quality radiosity and I ran it without anti-aliasing. Parsing time was 11s and rendering time was about 20s. Next I shut off the radiosity entirely and tried again. It made very little difference, saved about 3s. Everything got a bit brighter. Radiosity makes a much bigger difference with a sky sphere. My next step was to replace your spotlight with some area lights. Rendering time changed hardly at all, but I think it looks much better. If we wanted to render with no radiosity, I think this would be acceptable. Next step was to add your default sky sphere. It didn't change much. After that I replaced the sky sphere with the HDR light probe I always use. This made a pretty big difference in the lighting quality with almost no change in render time. Now I turned the radiosity back on. This certainly looks better, but whether it looks enough better to justify the increased render time is the question. It took about 30s (CPU time). Now I bumped up the radiosity to high quality. The difference is barely noticeable in a still image, but I understand that it matters for animation. Render time went up a LOT. 232s. Next I used my own radiosity settings. This runs much faster than HQ but looks just as good. Finally, I turned on anti-aliasing. AA adds significantly to the processing time, but it pretty much necessary if you want it to look good. This final setting took about 47s. I was pretty happy at this point. If you want to see the differences between the images more easily, step through them on my Bricksafe account. At this point I thought it was time to try a test animation. I ran frames 2000 - 2250 at 640x360 resolution with AA turned on (last picture settings). These 225 frames ran in about an hour. I threw a quick animated GIF together to show the results (9.2 Mb). I think it looks pretty good and I don't see any flickering problems. In the extreme close-up views the lack of stud logos is noticeable as is the lack of texture on the tires, but overall it looks really good. If/when you get LGEO parts both these issues will be solved, and I also expect parsing to go much faster. Now at 1920x1080 it can be expected to take 9x as long, and there are 3750 frames to do so it is still going to take a long time. I am trying it at 1600x900 right now.
  7. Blakbird
    If you were going to ultimate mechanical complexity, I'd say you have achieved your goal sir.
  8. Blakbird
    I can't download the file. It says "restricted access". Since POV-Ray uses plain text, compression algorithms work great on the files. 93x savings is pretty good! I am surprised by the size of the file. Did you export all the parts as a triangle mesh? If so, that would explain the file size and the slow parsing. If you can export with LGEO parts it would render and parse much faster, and look better to boot.
  9. Blakbird
    Wow, I absolutely love your mechanisms. This could all be done with multiple motors, switches, and sequencing but you have done it all mechanically. I'm interested to see the guts of it and the final version.
  10. Blakbird
    True, but it is pretty close given that the box for 8860 showed springs being used the same way even though the actual model was different than the pictures.
  11. Blakbird
    Fantastic! This is immediately recognizable as an updated 8865, even without reading any text. I love it.
  12. Blakbird
    I would just use Brickstock. No way out of counting everything though.
  13. Blakbird
    Still not working. You've got a whole topic now with nothing on it, and you are referencing it in other topics, but when people come here there is nothing to see. Please fix and test your links before posting further. Even better, get an account on Bricksafe which works best.
  14. Blakbird
    Check out the way Madoca's does it. I have always found his parts lists pretty easy to follow.
  15. Blakbird
    That's a really tough one. When I was collecting, 8862 was among the hardest to find but that was before Bricklink.
  16. Blakbird
    Thanks for letting us know; I'm not sure I would have found this otherwise. Do you still offer an adapter cable for Power Functions? Also, do you still offer a conversion to lower gearing?
  17. Blakbird
    This is amazingly cool! A really good way to highlight the features. I'd be willing to take a crack at rendering it. I think it would be possible to get acceptable quality without using radiosity.
  18. Blakbird
    Yes, I remember that as the most difficult connection to separate in any Technic set.
  19. Blakbird
    Here is a picture with my car. It doesn't have stickers either!
  20. Blakbird
    Sure, I can do that. It looks a little plain without the stickers, but still pretty good. I actually think the AMG version would be a better looking model if you are going to omit the stickers because of the 3 colors, but the Silberpfiel is the better looking model with stickers IMHO.
  21. Blakbird
    It is hard to compare them. Your Audi model uses a totally different construction style for the body which is more open with fewer panels. This means you can't really put stickers on it which makes it look very distinct when you see them together. This is still the first photo I have seen of all three together though and it is really cool to see. I have just finished building the Silberpfiel manual version but I am still waiting for the stickers to arrive before I take photos.
  22. Blakbird
    I can draw a rectangular prism. Is that close enough?
  23. Blakbird
    LEGO supercars have had gearboxes all the way from the beginning in 1977. However, there is usually good access to the engine so you can see the pistons change speed compared to the wheels. In this car, since the engine is completely hidden and you can't see the pistons even with the hood open, you are right that it seems the gearbox does not have as much purpose. Only you, the builder, will really know what it does. If you implement the mod to make the body removable, then it is much easier to see the gearbox and what it does with just the chassis.
  24. Blakbird
    Wow, this is an amazing prize package for a LEGO contest. You really got the VIP treatment. I am very happy to see all the good times you had. Yeah everybody copies me, even Porsche. Technic boxes have started to use this kind of image as well. I'm sure a check is in the mail in gratitude for my ideas.
  25. Blakbird
    I like your wheels but I do wish you had not used my name. Many people in this community will probably think that this product has something to do with me and it does not. Maybe you did not know about me. In any case, I wish you luck with your Kickstarter.
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