Alcom1

Well, yes, but it feels like its been over a year (only 11 months?!) since I wrote that topic, and I felt that an essay with a stronger level of eloquence was in order, and that it would have been even more confusing if I had done a grand revive/replace-content on the old one. I won't make this topic again unless its eight years later and the topic is an entire novel easily loadable by the contemporary super-internet. Also I'm like 'Oh studs, they noticed'.

Skype conversation blurb I just had with a bit more epiphany: [11:21:12 PM] Ronald Thomas Mullins III (Tauka Usanake): I can't understand the issue between the first two images. I know there are differences but how are they significant? [11:21:35 PM] Alcom Isst: Artistic quality on the rendering side. Basic immersion on the building side. [11:23:13 PM] Alcom Isst: The creations look more... real, at a higher FoV. You're not just building a creation from a distance, you can move the camera inside, look around from the perspective of a minifigure at a higer FoV.

I guess it's completely my fault. Working in a variety of Cad programs, playing a few first person games, I have become way too sensitive and aware to the field of view of the programs I use. So as a result, the following has become rather intensely aggravating to me, *ahem*: [humorous statement deleted] While LEGO Digital Designer doesn't outright display its field of view, it is very possible to figure it out experimentally. It is obvious that LDD isn't isometric, a small blessing, so the field of view can be determined by recording the location of the camera and how far sideways distant objects can be placed before they disappear from view. After performing a bit of trigonometry and drawing a diagram, I got this: Unfortunately the aggravation induced by a poor FoV is rather difficult to explain, as it is almost a qualia, or an ineffable feeling. I can't describe the bad feeling, though I can express it. Oh, also I can show excellent comparison pictures thanks to LDD2Pov. Both of the following pictures were taken from the same camera angle. The only thing that changes here is the distance from the camera to the object: 30 degrees is terrible. What's worse is that the FoV is tied to the horizontal dimension and not the vertical dimension of the window, so the vertical FoV will always be lower, unless you have one of those exotic computer screens that is taller than it is wide, or unless you do something like this: Before After (Camera has not moved) All the other Cad programs I use have an FoV slider or option, which I set between 50 and 90 depending on what I am doing. In gaming an FoV of 30 is what you would expect from some scope or zoom effect, so LDD locking at 30 degrees is like taping a toy pair of binoculars to my face, thus the title metaphor. While I am very much thankful for the development of LDD2Pov and its FoV options, LDD2Pov has no effect on my building environment. LDD2Pov also seems to be very weak at interior screenshots with its camera positioning and lighting settings, so I would rather use LDD, except using LDD makes a screenshot from the back wall of a room look like this: I would normally believe the excuse that building mechanics in LDD is dependent on the low FoV for functionality. After all, I've known programs to have stranger functions tied to FoV (I'm looking at you, ). However, after my frequent usage of the LDD within LU that operated at an FoV of 40, and after experimenting with the new super skinny view that expanding the bricks list causes to create a faux high FoV, I would now find this very hard to believe.Here is what I want: An FoV slider for LEGO Digital Designer. That's it. I cannot image how this would be difficult or impossible to enable. Put it as a cheap addition to the .ini file, or added it to the preferences tab in the actual program. I know that I am currently the only individual asking for this, but I know that, with the addition of such a feature, that other users will understand it and appreciate it. Please? LEGO? Development team of LDD? I am begging you! Please? and thank you for developing such a magnificent LEGO building tool.

Still no FoV slider. I am punching stuffed animals out of reactionary rage as we speak.

I am Alcom Isst, and I am here to leave my supreme mark on this contest. #13: +2 #8: +1

It's my Birthday, so I'm celebrating by dumping some of my renders into a topic here. Enjoy.

Yes, and such things are irrelevant to this: LDD has a fixed FOV of 30 degrees. Both images were rendered (quickly) through POV-Ray at the same camera angle, but with a different FoV, and an automatically modified camera distance so both renders fill roughly the same space. The 70 degree FoV picture has a camera much closer to the creation than the 30 degree FoV picture, creating a beautiful enhanced depth that cannot be replicated in LDD. I want to build with a more normal FoV like the second picture. I really do... I really, really, want this.

Did they include an FoV slider so I can stop building like I have a toy telescope duct-taped to my face? no...? Well, back to my hole.

So I started pondering how I might squeeze a multiplayer competitive experience out of LDD, and ended up with this amusing result. A turn based vs Mode in which 2 players each build a creation of a specific theme under various constraints. Rules used here:Each player starts off with a minifigure and a seat as positioned. With alternating turns, each player places a single brick to build their creation within the constraints of a theme and possibly additional rules. When a player places a brick, the other player is no longer able to use that specific brick. After 98 turns, where each creation is 50 pieces (minus the minifigure in this case), the game ends. Victor is determined based on peer judgin-... alright, why isn't there a manage poll button here? The video replay was just me rapidly undoing the model while recording, and reversing the result. Images:

Between having two parents who are special education teachers, therapists through public school, my child psychiatrist, the special education program at Syracuse University and the spectrum support program at RIT, I absolutely did. I just stopped using it effectively. With both my Mechanical Engineering Major and my awareness of LEGO in general, I am actually quite aware of LEGO's design constraints, though I tend to mostly neglect them as digital building has no part limitations. Such models I designed to be absolute eye-candy. I don't build like this all the time though, I have worked up a few models as concepts for potential Cuusoo projects, and have worked under unrelated yet tight polygon restraints for digital projects. Small example of building under the former constraints: I don't have the money to entirely switch my major, but I do have free electives open.

Let me explain my situation to you right now. I am a 20 year old Mechanical Engineering major in my third year of college. I am currently taking courses at Syracuse University, after which I will return to RIT in the fall, at the end of my medical leave. This medical leave isn't a result of some chronic condition or trauma, this was the result of a psychological problem. Back at RIT around my second and third year, I went crazy. Not raving lunatic crazy, but isolationist crazy, where upon I would skip classes and just lock myself in my room, never to be seen by society, fail my classes, and lose my friends. Lots of my isolationist time was spent building LEGO digitally. I didn't have any extra money to spend on actual parts or sets, and most of my childhood collection was back home. As such, I got to be quite good at it, the action of putting bricks together to create an aesthetic form became more of, but not entirely a reflex to me. I also spent a lot of time in LEGO Universe. Data from the game indicates that I spent over 1600 hours playing it, and much of that time was spent building. LEGO Universe also had a bit to do with my bout of crazy, not because it ended, but because while it was active, my attitude towards it, and its attitude towards me, was pushing me to put more and more effort into it. LEGO Universe offered me plenty of goals to meet. It had a Hall of Fame where my property would be displayed as among the best. It had a WBL candidate program that would only accept the best builders on LEGO Universe. The properties where building took place were ordered on lists, where the more popular and more visited a property was, the higher on the list it was. Yet despite my dangerously increasing efforts to build and to improve my ability to build, I kept achieving nothing. I decided to put more effort into LEGO Universe to meet my goals. I eventually wanted to turn my ability to build into a career, so if I couldn't achieve any of these smaller goals, how could I achieve the big goal? So I took the time I could spend studying and being a productive member of society and just... built... stuff like this. Even after LEGO Universe ended and me meeting none of my goals, I still kept up the insanity. I wanted redemption and to prove to the LEGO Community, with a unique project, that I was awesome. I applied previous experiences with 3D modeling, and later decided to practice putting LEGO into the FreeSpace Open Engine, at first in secret, where I might develop a unique LEGO Space campaign. I worked alone on the project, though stopped a few months ago as I was disliking my current assets, and switched to other LEGO activities related to the Rock Raiders United community. Now I'm taking summer classes with a lighter load that give me more free time, so that I may frequently enjoy LEGO activities without destroying my time for education and study. It's just that... well I'm scared. So far I've put plenty of time into learning how to be a better LEGO builder, but there's so much more I need to learn. On the day some opportunity comes for me to apply for a Job as a LEGO Master Builder or Designer, if I mess up on it due to a lack of ability or skill, I don't know how isolationist crazy I might get again. I'm scared and the only way I know how to justify that fear away is to get better at building LEGO. http://i.imgur.com/baCfCzo.jpg Also, despite the thousands of dollars I spent going crazy and failing at college, I can't help but to notice how, through the stuff I can build now, how much it might have been worth it.

Note to self: Start referring to studs as 'nobbles'.

That part not only is not in LEGO Digital Designer, but was never developed by LEGO. I know of a Megablok piece existing with that shape, but not a LEGO brick. There are ways to... hold on... images...

Mine is a rendering of the minifigure I used in LEGO Universe, made for me by a friend.

Technic, and an actual vehicle too. Well this is swiftly running away from my field of expertise.

It is simply not there, as is its 2880 relative.

Oh.... OH... I WANT IN ON THIS! :D

What's an RCB?

Turret out!

Two months ago on a very happy day I decided to buy some video capture software and make my own timelapses of LEGO Digital Designer building. These aren't instruction mode videos either, these are sped up videos of actual LDD construction set to music with a rendering at the end (I intend to use POVRay for that from now on). The complete playlist, currently 5 videos in total, is here:

I've been messing around with LDD2PovRay, though not long enough to reach the eventuality of taking my most massive creation and rendering it at the lowest setting possible. It's a fantastic program. Unrelated to it being a fantastic program, I find the rendering of cone bricks to be... trying to think of a word for it... adorable? Edit: Not my biggest creation, and it is the third lowest quality option, and, well, it's... okay? No transparency until several steps up the quality options. I would like to cut out the POVray middle man on this sort of thing. The program is fine for small and medium sized creations at beautiful high details, but I don't have the processing power to wait for high detail renderings of all my big stuff. I'd like to just set LDD to high quality rendering, press ctrl+k, and be done with it, but the program keeps forcing me to metaphorically duct tape a toy telescope to my face. I know I have been incongruously adamant about LEGO Digital Designer's Field of View to the point of obnoxiousness; all four of my posts are about it, but I've played too many First Person Video games and derped with too many 3D design programs not to notice it every time I place a brick. Anyways I should probably make this post perfectly relevant with an actual complete render. Yay!

I want a better field of view! Because this is a screenshot of an entire room that is 63 studs long, and the camera is backed up against the wall.

Jamesster's right. There's a difference between zooming the camera (which changes the FoV), and moving backwards (which doesn't change the FoV).

The field of view of LEGO Digital Designer is... drumroll please... 27.2 degrees. That is not a good thing. That is a bad thing. All my LDD screenshots look like they're taken through a pair of binoculars, or a camera with the zoom stuck at maximum. I can't get good interior screenshots, or any screenshots with good width and depth, and I do not like that! It shouldn't be that hard to fix either.