Photoreal LEGO Rendering

[Renderbricks]

Hi,

I am a pioneer in 3d animation and LEGO is the mother of all 3d. When I found LDRAW a long time ago on the internet I started to do some research with digital LEGO a long time before the LEGO movie. Due to my limited time as a company owner I just made some tests and that's it. Now I am testing with MODO and could unlock a new level of detail and realism which is worth to share. LDD2POVRAY is a nice toy but not really useable for more complex stuff like handling bigger scenes with animation, simulation, effects etc. The actual result looks quite promising. I need to find a way to get the LEGO logo on the studs. The fun part is now that I can import everything coming from LeoCAD or MLCad and setup the materials and shading in a few minutes to get this quality. A rendering of this Snowspeeder in HD will take a few minutes on my 12 core DELL. I wished LEGO would allow an export from LDD. I will update this thread with more results. Have fun.

Edited April 28, 2014 by virtualrepublic

[Superkalle]

Very intersting stuff. I had a question relating to this last year.

The rendering you did is really beautiful. I particularly like the imperfections in the windshield. And the lighting is spot on. Only thing missing seems to be the LEGO logo on the studs (like you say). And maybe that some of the bricks (like the wedge plates) have slightly too round edges (should be a tiny bit sharper) and that the studs bases also should have less radius.

[hrontos]

This rendering looks really great. The lighting and materials you used look realy realistic.

[JGW3000]

Wow, that's really a great result, would be great to get a version of this that works on a "normal" (2 year old) PC. It could be my personal preference or my monitor, but the colors, especially the orange, look oversaturated to me and a bit too contrasty overall. Otherwise, a great result.

From LDD, you can export the model as a LDRAW format, does this help? I haven't used this option so can't comment on whether it is worthwhile.

[Renderbricks]

Hi,

thanks for the reply. Actually the plastic might be a bit too translucent but this looks more interesting. Yes. The bevel edges are too big. Unfortunately you just can set them to one general value and not separately for the studs etc. Probably I will work out a way. Next steps would be a more "used" look like roughness on the edges and surfaces. I will post updates and test out other models. The cool thing is that this picture will render in a few minutes what is great for animation ideas.

[Renderbricks]

Wow, that's really a great result, would be great to get a version of this that works on a "normal" (2 year old) PC. It could be my personal preference or my monitor, but the colors, especially the orange, look oversaturated to me and a bit too contrasty overall. Otherwise, a great result.

From LDD, you can export the model as a LDRAW format, does this help? I haven't used this option so can't comment on whether it is worthwhile.

Yes. But LDRAW will not support all models from LDD. So you get an incomplete model in many situations.

[Nachapon Lego]

Amazing work! Looking forward to see more.

My suggestions:

Add rough surface on slope pieces.

Add 0.2 mm typical horizontal brick gaps.

Add imperfections in some studs and Lego logo.

Edited April 28, 2014 by bbqqq

[legolijntje]

That looks amazing, even though it isn't "complete" yet the thing is jaw dropping.

Nice work!

[Superkalle]

Yeah, now that you mention, perhaps some of the bricks are a tiny bit too translucent - makes them look like Megabloks

I noticed too, here is some odd affect that makes the bricks look like they were cast in one piece:

[papacharly]

I agree: This is just WOW! Furthermore I have to admit, that I’m quite a bit envious…

Has anybody here tried to generate similar effects (like the imperfections on the windshield or the random speckles on the “cannon” (#30359) ) by using Pov-Ray and is willing to share this knowledge? Regarding LDraw/LGEO I would expect that you have to manipulate the texture respectively the normal definition in lg_color.inc or do any similar measures for getting close to this impressive MODO rendering of virtualrepublic.

regards

papacharly

Edited April 28, 2014 by papacharly

[Renderbricks]

Thanks for all the comments and critics. The beveling is done by a shader and not real geometry. So it's more a visual fake. It's not possible to modify the bricks manually and add bevels by geometry or define different scales of bevels. Probably it's possible by scripting and analysing the geometry. I'll check this out. I will render another version now with smaller bevels and a bit less SSS and we'll see how it looks like.

[Renderbricks]

Update:

- reduced SubSurfaceScattering from 80% to 60%

- reduced bevels from 500 um to 300 um

- bevel set to "round same surface only"

Edited April 28, 2014 by virtualrepublic

[Renderbricks]

Another test with depth of field on black (macro shot). Rendertime in HD is around 4min 30sec.

Edited April 28, 2014 by virtualrepublic

[Renderbricks]

More LEGO RENDERP*RN *:-)

Edited April 29, 2014 by virtualrepublic

[Calabar]

Rendertime in HD is around 4min 30sec.

I'm a bit curious... with PowRay rendering time in hight quality usually takes from hours to days!

Which machine the software is running on?

PS: you absolutely have to add "lego" logo on the studs!

[JM1971]

Looks very realistic, in fact looks just like a high quality photo, very nice indeed.

[Renderbricks]

I'm a bit curious... with PowRay rendering time in hight quality usually takes from hours to days!

Which machine the software is running on?

PS: you absolutely have to add "lego" logo on the studs!

It's a DELL Precision T5610 2x Xeon 6 Core (12 Cores) 32 GB RAM Nvidia GTX 780.

Yes. POV-Ray is not the best choice. The renderer is extremely slow. MODO is using a modern rendering technology and the speed is insane. The top close-up view took 8 minutes to render on my DELL.

Edited April 28, 2014 by virtualrepublic

[Calabar]

An uncommon machine then. I can suppose times 2/3 times greater on a good standard PC, unless the engine of MODO uses GPU acceleration (does it use?).

It is a commercial software, isn't it?

[DuckBricks]

Wow! I've been fiddling with Photoshopping LDRAW and BRICKSMITH models on my Mac to make them look realistic, but this is amazing!

Edited April 29, 2014 by legozebra

[Renderbricks]

An uncommon machine then. I can suppose times 2/3 times greater on a good standard PC, unless the engine of MODO uses GPU acceleration (does it use?).

It is a commercial software, isn't it?

At home I have an older Alienware M17x and a newer ACER for around EUR 800,00. The renderer of MODO (also available for MAC) isn't using the GPU for rendering. The DELL is ofc a very fast machine but with a normal PC it's still fast. Forget POV-Ray *:-)

I tried to replace in the LDRAW library some .dat files responsible for the studs. There's a guy who did some files with different LEGO logos in 3d. But unfortunately the geometrie is broken and weird. I have no idea what kind of software is used to create those files. The format is text but too confusing to fix that by hand.

Here's a link about the studs:

http://forums.ldraw....?19,11439,11504

Edited April 29, 2014 by virtualrepublic

[Master_Data]

Which programs do you use for everything, from the build to the final render? This looks incredible and I would like to try something like this as well!

[legolijntje]

Holy cow! The new renders look even better (and most importantly: less Mega-blocks looks ). I'm following this topic for sure

If you need to find more LDraw models, you can always take a look here, if you haven't seen it yet.

[Renderbricks]

Holy cow! The new renders look even better (and most importantly: less Mega-blocks looks ). I'm following this topic for sure

If you need to find more LDraw models, you can always take a look here, if you haven't seen it yet.

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I know all these sources. It's just amazing. I will check out more models and do some insane stress tests soon. Actually I try to work out how to get the LEGO logo on all studs. Unfortunately the studs.dat replacement I found on LDRAW doesn't work properly. Getting the studs top faces for a displacement might just work with some scripting.

Here's an example what is broken:

Edited April 29, 2014 by virtualrepublic

[Philo]

Amazing images! Just missing logos indeed ;)

I tried to replace in the LDRAW library some .dat files responsible for the studs. There's a guy who did some files with different LEGO logos in 3d. But unfortunately the geometrie is broken and weird. I have no idea what kind of software is used to create those files. The format is text but too confusing to fix that by hand.

I don't see why these logos shouldn't work - but you have to look closely at the batch files provided byt the author: to make them work you need to rename file stulogo_v3.dat into stulogo.dat. Don't forget to place all tori primitives (t01o0714.dat, t02i3333.dat, t02o3333.dat) in your LDraw\p folder.

[Renderbricks]

Amazing images! Just missing logos indeed ;)

I don't see why these logos shouldn't work - but you have to look closely at the batch files provided byt the author: to make them work you need to rename file stulogo_v3.dat into stulogo.dat. Don't forget to place all tori primitives (t01o0714.dat, t02i3333.dat, t02o3333.dat) in your LDraw\p folder.

Morning. Thank you. For what are the files t01o0714.dat, t02i3333.dat, t02o3333.dat? Because I just need an simply extruded LEGO Logo onto the normal hi-res studs. When I use the original files I receive a bad result, too. The studs are replaced with bevels but the bevels are broken as the LEGO Logo. I would like to know what tool was used to generate those .dat files. Here's my modified file of the extruded LEGO Logo what doesn't work:

http://lego.virtualr...ssues/logo3.zip

+++ UPDATE +++ Interesting. I tried to load in MLCad and the LEGO Logo looks correct there. Investigation in progress...

+++ UPDATE +++ I found out the reason. It was my importer using a cleanup and I have to set the scale of the model when importing from 0.05 to 0.1.

Edited April 29, 2014 by virtualrepublic