[Software] LDD2PovRay

[Alcom1]

I've been messing around with LDD2PovRay, though not long enough to reach the eventuality of taking my most massive creation and rendering it at the lowest setting possible. It's a fantastic program. Unrelated to it being a fantastic program, I find the rendering of cone bricks to be... trying to think of a word for it... adorable?

Edit:

Not my biggest creation, and it is the third lowest quality option, and, well, it's... okay? No transparency until several steps up the quality options. I would like to cut out the POVray middle man on this sort of thing. The program is fine for small and medium sized creations at beautiful high details, but I don't have the processing power to wait for high detail renderings of all my big stuff. I'd like to just set LDD to high quality rendering, press ctrl+k, and be done with it, but the program keeps forcing me to metaphorically duct tape a toy telescope to my face. I know I have been incongruously adamant about LEGO Digital Designer's Field of View to the point of obnoxiousness; all four of my posts are about it, but I've played too many First Person Video games and derped with too many 3D design programs not to notice it every time I place a brick.

Anyways I should probably make this post perfectly relevant with an actual complete render.

Yay!

Edited January 29, 2013 by Alcom1

[Nachapon Lego]

I found that bug file made of Zblj 's report can be rendered!

http://www.eurobrick...opic=65020&st=0

bug by Nachapon S., on Flickr

Edited February 3, 2013 by bbqqq

[Lego Otaku]

Peak memory used: 3553042432 bytes

Render Time:

Photon Time: No photons

Radiosity Time: 14 hours 21 minutes 41 seconds (51701.418 seconds)

using 24 thread(s) with 1036059.508 CPU-seconds total

Trace Time: 129 hours 27 minutes 31 seconds (466051.497 seconds)

using 24 thread(s) with 9723538.201 CPU-seconds total

POV-Ray finished

Almost 5 and 1/2 days of non stop rendering to do on a 20k piece train station set someone did. Some transparent windows, lots of technic parts (= whole lot of bevels) A cheap computer from Walmart would likely take up to 2 months of nonstop rendering for the same 1600x1200, no AA image. Image posted below was reduced 50% to conform to forum rule.

PS sorry, no request. My computer uses about $75 per month in electricity.

Edited January 31, 2013 by Lego Otaku

[Bobsy]

42007 169 by Nachapon S., on Flickr

Okay, this:

How did you get the decorations on those pieces? I'm aware of using the custom decorations tool to replace existing decorations with image files, but I've checked those pieces you've used here, and they don't take any decoration in LDD at all. Did you Photoshop them in afterwards, or is there another trick here?

[Nachapon Lego]

Okay, this:

How did you get the decorations on those pieces? I'm aware of using the custom decorations tool to replace existing decorations with image files, but I've checked those pieces you've used here, and they don't take any decoration in LDD at all. Did you Photoshop them in afterwards, or is there another trick here?

Yes, I did Photoshop them. Only the number 6 can use custom decorations tool.

[kotaco]

Is it possible to do a base plane as you did with the wood but with Brushed_Aluminum or a Polished Chrome sort of look? (http://www.povray.or...view/3.6.1/485/) I orginally was looking for asphalt (as I tend to build vehicles) but couldn't find a texture for that but I did see POVray has the aluminum and chrome built in textures.

I tried to substiute woods.inc for metals.inc and include the texture { Polished Chrome } but that just caused a crash.

Edited February 16, 2013 by kotaco

[SBFD]

Hey I have a problem with LDD to Pov ray

I installed it yesterday and it worked, then i unisnstalled it again to put it into an other folder.

Now it says everytime that it cant generate includes cause he dont find the db.lif file

Could anyone help me please ?

Thanks

[DLuders]

@ SBFD: Welcome to Eurobricks! You should probably send your very specific question to the LDD2PovRay developers, by using their Contact Page.

[SBFD]

@ SBFD: Welcome to Eurobricks! You should probably send your very specific question to the LDD2PovRay developers, by using their Contact Page.

Thank you for your Help :)

[hrontos]

Hey I have a problem with LDD to Pov ray

I installed it yesterday and it worked, then i unisnstalled it again to put it into an other folder.

Now it says everytime that it cant generate includes cause he dont find the db.lif file

Could anyone help me please ?

Thanks

The file path in the message box seems to be wrong. db.lif path should point somewhere to your profile directory.

Something like: C:\Users\SBFD\AppData\Roaming\LEGO Company\LEGO Digital Designer\db.lif.

Is it possible to do a base plane as you did with the wood but with Brushed_Aluminum or a Polished Chrome sort of look? (http://www.povray.or...view/3.6.1/485/) I orginally was looking for asphalt (as I tend to build vehicles) but couldn't find a texture for that but I did see POVray has the aluminum and chrome built in textures.

I tried to substiute woods.inc for metals.inc and include the texture { Polished Chrome } but that just caused a crash.

Create a file named ldd_brushed_aluminum_base_plane.inc in your LDD to POV-Ray includes directory and put into the file following:

#include "textures.inc"

plane { y, min_extent(ldd_model).y texture { Brushed_Aluminum } }

It should be offered by the converter as custom base plane file so just select it in the converter gui.

Other built-in POV-Ray textures should work just like that.

Edited February 20, 2013 by hrontos

[Masked Builder]

I did two quick renders. (No more than an hour for each) I'm still trying to figure out how to change camera angle.

Click through for larger images.

[Nachapon Lego]

I did two quick renders. (No more than an hour for each) I'm still trying to figure out how to change camera angle.

Just change camera angle in LDD then save file. What you see in LDD is what you get render.

Trick: Adjust LDD window size and bricks pallette width to make LDD view port ratio close to ratio of render output (ie : 4:3 or 16:9). Then find best camera angle and save. The size of model will close to what you see in LDD.

Edited February 20, 2013 by bbqqq

[Masked Builder]

Just change camera angle in LDD then save file. What you see in LDD is what you get render.

Trick: Adjust LDD window size and bricks pallette width to make LDD view port ratio close to ratio of render output (ie : 4:3 or 16:9). Then find best camera angle and save. The size of model will close to what you see in LDD.

Hm, okay thanks I'll try that when I render my next model this afternoon.

[Gunner]

Again regarding decorations, sorry...

The problem this time is with the colors. I used the RGB parameters from the ldd_default_colors.inc file, but when I render, the colors of the decorations get darkened. Is there an easier way to match the colors of the decorations and bricks?

Trial and error is easy but a little hard-working, as is changing brightness and contrast in image editors. Any help?

The cockpit parts (50986 and 3960) are supposed to be Light Bley (Medium Stone Grey). They can be decorated, as well some other parts in LDD.

It's not actually something new, I found how to do it in a topic here, but I can post the decorable bricks I've found so far.

There's no need to hack LDD.

[Masked Builder]

Alright, my two other renders so far.

[hrontos]

Just a quick info: POV-Ray has new beta 3.7 RC7, so I updated also LDD2POVray to support it.

You will need at least LDD2POVRay 1.2.9 to work with POV-Ray v3.7 RC7.

[Nachapon Lego]

The cockpit parts (50986 and 3960) are supposed to be Light Bley (Medium Stone Grey). They can be decorated, as well some other parts in LDD.

It's not actually something new, I found how to do it in a topic here, but I can post the decorable bricks I've found so far.

There's no need to hack LDD.

Good found and nice rendering! Could you please share a LDD file with all new found decoratable parts? So we can use it as a template.

Edited March 7, 2013 by bbqqq

[Seluryar]

Here is something Ive been working on for the past few days:

Is there any way to add multiple light sources to the render process? i would particularly like to add lighting to the interior of the hangar to bring some light into there, perhaps from a different color of light.

[Gunner]

Good found and nice rendering! Could you please share a LDD file with all new found decoratable parts? So we can use it as a template.

Sure! I just made one a couple of days ago, but with LDD latest update I need to make another. I think I can post it here tomorrow.

PS: I already solved the problems I've encountered (colors and torso reflection).

[Gunner]

It took a little longer than planned, but here they are!

First, some considerations:

> All parts in the file can be decorated;

> All multicolored parts can be decorated;

> There may be some weird mapped surfaces (like General Grievous head and body, don't know if there are others), so designing decals for those can be tricky;

> Renders in some curved surfaces and multicolored elements may be "broken", like in Boba Fett's helmet;

> Transparent pieces will make the decals darker unless they're declared as dullPlastic in the ldd_part materials.inc, however they won't be so smooth anymore;

The file: http://www.brickshel...thers/decor.lxf (262 bricks)

The canopy and 4x4 dish are standart; the others dishes are dull Plastic. The decals in the dishes are the same.

The method for decorating the elements is in here: http://www.eurobrick...showtopic=59109 (end of the page). But to simplify it:

1. Create a lxf with the bricks you want to decorate

2. Rename the .lxf to .rar or .zip

3. Extract the .rar/.zip

4. Open the .lxfml in a text editor and change the decoration number to any number of the list (in the same topic above); then save it

5. Open the .lxfml with LDD and copy the bricks to a new .lxf

[Nachapon Lego]

Sure! I just made one a couple of days ago, but with LDD latest update I need to make another. I think I can post it here tomorrow.

PS: I already solved the problems I've encountered (colors and torso reflection).

Thanks you very much.

[SilentMode]

Here's my latest render (reduced to 800px wide):

At it's original size it took about two days, on a 32-bit computer.

[bacem]

this is my very first time using pov-ray, and i have a problem. the pov-ray rendering picture won't show. i'm rendering an LDD file that converted into pov-ray file using LDD2pov-ray. the rendering works fine, but the pictures won't come out. the sample pictures come out with no problem, so i think this problem only arise with LDD converted file. what should i do ?

Edited April 5, 2013 by bacem

[hrontos]

Could you, please, share the content of your message pane from POV-Ray?

[bacem]

there is no error message pane. that's what made me very confused, because i don't know what's wrong.