Custom LDD bricks and fixes

[Equilibrium]

On 10/21/2023 at 12:22 AM, macouso said:

I know this prolly won't help anyone, just would like to say that at the moment I solved that g parts transition issue by creating one single mesh out of those g1, g2, g3 etc. brick sections (becoming one g1 part) and the "main" g brick is actually just some bottom part, so everything is basically one huge object thus smooth after all, haha (I know it's kind of lame but still works beautifully + of course that also means completely re-design UV mapping as well).

Doing them like this will prevent decoring and coloring different areas of the same part. Just fix normals instead.

On 10/21/2023 at 12:22 AM, macouso said:

 

I've updated/fixed flex rods years ago. Unless it has been messed with it's issue on your side.

[macouso]

On 10/22/2023 at 4:01 PM, Equilibrium said:

Doing them like this will prevent decoring and coloring different areas of the same part.

No, you would not: just create very simple 128x128 pixels rectangle in the color you want it to be colored in any graphic editor and that's it - quick and easy + once you have a specific color it is reusable in ANY PART, of course (just add it in the DecorationMapping.xml for the specific designID and surfaceID). And, BTW, this is one of the exact ways LDD itself doing it (just look for minifig leg decors)

On 10/22/2023 at 4:01 PM, Equilibrium said:

Just fix normals instead.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the normals at all (checked in Blender - there it looks pretty smooth as one peace, exactly as it should) - it is more likely to be some sort of coding problem in the LDD Brick Editor when it generates the mesh into the actual LDD brick - author would have to check it himself (if he asks I can provide the 3D src file),

BTW why are you answering this as if I was talking to you?! You are not author of the app (AFAIK), nor the brick pack creator...or are your bricks in the pack too?

 

On 10/22/2023 at 4:01 PM, Equilibrium said:

I've updated/fixed flex rods years ago. Unless it has been messed with it's issue on your side.

Once again wrong: it is a g part DIRECTLY FROM THE APP SRC (it was just some example that was included inside one of the older src zips from the GitHub), but I have to say it is from one of the older version before I realized there already is completely new app project, so yes - most prolly it was fixed already.

And most importantly: why are you pointing to absolutely not important portion of the image where I literally said DO NOT MIND THE FLEX BRICK (or something along those lines) in the original post where this image appeared for the first time here??? That flex brick is there just by coincidence as that very image was used as an example elsewhere and I do not find it important to remove the brick as the point was very clear what I am talking about (well, at least I thought so + judging from the custom brick pack author he did understood it as he should, which cannot be said about you, unfortunately).

Edited October 24, 2023 by macouso

[ThorsHammer9999]

Is it possible to change some colors? Make Transparent Fluoride Green...more green and less yellow so it actually looks like Transparent Fluoride Green instead of just another Transparent Yellow. and Make Transparent Blue a little darker so it looks more like the IRL pieces instead of a slightly darker Transparent Light Blue?

[Stephan]

17 minutes ago, ThorsHammer9999 said:

Is it possible to change some colors? Make Transparent Fluoride Green...more green and less yellow so it actually looks like Transparent Fluoride Green instead of just another Transparent Yellow. and Make Transparent Blue a little darker so it looks more like the IRL pieces instead of a slightly darker Transparent Light Blue?

Yes, this is possible and I have been thinking about this as well. I have kept it as it is now due to nostalgic reasons. But they can be updated if people are OK with that.

2 hours ago, macouso said:

And, BTW, this is one of the exact ways LDD itself doing it (just look for minifig leg decors)

I actually though about updating these parts, re-organising their g files.  Because I don't like there a 4 separate decoration surfaces. That also means there are 4 decorations per leg, so 9 in total for a leg assembly. Since we cannot use 7-digit DecorationIDs, I want to optimise the decoration surfaces and update original LDD decorations to a higher quality. Same goes for the 3626 head, and torso. But that will be a long term improvement since it would take a long time to re-draw these decorations.

[ThorsHammer9999]

1 hour ago, Stephan said:

Yes, this is possible and I have been thinking about this as well. I have kept it as it is now due to nostalgic reasons. But they can be updated if people are OK with that.

Then maybe a compromise...make the more realistic Transparent Blue something like Transparent Dark Blue for example and keep both and make the Transparent Fluoride Green something like Transparent Vibrant Green and again keep or something?

[Stephan]

4 hours ago, ThorsHammer9999 said:

Then maybe a compromise...make the more realistic Transparent Blue something like Transparent Dark Blue for example and keep both and make the Transparent Fluoride Green something like Transparent Vibrant Green and again keep or something?

Yeah, we do not need to keep the old values for that matter. I also already changed Nature. And I have the original available if needed for some reason. I'll look into this for a next update!

Edited October 24, 2023 by Stephan
Typo.

[PicnicBasketSam]

Looking through the new parts update, it appears the Mickey Mouse head element (24629) is now corrupted in some way. LDD immediately crashes if I so much as scroll down to it in the parts menu.

Edited October 24, 2023 by PicnicBasketSam

[Stephan]

1 hour ago, PicnicBasketSam said:

Looking through the new parts update, it appears the Mickey Mouse head element (24629) is now corrupted in some way. LDD immediately crashes if I so much as scroll down to it in the parts menu.

Thanks for letting me know. I will add all part files to the update again to remove any corrupted ones. If you already downloaded the update through the "update only" option, please note that the Minecraft chicken will have its PartID updated!!

[macouso]

7 hours ago, Stephan said:

Since we cannot use 7-digit DecorationIDs...

Ehm, no, this is not true at all: I am using quantum of my own decors which digits (name) CONSISTS OF 10 DIGITS and it still works fine. I also found out that some bricks has limit of 9 digits for the decor name, others of 10 but never figured out why that is. IT seems like it depends what digits you use, in what order and the overal number (name) "amount", like you could use 111111111 but you could not 999999999 (just an example to somehow show you what I mean by the "amount").

 

Anyway, on the other hand WHAT YOU CANNOT USE ARE LETTERS IN DECOR NAMES: that is it would appear inside the LDD, but once you save such model with such a decor upon next re-opening the model they are gone from the project.

Edited October 24, 2023 by macouso

[Stephan]

25 minutes ago, macouso said:

Ehm, no, this is not true at all

Partly true. LDD supports DecorationIDs longer than 6 digits, but then you can not use the Palette option. I use that to pre-color/pre-decorate the new parts. The paxml file does not support 7-digit DecorationIDs for some reason.

---

Added version 20231023: LINK.

This version includes 188 new parts, 49 updated original, and 40 updated custom parts, 522 new decorated parts, 1 new color, a new version of the 2020NewPreColoredParts palette and a new version of the DecorationMapping! For the first time 13 Complete set Palettes can be added to your Palettes folder providing you with only the parts you need for a certain set!

Even though the parts are thoroughly checked, you might still encounter unforeseen problems during some builds. If that is the case, please let me know.

For which parts are you most excited?

Enjoy 

Edited October 24, 2023 by Stephan

[macouso]

 

8 minutes ago, Stephan said:

Partly true. LDD supports DecorationIDs longer than 6 digits, but then you can not use the Palette option. I use that to pre-color/pre-decorate the new parts. The paxml file does not support 7-digit DecorationIDs for some reason.

What "Palette option", where? As a side note: we are talking here about customization of LDD incl. db extraction and manipulation/updating/changing its internal files which requires a bit higher knowledge than some average user has, so I somehow automatically assume such person is using EXTENDED LDD GUI, so what kind of palette dealing with decors are we talking about here??? The only thing that comes to my mind could be the visual list you get when you select Decoration tool and click a decorable brick part - is that what you mean by Palette option? Cos if so there is no problem with the display of decor having name consisting of 10 digits.

And PAXML file - where you see such file in LDD? If it is some kind of typing mistake and you talking about the DecorationMapping.xml which is the only xml file dealing with the brick decors then once again not true, of course. But hey, as I said I have no clue what file you talking about here thus I may be totally wrong - would you mind to explain yourself more, please?

[Stephan]

15 minutes ago, macouso said:

 

What "Palette option", where? As a side note: we are talking here about customization of LDD incl. db extraction and manipulation/updating/changing its internal files which requires a bit higher knowledge than some average user has, so I somehow automatically assume such person is using EXTENDED LDD GUI, so what kind of palette dealing with decors are we talking about here??? The only thing that comes to my mind could be the visual list you get when you select Decoration tool and click a decorable brick part - is that what you mean by Palette option? Cos if so there is no problem with the display of decor having name consisting of 10 digits.

And PAXML file - where you see such file in LDD? If it is some kind of typing mistake and you talking about the DecorationMapping.xml which is the only xml file dealing with the brick decors then once again not true, of course. But hey, as I said I have no clue what file you talking about here thus I may be totally wrong - would you mind to explain yourself more, please?

When you open LDD, you can select MINDSTORMS mode. This mode supports custom parts palettes, i.e. a custom list of parts. The files are located here:

And can be accessed in LDD through:

 

And of course we use LDD Extended mode, but why limit ourselves when there are so much options in LDD to make our life easier.

Edited October 24, 2023 by Stephan

[macouso]

LOL, that actually explains why I had no clue what you are talking about here, as I only have files for EXTENDED mode, no need to take up place with files from other themes I will never ever use, thus there are no mindstorm files in my system, thus no paxml - thanks for explanation. As I said, as it has nothing to to with the way I work with my highly customized LDD I am of no help for you here and you most prolly are right.

So continuing the question from the wrong place (your bricks update page): but then it is not just the updated bricks, only their parts, it is a mess as one would expect to have complete brick package of specific "only newly added" bricks; this way it does not serve its purpose (what for when I still have to search for the previous update?), this way it is broken - if you are providing pack with only the newly added bricks you should include all their files, both updated and not updated so one can use it without any additional work of searching, downloading, finding the correct bricks that were updated etc.

And comparing this with software updates is not correct and not the same: if you update software you use it as WHOLE APP, not just some of its part, thus logically in update you only get snipets as the other sections are already in the app. But if you providing a separate pack with just the newly added bricks which could be used without the rest (that is the actual reason) then you simply have to provide the complete brick incl. all its parts that is the updated and also the older that got no update. Maybe you do not think about it this way, but did you thought that someone can really use just a specific bricks from your pack excluding your decors and other stuff you have in there, hm?

For instance I'm only interested in bricks that were not originally in LDD: I do not care for your versions of existing LDD bricks as you completely broke UV and decor logic which in turn would broke logic I introduced for my own custom stuff incl. bricks that I am using for many yrs now (for example: you are now creating hi-res images as one piece where the separate "decor faces" are now as one multidimensional UV having all "faces" side by side in one single image where in original each face had its own separate decor - I do not like this new version of yours as it is breaking my system which respects original LDD way of things as I already said). Now do not get me wrong here: I of course understand that the hi-res images are much better, sure, but I do not need that as I have my own hi-res ones that actually respects original LDD uv mapping for separate faces.

All this long explanation was needed to show you that there may be people - and there are, well, at least one here - that simply cannot download the whole pack and replace its original content mindlessly, no way (but I do get there are many ppl which will). You see: as you created your custom system, I created my own many yrs ago for my own purpose and those two are not compatible in this important regard, THUS THE RESONING BEHIND THE WAY YOU FILL THE CONTENT OF THE PACK WITH JUST THE NEWLY ADDED BRICKS, cos your new bricks are pretty fine, I would use them, but I need normal way of providing the new additions only. BUt if nothing esle, I will have to once again - and with every new update, ah - go thru it file by file and copy/paste individual files I find usable (which is not good and pretty terrible practice, I can tell you that).

Sure, it is only my "look at things" and you may do whatever you think is right and correct, but this is of little help having it this way as it simply breaks reasonable usage of such pack.

Also: how can you dll bricks separately from your GitHub when for example the listing is truncated to only 1000 files thus folder "LOD0" is not even shown???

Edited October 24, 2023 by macouso

[PicnicBasketSam]

Thanks for fixing the Mickey Mouse head! These parts look great, I'll see if I can find any issues implementing them into actual models. For the moment I do not see a few parts listed in the update patch notes in the actual files, in what I downloaded earlier, or Github and Dropbox right now: wheel 3486, Technic mudguard 3538, or Darksaber blade 3885.

Edited October 24, 2023 by PicnicBasketSam

[Eggyslav]

I NEED HELP PLEASE!!! I don't know how or why, but I lost all the additional colour options. I screwed something with the instalation, and I had to reinstall each and every new part pack. And now I only have colours that came with regular LDD. Help?

Edited October 24, 2023 by Eggyslav

[suenkachun]

19 hours ago, Stephan said:

Added version 20231023: LINK.

This version includes 188 new parts, 49 updated original, and 40 updated custom parts, 522 new decorated parts, 1 new color, a new version of the 2020NewPreColoredParts palette and a new version of the DecorationMapping! For the first time 13 Complete set Palettes can be added to your Palettes folder providing you with only the parts you need for a certain set!

Even though the parts are thoroughly checked, you might still encounter unforeseen problems during some builds. If that is the case, please let me know.

For which parts are you most excited?

Enjoy 

There are some missing files on both Dropbox and GitHub (I used the development version). I tried installing either version, copying and replacing the “Palettes”, “Assemblies”, “Decorations”, “MainGroupDividers” and “Primitives” folders from both platforms (the rest I manually replaced individually due to one custom colour and custom decorations of my own). Afterwards, as shown below opening the latest “231023.lxf” resulted in 12 Bricks removed and a large number of Bricks not showing with only their bounding boxes present.

P.S., the Train Window not attaching issue (Parts 4035/4036) seems to still exist, please check this too and thanks for the update.

Edited October 25, 2023 by suenkachun

[Stephan]

7 hours ago, suenkachun said:

There are some missing files on both Dropbox and GitHub (I used the development version). I tried installing either version, copying and replacing the “Palettes”, “Assemblies”, “Decorations”, “MainGroupDividers” and “Primitives” folders from both platforms (the rest I manually replaced individually due to one custom colour and custom decorations of my own). Afterwards, as shown below opening the latest “231023.lxf” resulted in 12 Bricks removed and a large number of Bricks not showing with only their bounding boxes present.

I don't know what went wrong... There are indeed some files missing (68577 confirmed) while I set-up a new method to prevent this... But there are also a lot of parts of which the files are included that do not show up on your side... I did a quick check in the rar files and 1686, 1939, 3250 etc. are just included. So please re-check the download. 

There are also original parts that should just show up with no problem since only collision data has been updated. Which means that the standard LDD installation should already have all those files. Something is going wrong on your side.

Edited October 25, 2023 by Stephan

[macouso]

43 minutes ago, Stephan said:

I don't know what went wrong... There are indeed some files missing (68577 confirmed) while I set-up a new method to prevent this... But there are also a lot of parts of which the files are included that do not show up on your side... I did a quick check in the rar files and 1686, 1939, 3250 etc. are just included. So please re-check the download. 

There are also original parts that should just show up with no problem since only collision data has been updated. Which means that the standard LDD installation should already have all those files. Something is going wrong on your side.

You see: this is exactly another reason why pack containing just the newly added/updated parts should always be as "complete", that is all parts of the brick(s) should be there, not just the ones (the parts of a brick, be it .g or .xml files) that actually got some sort of update - that way one can simply extract those and case closed (he could be sure he always got fully functional brick without the additional stuff he may not need - if he needs the other stuff too he can then procede to that as next step cos this way his head can explode trying to pinpoint the reason for his problems with LDD after the update with your brick pack as it also contains other files besides actual bricks), he does not need to finding out what went wrong, what is possibly missing from the previous pack etc. ;-)

That being said, if I were you (as I am not, of course) what I would have somewhere on my webpage would be this:

• one MAIN pack containing all the stuff created so far: this one would be always actualised, that is not everytime new pack of this kind, no, just this one singular file always updated to the latest full release (this way you could also forget about giving new link for the new release every single time as there would be one permanent link for this file so you could always redirect to the 1st post of your thread)
• separate small pack containing ONLY NEWLY UPDATED/ADDED stuff as "complete" (see description I gave above) for every update: this way one can really procede step by step with update after update extracting only the new stuff by which he can much better pinpoint which update made the error...

I mean this really in a good manner trying to help, possibly for any new update...think about this, please.

Edited October 25, 2023 by macouso

[Stephan]

3 hours ago, macouso said:

You see: this is exactly another reason why pack containing just the newly added/updated parts should always be as "complete", that is all parts of the brick(s) should be there, not just the ones (the parts of a brick, be it .g or .xml files) that actually got some sort of update - that way one can simply extract those and case closed (he could be sure he always got fully functional brick without the additional stuff he may not need - if he needs the other stuff too he can then procede to that as next step cos this way his head can explode trying to pinpoint the reason for his problems with LDD after the update with your brick pack as it also contains other files besides actual bricks), he does not need to finding out what went wrong, what is possibly missing from the previous pack etc. ;-)

I mean this really in a good manner trying to help, possibly for any new update...think about this, please.

I will re-think the process. It's not rocket science so I should be able to come up with a solution. I understand what you are saying and I agree with your reasoning. Apparently during my process I sometimes just forget to copy the new files to the update folder... I need to see how I fix this consistently.

Edited October 25, 2023 by Stephan
Typo

[macouso]

Just now, Stephan said:

I will re-think the process. It's not rocket science so I should be able to come up with a solution. I understand what you are saying and I agree with your reasoning. Apparently during my process I sometimes just forget to copy the new files to the update folder... I need to see how I fix this consistenly.

Thumb up! + see my a little bit updated comment with further possible solution...

[Eggyslav]

Excuse me, but why no one answered me? I asked for help and got ignored. As such I'm kindly repeating my plea for help: Somehow while installing the latest update, I did something wrong, and I had to reinstall all the parts again, and in result, I somehow lost ALL the custom colour options in LDD. Can someone Please, PLEASE help me?

Edited October 25, 2023 by Eggyslav

[Stephan]

42 minutes ago, Eggyslav said:

Excuse me, but why no one answered me? I asked for help and got ignored. As such I'm kindly repeating my plea for help: Somehow while installing the latest update, I did something wrong, and I had to reinstall all the parts again, and in result, I somehow lost ALL the custom colour options in LDD. Can someone Please, PLEASE help me?

You did not get ignored, there were other things to discuss first...

What did you do wrong? For standard users it is just copy-paste the rar file in the LEGO Digital Designer folder and unpack. Everything else should be automatic. And what do you mean with "reinstall all the parts again"? Did you re-add the custom parts, or reinstall LDD? If you do not have the custom colors in Extended Mode, you are probably missing files in the Palettes folder for Extended mode.

12 hours ago, PicnicBasketSam said:

Thanks for fixing the Mickey Mouse head! These parts look great, I'll see if I can find any issues implementing them into actual models. For the moment I do not see a few parts listed in the update patch notes in the actual files, in what I downloaded earlier, or Github and Dropbox right now: wheel 3486, Technic mudguard 3538, or Darksaber blade 3885.

No problem! When I get home from work, I will re-upload all parts files. This should fix the missing parts.

I also want to publish updates easier. And adhere to the process suggested by @macouso in some way. I agree with his reasoning, now that the custom knowledge about LDD is growing for a larger group of users, we are not only talking about standard users. I need to consider the people that modified their LDD and decorations. It doesn't mean I can't make improvements anymore to LDD, but it does mean that I should provide an option for those users to be more selective with what they download.

[macouso]

@Stephan

Regarding my previous suggestion, I dared to construct very simple possible visual for you so you have to spend less time inventing your possible visual and concentrate more on the bricks, haha, see this suggestion of mine (please, click on the thumbnail image as it got cropped thus you do not see it as it should be):

 

+ one other thing I noticed before, so maybe it is not the case now but still: you SOHULD ONLY PROVIDE ONE LINK FOR YOUR FILES OF THE SAME CONTENT, not several others for the same stuff as it happened more than once that the same pack from different sources had not the same content! Be aware of this - if you'd go "somewhere along the lines" of my suggested visual such problem would be solved that way too.

Edited October 25, 2023 by macouso

[Eggyslav]

2 hours ago, Stephan said:

What did you do wrong? For standard users it is just copy-paste the rar file in the LEGO Digital Designer folder and unpack. Everything else should be automatic. And what do you mean with "reinstall all the parts again"? Did you re-add the custom parts, or reinstall LDD? If you do not have the custom colors in Extended Mode, you are probably missing files in the Palettes folder for Extended mode.

It's a long story: when I installed the newest update, I also downloaded the parts only folder, as I was missing some stuff. Whe I downloaded and opened the folder, I noticed there are actually some extra stuff in there, like additional parts and decorations. So I Also installed them as well. I thought I knew what I was doing. But I was wrong. LDD would nearly instantly crash to Desktop. So, I had to re-add all the parts, and after a lot of fiddling, I was able to make it work. But in the process I somehow lost all the colour options. The colours are still there, but I can't chose them in the colour picker menus. May I just have the necessary files to fix it?

Edited October 25, 2023 by Eggyslav

[suenkachun]

9 hours ago, Stephan said:

I don't know what went wrong... There are indeed some files missing (68577 confirmed) while I set-up a new method to prevent this... But there are also a lot of parts of which the files are included that do not show up on your side... I did a quick check in the rar files and 1686, 1939, 3250 etc. are just included. So please re-check the download. 

There are also original parts that should just show up with no problem since only collision data has been updated. Which means that the standard LDD installation should already have all those files. Something is going wrong on your side.

Just did a fresh LDD install by using files from the original “setupldd-pc-4_3_11.exe” programme, including re-extracting all required files using the LIF Extractor. Then I installed the latest update using the Dropbox version and here are the latest findings.

A few previous glitches on my end have all been fixed, including that weird Plate 6x6 issue which must have been due to outdated files when updating. However, the Train Window not attaching issue (Parts 4035/4036) is still around.

For the latest “231023.lxf”, nothing has changed since the last time I posted a screenshot. All the missing Bricks there are still only showing their outline box, 12 Bricks removed due to could not be loaded and 2 removed due to being misplaced. Other than these, the Decoration PNG for Part 14719 Flat Tile Corner 1x2x2 seems to missing within the visible Bricks too. Thanks for the efforts so far.

Edited October 25, 2023 by suenkachun