I wasn’t in the mood to do any work on the Death Star today. That’s a huge project that’s going to take a while and I’m going to have to work on it bits at a time so that I don’t get burned out on it. So, in lieu of working on that, I decided to do one of the old space sets, the Star Cruiser. I know, it's not Star Wars, but I'm not starting a new thread for this. Besides, you could stick this in a SW scene and it would work. Now, for some reason, from time to time, Lego released the same kit twice with a different number. This one was released as set #487 and set #924. They’re identical (even the instructions) and both were released in 1978, so it makes no sense to me. Anywho, I went with 924 because the instructions were in better shape. Anywho, it turned out really well:
LeoCad had all of the parts for this though, for some reason, they only had the small bricks and minifig chest with the emblem with a black planet. Since the planet in this set and most of the others from back then is yellow, I recolored it in trueSpace. I plan to do more stuff from the classic space series.
On a side note: these are Legos. They’re bricks, you put them together normally. It’s all basic construction, which can easily be achieved in LeoCad. I was looking at instructions from some of the newer kits and I was shocked at how complex they’ve become. They have all of these odd bricks, cams and pins and whatnot. LeoCad doesn’t like the irregular stuff, it won’t line up correctly with the grid snap turned on. You have to do it manually. It can be done, but it’s a PITA. I prefer the classic Legos with simple construction.
Nice!
I looked at some of those old instructions and it seems like a lot of my kits came from 89-90s. I still have them thankfully! I agree evil about current Lego kits being crazy. Sometimes they don't seem like Lego anymore. They've gotten better in recent years, but still a bit too complex for me sometimes though. The Lego Star Wars kits oddly enough seem to have not too crazy of pieces so sometimes I'll buy a small kit and I actually got some lego for my birthday last year (fun for a 30 year old ) Looking forward to more of your classic space! M-Tron, Blacktron and Space Police were my favorite back in the day.
O.o i remember that set! i had several of that space series with the blue and yellow-clear bricks, then came the blacktron and technic stuff... i still have boxes full of old blacktron and technic parts
Yeah, I love those old space sets. I'm already imagining an animation with a bunch of this stuff moving around. Though, it will be interesting to see if it actually happens. They had everything for this series, even buildings and scenery. (a baseplate with mountains :devil:) You can build a complete spaceport/base type thing just by building parts from this series. (and add stuff from other series)
Nice Chris.
The classic space all the way though to M-Tron was some of the best that lego produced.
I love it, but I was always given the City/Town stuff with one or two space stuff.
The one thing that really bugs me about lego now, is that when I was a kids, on the back of the box, would be different desgin that you could build with the peaces you got. Now with all the custom parts you don't get that. The last set I saw that did this was Set: 7239
Fire Rescue Truck. The box did not have different desgins, but along with the instructions you did get a sheet that did.
Yeah, there are too many custom parts now. I know what you mean. The old sets usually had alternate builds both on the box and in the manual. With all the weird parts they have now, it's got to be hard to do alternate builds. I also like how you used to be able to just buy a bucket of standard Legos and build some of the set stuff without the sets. The only things you might be missing were some of the pieces with special stuff painted on them. Now, with all of the weird parts, I don't think you can do that.
Not sure if I mentioned this but ldraw leocad mlcad are all the same thing, just different interfaces, so each of the parts categories are interchangeable. I use leo to build then save it to MLcad to apply proper colours, since leo will only do what It has in the menu, ML will allow one to apply any colour used int he lego inventory or your own.
Easiest to do when building from instructions off many of the sites out there is to use someplace like Bricklink. http://www.bricklink.com
Just search the kit, name, theme, whatever. I'll list the kit all parts used in that kit (well supplied since lego always incl extras) Then you can search by part # inside of leo/ml cad.
Dunno I find all the fancy parts easier to build with. In the past SNOT building was very limited due to the parts that would allow this sort of build. In the past id wedge plates in-between studs to do this but that ends up with a fragile base and well hard to hide. (It is now a illegal build type too apparently, I guess there are build contests) However I found SNOT style and being creative with these apps much harder than just going to the real lego. I have seen many design in these cad apps then move to a physical build but dunno I do the opposite. Also found it hard to do SNOT in the apps as well lots of manual positioning! hah. But isnt it that way for everything? Even importing the 3ds in max makes for a nightmare f rebuilding parts due to the way the parts were originally built, yeah overlapping polys wont hurt but ugh all the tris and overlapping polies drive me nuts.
Oh also leo is designed to work with POV ray. It has some sort of odd export directly to pov ray, I have not gotten into it yet to know fully what is entailed with working with it but if you can manage a pov file out of it all, it might make for less painful exports, that or the ever present Blender as an exchange app.
Alternate builds, newer kits oh post 2011 seem to be more focused on selling the features of the kits. Space Police and a few others from the 2009~2010 had alternates on the backs. As I kid I do remember friends being frustrated with seeing the build back there but no instructions. Often it was a single step inside of the model that threw them all. I managed but there were a few I couldn't figure out back then.
Yeah, there are too many custom parts now. I know what you mean. The old sets usually had alternate builds both on the box and in the manual. With all the weird parts they have now, it's got to be hard to do alternate builds. I also like how you used to be able to just buy a bucket of standard Legos and build some of the set stuff without the sets. The only things you might be missing were some of the pieces with special stuff painted on them. Now, with all of the weird parts, I don't think you can do that.
it was several years ago the last time i bought an actual lego set, and that was one of the bionicle spinoff arena sets for my son. what i noticed is they do the cross promotional thing. no optional builds on the box, but in the back of the instructions was a portion of another build "if you buy these other sets you can finish this whatchamacallit!!!!"
that bugged me to no end.
he always liked digging into my piles of old bricks and being creative to come up with his own stuff anyway! he really did like the bionicle stuff though. and had several versions of each generation of the robots. combined with my old technic stuff he managed to build a 4-foot robot of his own! it was pretty cool
The last Lego kit I bought was one of the SW kits more than a decade ago. My sister gave me couple of the later kits, the Millennium Falcon, the big TIE Interceptor and something else, (some other Sci-Fi kit) but I didn't buy those, so they don't count.
Not sure if I mentioned this but ldraw leocad mlcad are all the same thing, just different interfaces, so each of the parts categories are interchangeable. I use leo to build then save it to MLcad to apply proper colours, since leo will only do what It has in the menu, ML will allow one to apply any colour used int he lego inventory or your own.
Easiest to do when building from instructions off many of the sites out there is to use someplace like Bricklink. http://www.bricklink.com
Just search the kit, name, theme, whatever. I'll list the kit all parts used in that kit (well supplied since lego always incl extras) Then you can search by part # inside of leo/ml cad.
Dunno I find all the fancy parts easier to build with. In the past SNOT building was very limited due to the parts that would allow this sort of build. In the past id wedge plates in-between studs to do this but that ends up with a fragile base and well hard to hide. (It is now a illegal build type too apparently, I guess there are build contests) However I found SNOT style and being creative with these apps much harder than just going to the real lego. I have seen many design in these cad apps then move to a physical build but dunno I do the opposite. Also found it hard to do SNOT in the apps as well lots of manual positioning! hah. But isnt it that way for everything? Even importing the 3ds in max makes for a nightmare f rebuilding parts due to the way the parts were originally built, yeah overlapping polys wont hurt but ugh all the tris and overlapping polies drive me nuts.
Oh also leo is designed to work with POV ray. It has some sort of odd export directly to pov ray, I have not gotten into it yet to know fully what is entailed with working with it but if you can manage a pov file out of it all, it might make for less painful exports, that or the ever present Blender as an exchange app.
Alternate builds, newer kits oh post 2011 seem to be more focused on selling the features of the kits. Space Police and a few others from the 2009~2010 had alternates on the backs. As I kid I do remember friends being frustrated with seeing the build back there but no instructions. Often it was a single step inside of the model that threw them all. I managed but there were a few I couldn't figure out back then.
Thanks for the info, Dan. Yeah, I have LDraw installed, but I don't have MLCad yet. I'll DL that here in a bit. I haven't played with the POV-Ray exporter (yet) but I do have POV-Ray installed, so I'll probably mess with that sometime in the near future.
Whether or not I like it, I'm going to have to get into the SNOT (Studs Not On Top, for those who don't know the acronym) building soon. I really want to do a Death Star model and the only instructions I've found are for a really complex Death Star II model. I can build it and just mod it so that it represents the original Death Star, though I'll probably build both simultaneously. All I'll really have to do is copy and paste some of the sections for the "completed" part of the DSII to cover the part that's "incomplete" on the kit. It amazes me that they never did a kit for the original Death Star exterior, (there's an interior kit) especially since it appears in the Lego SW game. Really, SNOT building isn't that hard, it's just time consuming and my time is limited by my patience. But, I'll get past it. Another thing I want to do is the Batmobile, and it's mostly SNOT. Another one I want to do is that newer X-wing, like the one that stonky did. That's the best Lego X-wing out there, IMO. (I even like it better than the Ultimate Collector's Edition X-wing)
Of course, now I'm onto this classic Space kick, but I'll get back to the SW stuff at some point. Legos are my new obsession (really, an old obsession reawakened) and the possibilities are limitless with virtual Lego building.
I decided to put together a few of the “smaller” sets in the classic space series. These 3 are from 1979, which is a very good year, I might add.
The only major import issue with these LeoCad models is the faces. trueSpace doesn’t like the geometry on the faces, so those were coming out bad. To fix this, I’ve been giving my spacemen plain heads and textured them in trueSpace with a smiley face texture I made last night in Inkscape. (I guess they all work in a space Walmart ) It looks just like the classic smiley head, but without the mesh errors. Once I go back to the SW stuff, I’ll have to make some more face textures for those heads, because none of them use the classic smiley.
Also, I tried to export one of my models to POV-Ray, but it keeps messing up on me. I point it to where the LGEO stuff is installed, but it keeps telling me that it can’t find LGEO. So, I’ve given up for now. I’ll try to figure that out when I’m not sick.
MLcad should be in the root dir of leo, least if you used the basic installer package. I had seen some where you have to install ldraw then add on all the packs and other crap.
Yeah sux about the faces, does it in max to a extent all the folded edges etc, happens when it tris up the geo. lol you could take it into mlcad and screen cap the face to make a map of the more complex faces.
The MLCad I downloaded was just a .zip file and it runs from the folder inside there with no installation. I downloaded the "complete" LDraw the other day, which included lgeo, I also downloaded lgeo earlier. It's the same crap I already had, where the LeoCad exporter claims it can't find it. :rolleyes:
Yeah, the faces don't appear to import well into any software. They look FUBAR in Blender also. It think it's just bad geometry. Oh well, that's what textures are for.
Don't ask me what I was thinking. (I'm blaming the fact that I'm sick) The LDraw package I downloaded came with MLCad because MLCad is the main GUI for LDraw. :shiner: Though, the .zip I downloaded from the MLCad site has a newer version than the one that came with LDraw. I should just have to drop that stuff into my LDraw folder and update my shortcuts. All I got with LeoCad was LeoCad.
After you told me about it, I just Googled LeoCad and found their site, so I downloaded it from there. Then I followed links on their site to find LDraw. So, I guess you can say I did it backwards.
mm really odd, since I think I got my package from them too. Maybe not heh, I have to check.
LDraw_AIOI_2011-01_setup_32bit_v2.exe
I think this was the installer I used. Shrug ?!?!?! hahah
I did have to copy over some parts archives to overwrite the older stuff. Anyhow no worry unless your really wanting that povray crap to run, which it seems isnt really a need. TS seems to be working well for these, compared to max.
Anyhow no worry unless your really wanting that povray crap to run, which it seems isnt really a need. TS seems to be working well for these, compared to max.
Yeah, it's not really that important, I just like to play with stuff.
trueSpace 3 handles them amazingly well, better than any other software I've tried, including newer versions of tS. So, I'll just run with that.
I just compiled LeoCad 00.75.2 for Linux. They have a .rpm package, but itAâs for version 0.74, so I downloaded the source and compiled it. (I love open source ) Now I can play in LeoCad in either Windows or Linux. Though, unless I can find something that can import the LeoCad objects properly in Linux, IAâll still have to render them in Windows using trueSpace. Anywho, here she is and hereAâs my latest build also:
That's good to hear. It's a fun little program. I didn't really think I'd like virtual Lego building until I tried it, now I can't get enough (obviously. )
More space Legos. The Space Transport. Though, I can’t imagine what it’s transporting, the cockpit is large enough for a single occupant and the cargo space is about big enough for his luggage.
The X1 Patrol Craft (though, I wouldn’t want to patrol space in an open cockpit. )
The X1 was partly built in PCLinuxOS in my compiled version of LeoCad while I was installing some other software.
I don't know. That cracks me up about the classic helmets. The newer ones have a visor, but it doesn't fit correctly onto the old helmet (I tried.) Even if I put it on there, it doesn't even look like it's sealed, so it's not convincing at all.
mm really odd, since I think I got my package from them too. Maybe not heh, I have to check.
LDraw_AIOI_2011-01_setup_32bit_v2.exe
I think this was the installer I used. Shrug ?!?!?! hahah
I did have to copy over some parts archives to overwrite the older stuff. Anyhow no worry unless your really wanting that povray crap to run, which it seems isnt really a need. TS seems to be working well for these, compared to max.
After all that messing around with the LGEO crap the other day, I have now found out that box is optional on the POV-Ray exporter. :rolleyes: I decided to try it my compiled LeoCad build in PCLinuxOS and it says on the exporter on there (optional) next tho the LGEO path thing. It does not say that in the Windows version. However, sure enough, it's not necessary. I left it blank on there and it exported. Likewise, I tried exporting one in Windows, leaving that box blank. Sure enough, it exported. So, I now know how to make POV-Ray files. I don't really like POV-Ray, but I know how to do it. (the render I did in there looks like poop, and I had the quality cranked up)
Posts
I wasn’t in the mood to do any work on the Death Star today. That’s a huge project that’s going to take a while and I’m going to have to work on it bits at a time so that I don’t get burned out on it. So, in lieu of working on that, I decided to do one of the old space sets, the Star Cruiser. I know, it's not Star Wars, but I'm not starting a new thread for this. Besides, you could stick this in a SW scene and it would work. Now, for some reason, from time to time, Lego released the same kit twice with a different number. This one was released as set #487 and set #924. They’re identical (even the instructions) and both were released in 1978, so it makes no sense to me. Anywho, I went with 924 because the instructions were in better shape. Anywho, it turned out really well:
LeoCad had all of the parts for this though, for some reason, they only had the small bricks and minifig chest with the emblem with a black planet. Since the planet in this set and most of the others from back then is yellow, I recolored it in trueSpace. I plan to do more stuff from the classic space series.
On a side note: these are Legos. They’re bricks, you put them together normally. It’s all basic construction, which can easily be achieved in LeoCad. I was looking at instructions from some of the newer kits and I was shocked at how complex they’ve become. They have all of these odd bricks, cams and pins and whatnot. LeoCad doesn’t like the irregular stuff, it won’t line up correctly with the grid snap turned on. You have to do it manually. It can be done, but it’s a PITA. I prefer the classic Legos with simple construction.
I looked at some of those old instructions and it seems like a lot of my kits came from 89-90s. I still have them thankfully! I agree evil about current Lego kits being crazy. Sometimes they don't seem like Lego anymore. They've gotten better in recent years, but still a bit too complex for me sometimes though. The Lego Star Wars kits oddly enough seem to have not too crazy of pieces so sometimes I'll buy a small kit and I actually got some lego for my birthday last year (fun for a 30 year old ) Looking forward to more of your classic space! M-Tron, Blacktron and Space Police were my favorite back in the day.
Yeah, I love those old space sets. I'm already imagining an animation with a bunch of this stuff moving around. Though, it will be interesting to see if it actually happens. They had everything for this series, even buildings and scenery. (a baseplate with mountains :devil:) You can build a complete spaceport/base type thing just by building parts from this series. (and add stuff from other series)
The classic space all the way though to M-Tron was some of the best that lego produced.
I love it, but I was always given the City/Town stuff with one or two space stuff.
The one thing that really bugs me about lego now, is that when I was a kids, on the back of the box, would be different desgin that you could build with the peaces you got. Now with all the custom parts you don't get that. The last set I saw that did this was Set: 7239
Fire Rescue Truck. The box did not have different desgins, but along with the instructions you did get a sheet that did.
Yeah, there are too many custom parts now. I know what you mean. The old sets usually had alternate builds both on the box and in the manual. With all the weird parts they have now, it's got to be hard to do alternate builds. I also like how you used to be able to just buy a bucket of standard Legos and build some of the set stuff without the sets. The only things you might be missing were some of the pieces with special stuff painted on them. Now, with all of the weird parts, I don't think you can do that.
Easiest to do when building from instructions off many of the sites out there is to use someplace like Bricklink. http://www.bricklink.com
Just search the kit, name, theme, whatever. I'll list the kit all parts used in that kit (well supplied since lego always incl extras) Then you can search by part # inside of leo/ml cad.
Dunno I find all the fancy parts easier to build with. In the past SNOT building was very limited due to the parts that would allow this sort of build. In the past id wedge plates in-between studs to do this but that ends up with a fragile base and well hard to hide. (It is now a illegal build type too apparently, I guess there are build contests) However I found SNOT style and being creative with these apps much harder than just going to the real lego. I have seen many design in these cad apps then move to a physical build but dunno I do the opposite. Also found it hard to do SNOT in the apps as well lots of manual positioning! hah. But isnt it that way for everything? Even importing the 3ds in max makes for a nightmare f rebuilding parts due to the way the parts were originally built, yeah overlapping polys wont hurt but ugh all the tris and overlapping polies drive me nuts.
Oh also leo is designed to work with POV ray. It has some sort of odd export directly to pov ray, I have not gotten into it yet to know fully what is entailed with working with it but if you can manage a pov file out of it all, it might make for less painful exports, that or the ever present Blender as an exchange app.
Alternate builds, newer kits oh post 2011 seem to be more focused on selling the features of the kits. Space Police and a few others from the 2009~2010 had alternates on the backs. As I kid I do remember friends being frustrated with seeing the build back there but no instructions. Often it was a single step inside of the model that threw them all. I managed but there were a few I couldn't figure out back then.
it was several years ago the last time i bought an actual lego set, and that was one of the bionicle spinoff arena sets for my son. what i noticed is they do the cross promotional thing. no optional builds on the box, but in the back of the instructions was a portion of another build "if you buy these other sets you can finish this whatchamacallit!!!!"
that bugged me to no end.
he always liked digging into my piles of old bricks and being creative to come up with his own stuff anyway! he really did like the bionicle stuff though. and had several versions of each generation of the robots. combined with my old technic stuff he managed to build a 4-foot robot of his own! it was pretty cool
Thanks for the info, Dan. Yeah, I have LDraw installed, but I don't have MLCad yet. I'll DL that here in a bit. I haven't played with the POV-Ray exporter (yet) but I do have POV-Ray installed, so I'll probably mess with that sometime in the near future.
Whether or not I like it, I'm going to have to get into the SNOT (Studs Not On Top, for those who don't know the acronym) building soon. I really want to do a Death Star model and the only instructions I've found are for a really complex Death Star II model. I can build it and just mod it so that it represents the original Death Star, though I'll probably build both simultaneously. All I'll really have to do is copy and paste some of the sections for the "completed" part of the DSII to cover the part that's "incomplete" on the kit. It amazes me that they never did a kit for the original Death Star exterior, (there's an interior kit) especially since it appears in the Lego SW game. Really, SNOT building isn't that hard, it's just time consuming and my time is limited by my patience. But, I'll get past it. Another thing I want to do is the Batmobile, and it's mostly SNOT. Another one I want to do is that newer X-wing, like the one that stonky did. That's the best Lego X-wing out there, IMO. (I even like it better than the Ultimate Collector's Edition X-wing)
Of course, now I'm onto this classic Space kick, but I'll get back to the SW stuff at some point. Legos are my new obsession (really, an old obsession reawakened) and the possibilities are limitless with virtual Lego building.
The only major import issue with these LeoCad models is the faces. trueSpace doesn’t like the geometry on the faces, so those were coming out bad. To fix this, I’ve been giving my spacemen plain heads and textured them in trueSpace with a smiley face texture I made last night in Inkscape. (I guess they all work in a space Walmart ) It looks just like the classic smiley head, but without the mesh errors. Once I go back to the SW stuff, I’ll have to make some more face textures for those heads, because none of them use the classic smiley.
Also, I tried to export one of my models to POV-Ray, but it keeps messing up on me. I point it to where the LGEO stuff is installed, but it keeps telling me that it can’t find LGEO. So, I’ve given up for now. I’ll try to figure that out when I’m not sick.
Yeah sux about the faces, does it in max to a extent all the folded edges etc, happens when it tris up the geo. lol you could take it into mlcad and screen cap the face to make a map of the more complex faces.
Yeah, the faces don't appear to import well into any software. They look FUBAR in Blender also. It think it's just bad geometry. Oh well, that's what textures are for.
More Space Legos, the Space Dart and the ATV.
LDraw_AIOI_2011-01_setup_32bit_v2.exe
I think this was the installer I used. Shrug ?!?!?! hahah
I did have to copy over some parts archives to overwrite the older stuff. Anyhow no worry unless your really wanting that povray crap to run, which it seems isnt really a need. TS seems to be working well for these, compared to max.
Yeah, it's not really that important, I just like to play with stuff.
trueSpace 3 handles them amazingly well, better than any other software I've tried, including newer versions of tS. So, I'll just run with that.
More space Legos. The Space Transport. Though, I can’t imagine what it’s transporting, the cockpit is large enough for a single occupant and the cargo space is about big enough for his luggage.
The X1 Patrol Craft (though, I wouldn’t want to patrol space in an open cockpit. )
The X1 was partly built in PCLinuxOS in my compiled version of LeoCad while I was installing some other software.
I wouldn't want to patrol space without a helmet visor. How is he breathing?
After all that messing around with the LGEO crap the other day, I have now found out that box is optional on the POV-Ray exporter. :rolleyes: I decided to try it my compiled LeoCad build in PCLinuxOS and it says on the exporter on there (optional) next tho the LGEO path thing. It does not say that in the Windows version. However, sure enough, it's not necessary. I left it blank on there and it exported. Likewise, I tried exporting one in Windows, leaving that box blank. Sure enough, it exported. So, I now know how to make POV-Ray files. I don't really like POV-Ray, but I know how to do it. (the render I did in there looks like poop, and I had the quality cranked up)