As I recently began learning 3ds Max, I kept getting in over my head and getting very frustrated with trying to create shapes in several different methods.
it kept coming down to the fact that I just havnt mastered the basic skills. i'm too used to working in another medium (autocad) and as i kept getting angry and starting over again and again... i was watching my son in the next room with all his lego's strewn across the floor as he played, it gave me an idea!
basically i began modeling one brick after another. eventually i had a decent library of parts, and the repetition of creating all of them was finally getting me the skills i needed!
next i downloaded several instruction booklet pdf's from the Lego website, and began learning assemblies etc... as i would stack and construct with them.
anyway, hope this will help out anyone else just starting out as well. and here's the first lil-bugger i put together! hope you like it
001.jpg
Posts
Looking good tho
Check Peeron™ LEGOAc Set Inventories for inventories of various Lego sets include building instructions, they only donAât have newer than 2 years I think. It is agreement with The Lego Company.
you may want to put a skylight (light>standard lights>skylight) in your scene and a lighttracer in your advanced lighting render tab.
maybe i should add a few more links to this then, the peeron site already mentioned is great Limited access to scans it has both instruction libraries, and complete part listings for the kits too
i spent quite a while thumbing through this site too Brickfactory it is the simplest site i found that has all the sets box art categorized by family, i found all the old sets i used to have as a kid there
i found it easier for downloading the actual instructions to get the pdf's from the lego site itself: LEGO.com Customer Service : Building Instructions the search function sucks, so i'd just find the set # on either peeron or brickfactory, then punch the code in on that page to get the PDF
also, for bricks themselves (although not every brick makes it into the library)
Pick A Brick | LEGO Shop
and here's a couple other links for lego sizes, colors, etc...
Peeron Color List
LUGNET LEGO Color Reference
Lego dimensions:*the measurements
as for the LDD app, ive had that for quite a while. My son has come to me more than a few times handing me a wad of allowence saying "i need new parts, gimme your CC" he's aaaaaaaaaalmost as much of a lego-nerd as i was back in the day!
this adventure was more about modeling the bricks themselves for instructional purposes than it was about stacking them together :cool:
the mini-snowspeeder above was built out of some rather simple bricks too, i now have most of them refined more with bevels and chamfers to catch more light (although it makes it harder building with them because of object snaps :mad:)
there are still a few things i'm struggling with, so i may continue with the lego thing a bit longer before i get back into my regular projects. there are 3 other SW Snowspeeder kits (although one of them is one of those 1k+ piece monsters) maybe i'll build one of them up as i progress further
i actually started out this endeavour with one of the biggest Lego kits out there, the ultimate Star Destroyer... over 3k parts... Peeron: Imperial Star DestroyerA? (#10030-1)
i only made it to page 12 (of 228) in the instruction book before i realized that all these surfaces are going to KILL my processor trying to render them just as i would work... :flippy: i was building this one with the higher-poly light-friendly bricks too though
anyway: its lunchtime, so my brains about to stop working for an hour or so...
and THATS how i learned about the difference in high-low poly modeling! hahaha
edit: now that i think about it, just after that discovery is what prompted my current avatar!!!
-Stefan-
How detailed are each of your individual pieces? what kind of smoothing are you using on them?
the original post was built with what i'd consider "medium quality" bricks. it was just built up to practice assemblies and stuff.
here's a couple new pics of the same one, along side the old, with the better quality bricks and more lighting as suggested earlier (thanks for the tip). at first glance its hard to see any difference, but once you realize what you're looking for it becomes more obvious.
i'm also still at little unhappy with my textures, the light-grey is still washing out, and the black is still too blue :mad:
hold on, thinking about it: i think you can export models as follows:
ldd (.lcd or something like that) > leocad > 3ds.
i will definitely agree the snowspeeder looks good!
Nice work, I might try this in SU for a laugh.
haha, be carefull... its become quite addictive! i'm up to 154 bricks now!
(big pics, so just thumb-links)
i love the blacktron set, but with all the dark pieces i'm not sure how well it would turn out. on the other hand there are soooo many parts in the model team set. :flippy:
any suggestions on which one i should tackle?
i'm going to throw out most of my bricks and start anew, many of these were created way too ambitiously. polycount is way too high, especially when the Model Team set has over 1k bricks...
here's the old bricks, you can see by all the detail in the undersides why i'm simplifying them.
excellent suggestion, i was thinking just the same thing about multi-layer bricks.
and i suppose the bonus kit of the model-team set is going to be the candidate then.
however, here's something else to wet your appetites (or perhaps inspire one of you to tackle yourselves :flippy: )
it would probably take years to model, but hell wouldnt it look great?
fyi: at lego-scale the above model will be 20.5' long, 5' tall, and 9.5' across...
here's step one: