mali

I modeled, textured and rigged the minifigs myself. I used the character studio biped in 3ds Max for rigging, it's pretty straightforward once you learn the basics, but it certainly takes some skill and time to set it all up properly (though certainly easier than rigging a realistic human ). If you want to have this kind of bendy movements that real minifigs can't do, you really need to have a nice clean topology on the models (enough polygons to enable the bendy movement).

Thank you for the kind comments :) Yes, the main software used was 3ds max.

After my last video of a CG Lego pirate diorama I wanted to try making something different, a real brick flick. I'm not totally happy how it turned out, wish I could change some things but I have learned a lot and had both fun and frustration while making this. Hope you like it. Thanks for watching. Warning: The video contains scenes with graphic violence towards bricks, but no real bricks were harmed during the making of this film.

Sorry for the late reply, I was on vacation. I already explained this process to someone via personal message, so I will just copy the same text here. Hope it helps you, but as hrontos wrote, you would be better off creating the minifig model yourself, because the LDD minifig model would certainly not be suitable for animation due to its simple topology. Anyway, here is the process: First of all, you need 3ds max 2008. As far as I know, it can't be done without it, because it requires a script that works with that version of max... Next, you need 3DVIA PrintScreen, which you can download here: http://www.3ds.com/products/3dvia/3d-xml/1/ It captures a 3d scene from opengl applications like LDD. It's similar to a screenshot, only it captures the 3d geometry displayed in LDD and stores it in a 3dXML file. The 3d XML viewer that you can download from the same link can be used to view those files as 3d geometry but it can't export it in any acceptable 3d format. (It seems that the PrintScreen application is not present on the linked download page any more, please find it elsewhere yourself) Now you need to get the script I mentioned from here: http://www.4shared.com/dir/5807782/1c394251/KoichiSenada.html#dir=5807793 (just get the latest version, 2008.11.25., it works for me) and install it. When you run the script, you need to browse for the source file (3dxml), then click on "Read Source" (don't forget this), then choose a destination and click "Write Destination". The mesh is then imported, but it will be rotated wrong so you need to manually correct it.

This is just amazing, very impressive..

Such an amazing scene, very well done. Is that head in the water a baby? Nice details.

Those are really cool, well done. I wonder if he uses Pepakura or is it hand made somehow?

OK, I tried using the audio swap option now with some random reggae tune, so please ignore it for now, I may change it again later. I guess you guys should be able to see the video now, I'm a bit noobish on Youtube. Thanks! Oh and also a huge thanks for the mention on the blog

Thanks guys, I appreciate it. Yeah, a lot of patience was involved =) I now see it says the video is blocked in Germany and the USA due to copyrighted music Can you guys not see it? Should I re-upload without the music?

Not at all, thanks for embedding it and thanks for the compliments =)

Thanks a lot guys, I appreciate it =) @TalonCard I'm glad you like the pirate version of the Caribbean Clipper, I was afraid people would just say I'm lazy for not modeling the Black Seas Barracuda or something @Hiawatha, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I probably won't be animating this scene any further, it got too huge to handle everything. I would need to simplify it and plan different shots to make it work. And I'm just one guy with a single pc, it would take ages to do it. But who knows, maybe some day... I'm planning to do some other themes as well, but with more animation.

Yeah, I could have millions of bluecoats if I wanted :D Thanks =)

Thanks guys! I imported many of the parts that were available from LeoCAD, but I remade many of them to make them look better from up close and then arranged everything together in max.

After a long time working on this scene (almost 200 hours just for rendering alone) I've finally finished this animation. It's been done in 3ds Max. There's some more info on it in my first post here: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=60015 Hope you like it The (720p available)EDIT: I had to remove the original music due to copyright issues, so it's now replaced with a random reggae tune. Please ignore it, it was not my original intention. And some stills:

Nice, me and my brother got 2 of these each, because our dad forgot he bought them to us and he remembered we wanted them We also got 2 lances for each knight. I never noticed this picture on the left, it looks like they made him taller, looks cool