IA’ve been playing with the Lego Digital Designer lately. However, yesterday, Madkoifish told me about LeoCad, which is much better, IMO. The Lego Digital Designer is an attempt to get people to make custom Lego kits and buy them at outrageous prices (they basically just put the parts you use in a box and send it to you.) I did a price on one of my creations and it was $70 (USD.) However, LeoCad is more about just making Lego-type stuff. It has a huge library of parts, most of the ones that have been done over the years. Lego Digital Designer uses only newer parts. It also will only save to its own format, LeoCad will export to .obj and .3ds.
So, since LeoCad is so versatile, I decided to try some actual Lego kits with it. I bought many of the Star Wars kits back in the A’90s and early 2000s, but I didnA’t feel like digging up my old instruction manuals, so I found a site that has them scanned. I decided to start with LukeA’s Landspeeder, because itA’s one of the smaller kits, it doesnA’t use as many parts as some of them do. It went fairly well, the biggest problem I had was finding some of the parts in the library (I had to know in which categories to look.) Anywho, it came out really well:
I exported the model to .3ds and loaded it into trueSpace 3.2, setting the importer to automatically fix flipped faces. There were issues with tS7.6, IA’ll get into that momentarily. Anywho, it turned out really well also:
This next bit is amazing to me. I loaded the mesh that I imported into trueSpace 3.2 and saved to a .cob file into trueSpace 7.6. For some reason, it doesnA’t look as good. There are flipped faces that I canA’t fix. And the .3ds importer in tS7.6 doesnA’t have a tool to fix the flipped faces when I import it. So, IA’ll be continuing to render these in tS3.2 because this is how it looks in 7.6:
ItA’s not quite as bad as the direct .3ds import into tS7.6, but itA’s still bad.
Next, I decided to do the A-Wing. It went well. As with the Landspeeder, I had trouble finding a few parts, but it all worked out OK in the end.
I see a couple small issues with it, IA’ll fix those later. Though, all in all, it came out well.
I also have instructions for the X-Wing and I can get more instructions. I might even get crazy enough to do the Falcon.
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Much like the Lego Digital Designer, Lego's website has only newer stuff as far as scanned instruction manuals. I don't know why they're such turds about it, but The Brickfactory has them all (or at least most of them.)
Also, here's a link to LeoCad, just in case anybody is interested in it: http://www.leocad.org/trac (I love the AT-AT render, that's what got me thinking of doing SW stuff with the program)
I have them in a spare room that I use for storage. I also have the one that's rendering (slowly) right now, the X-wing.
I tried doing the S-foil separation in LeoCad, but it didnAât want to rotate where I wanted it to, so I just rigged it in trueSpace. To make this process go faster, I exported the wings separately and then glued them on in trueSpace and edited the axis location so that they pivoted in the right spot. And, of course, I rotated each wing 16.5 degrees, creating a 33 degree separation between the wings, which is correct for this class of fighter.
Yeah, LeoCad is much more of what I was looking for too. And it's a lot smaller file that LDD. Plus, the .3ds and .obj exporter is nice, especially since LeoCad renders aren't that great (those are the wireframe looking ones that I've been posting.)
Brickfactory has the instructions: http://www.brickfactory.info/
Well, I was going to start an actual model build today but I wound up messing with this stuff instead. Since later versions of trueSpace won’t import these things correctly, (I’ve tried) I tried Blender. It imports them fine, but I had issues getting some of the parts to look right when I smooth shaded them. So, I eventually gave up and decided to just render them in trueSpace 3. I should be happy they work in that software, because these things export to a mess of polygons. (all triangles and lots of ugly meshiness)
So, after that, I decided to build the TIE Fighter. The only parts I couldn’t find for it were the parts for the pilot. LeoCad doesn’t have an Imperial pilot helmet or even a Stormtrooper helmet, so I fudged it a bit (you can’t really see him anyway.)
Doing these must be a nice change of pace from the usual stuff, I may give it a try!
Yep.
Here's another site with instructions: http://www.worldbricks.com/
Thanks to Madkoifish for that one. The thing I like about Worldbricks is that the instructions are in .pdf format, they're just scanned images on Brickfactory. However, I like the theme breakdowns on Brickfactory better. So, earlier, I found the kit I was looking for on Brickfactory and then searched for it on Worldbricks and it worked great. The instructions for the kit are 64 pages, I didn't want to download all of that page by page.
Also, here's another brick building program, though I haven't tried it yet: http://www.ldraw.org/ The good thing is its library of bricks can be converted to LeoCad. I need to check it out later and see what it has that LeoCad doesn't.
The newer Y-Wing kit is more detailed, but this one will do nicely. I wanted to do kits I’ve owned, plus this one is from the same series as the others.
last month when i was starting on my AT-AT i considered doing it in a giant lego scale instead. i still might one day...
The Bussard collectors... *ahem* dome things on the engines are supposed to have that golf ball geometry, I remember having another Lego set that came with one of those.
You should definitely do it. Don't even think about it, just do it. :devil:
Yeah, those domes are another part I'm not completely happy with. But, as Kyle Reese said, "I didn't build the f*ng thing!" Since I have no idea how to make parts for the program, I'm at the mercy of what they give me.
And the Dark Lord himself.
Even though itAâs not necessary because this is CGI, the turret is built like it actually would be out of Legos. The parts that should move are built so that they actually would if it was made in the real world. The top is on a 2Aâ2 turntable brick and the guns are on bricks with hinges on them. The parts rotate as they should. I rigged it in trueSpace so that the top and guns rotate as they should, on their respective moving parts. To illustrate this, I rendered a short animation of it in motion.
[video=vimeo;34756973]
ItAâs in 720p, so advise watching it in HD on Vimeo. This rendered very quickly, mostly due to the fact that the Legos arenAât textured, which means itAâs looking like a good possibility that I might do some Lego SW animations.
With what you have been doing I had to have a look at LeoCad. It a great little program. But finding all the different parts is driving me a little nuts. But I am slowly getting there.
Yeah. That about sums it up.
i dont remember which was which, but i remember i liked the parts and variety of one program and the modeling ability of the other. hah
Work has started on the bottom of the Death Star Trench. Obviously, this is going to be a much longer build than those Lego sets were.
if i can make a suggestion: if you're going to go for a trench... how about that matte of the 'Falcon gettting pulled into a hangar bay. that would look great in Lego, albeit a rather large build.
Right now I'll be lucky to finish this surface stuff for the Death Star. It's a very big project, as you can see from the images. I have many more details to add do the trench bottom before I can even do the sides.
The video games LEGO Star Wars II and LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga have that scene you mention in them.
I remember as a kid (way back in the 60's) that getting some lego (or clones) was a huge deal for me and my sisters. But back then, you didn't get all the little kits like you can now. We had to use that thing... what's it called... oh yeah! Imagination. Seriously though, Lego is cool and still fun to play with. Just have to wait for some grand kids now. Jeez! Did I just say 'grand kids'? Crap, now I feel really old...
Al
@captain_mills: I'm glad your kids love it.
@Tralfaz: I was a '80s kid, but I didn't get any LEGO sets. I got a huge bucket of LEGO knock-offs one year for Christmas and I used to build all kinds of crazy stuff with them. No kits, just imagination. The sad part is, the custom sets are just an excuse to charge more than you pay for the bricks in the big LEGO buckets (do they still have those?) and the parts are mostly the same. You'll get a few custom parts, but not enough to make up for the price difference.
I decided I hated my first turret. Technically, it was pretty accurate to the one in the movie. However, the one in the movie had little greeble bits and painted details, neither of which is an option when one is working with Legos. So, I took some artistic license and made a new turret. After all, it’s not like my Death Star surface details are going to match what was in the movie anyway (neither do the ones in the Lego Star Wars games.)
Anywho, I’m happy now. Or at least happier, anyway. I’m getting sick, so that’s not a happy thing.