Alain wrote:

>> PS is that a dog peeing against a tree in the background?!

Only one problem. If the dog was peeing on the tree, shouldn't it be his 
OTHER leg in the air ??

bit

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Great rendering!

I've been doing some Lego rendering recently - see 
http://www.pearse.co.uk/lego for my recent experiments.

I've only used the basic PoseRay settings for rendering so far but I 
would love to create some more realistic renders. Any chance you could 
post some code or hints on lighting / radiosity settings?

Thanks in advance

Reuben
reu### [at] pearsecouk



Ive wrote:
> While doing a bit of browsing within some stacks of old 3.5" disks I did 
> find some POV-Ray source files of mine I had completely forgotten about. 
> It seems they where made for POV-Ray 3.0 and I couldn't resist to update 
> them and make them work with 3.7 beta.
> 
> The POV-Ray Lego bricks itself are just the kind of basic bricks I did 
> play with when I was a child (so about 1966, I guess, before Lego did 
> start with all those fancy sets) and I guess the youngsters among you 
> will not remember this kind of simple wheels and axis parts, but this is 
> how they looked like ;)
> 
> And as I'm currently working on some camera lens distortion removal 
> filters I figured that I could use the same routines to also *add* some 
> lens distortion. This is 'just' post-processing and maybe it will find 
> its way into IC some day.
> 
> -Ive
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>

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On 26.01.2010 23:14, Reuben Pearse wrote:
> Great rendering!

Thanks!

> I've only used the basic PoseRay settings for rendering so far but I
>  would love to create some more realistic renders. Any chance you
> could post some code or hints on lighting / radiosity settings?
>

I'm not using LDraw just an very old include file of mine where only the
very basic bricks (the ones I actually did have) are defined. Also the
scene is an old one and I just used higher quality settings for 
area_lights and focal_blur for this contemporary rendering as meanwhile 
I have something faster than a 200 MHz Pentium  ;)


The used finish for the bricks is:

#declare LegoFinish = finish {
     ambient 0  diffuse 0.775
     specular 0.6  roughness 0.012
     reflection  {0.01 0.125 falloff 2} conserve_energy
}


and for "glass" bricks

#declare LegoTransFinish = finish {
     ambient 0  diffuse 0.5
     specular 0.6  roughness 0.012
     reflection  {0 1 fresnel on}  conserve_energy
}


I have only defined the basic colors (again the ones I actually did 
have) and the values are taken from
http://www.peeron.com/cgi-bin/invcgis/colorguide.cgi
but are inverse gamma corrected to have them in linear color space as
they should be:

#macro GI(C)
   #local C = color C;
   <pow(C.red/255, 2.2),
    pow(C.green/255, 2.2),
    pow(C.blue/255, 2.2),
    C.filter>
#end


#declare LegoBlack  = GI(<  31,  45,  52, 0 >);//No.26 Black
#declare LegoWhite  = GI(< 240, 241, 240, 0 >);//No. 1 White
#declare LegoGrey   = GI(< 161, 165, 162, 0 >);//No. 2 Gray
#declare LegoRed    = GI(< 196,  40,  27, 0 >);//No.21 Bright Red
#declare LegoGreen  = GI(<  75, 151,  74, 0 >);//No.37 Bright Green
#declare LegoBlue   = GI(<  13, 105, 171, 0 >);//No.23 Bright Blue
#declare LegoYellow = GI(< 245, 205,  47, 0 >);//No.24 Bright Yellow
#declare LegoGlass  = GI(< 235, 240, 241, 0.885 >);


The lighting is just very basic (again it is an old scene) just 2 
area_light and a shadowless fill-light positioned exactly at the camera 
position.

And of course assumed_gamma has to be 1.0 for POV-Ray versions prior 3.7 
and has to be removed for the 3.7 beta versions.

I figured that there would be no interest for my "old-school" Lego 
include file where just the basic bricks and the old wheels are defined. 
If there is some interest I could prepare it for download and add the 
scene file for the shown image as usage example.
But as I would have to clean it up a bit and add a few comments it might 
take a few days, just tell me.

-Ive

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On 26.01.2010 22:51, BitViper wrote:
> Only one problem. If the dog was peeing on the tree, shouldn't it be his
> OTHER leg in the air ??

I know, but I think no one would have recognized it with the other leg 
raised without rearranging the whole scene - and I was too lazy for 
doing THIS.
In fact I'm quite surprised that everyone seems to see a dog in the 
object made of just 7 basic bricks. Well it is indeed meant to be one as 
the comment within this old scene file shows, but still...

-Ive

(Note to myself: play more around with a higher level of abstraction and 
leave the photo-realistic path for a while!)

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Thomas de Groot wrote:
> "Rick Gutleber" <ric### [at] hiscom> schreef in bericht 
> news:4b5dd560$1@news.povray.org...
>> Wonderful!  I still have some of that old stuff.  Gray tires.  Even the 
>> old Lego logo from the early 70s.  I started with Lego when I was 3 and 
>> I'm almost 45 now.  :-)
>>
>> Now my kids are Lego freaks.  Thanks for the wonderful render.
>>
> 
> You know that I am quite jealous of you, Lego generation kids? :)
> 
> [puts on oldies mask]
> "In my time, we did not have Lego, *only* Meccano, and we were always crying 
> in frustration because Lego had not been invented yet. I remember going to 
> the toys shop and asking if they already had received some Lego, always 
> getting the answer: Come back in 15 years' time son, you are too early yet.
> [takes off oldies mask]
> 
> Well, there it is. Good nostalgic work, Ive!
> 
> Thomas
> 

Well, I'm 72.  So Legos were much later than my early years.  For me it was Tinker
Toys (all 
wood), then a little later, Erector Sets (all metal).

Of course, now we can build anything with POVRay...     ;-)

      -=- Larry -=-

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Hi Ive:

   Very nice... as usual. Specially the transparent blocks are awesome,
perhaps due to the subtle chromatic aberration. And indeed nostalgic... I
seem to remember playing with these, although my childhood memories are
mostly gone.



-- 
Jaime Vives Piqueres

http://www.ignorancia.org

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High!

scott wrote:

> Great render - I remember those old wheels and tyres too, they had a 
> metal axle that you pressed into a special 2x4 brick didn't they?  I 
> preferred the technic wheels and axles that you actually connect to 
> stuff :-)

When I got my first Lego set in 1974, the tyres were black, not gray... 
and also later, I never encountered any gray tyres! Could it be that 
Lego sets with gray tyres were only marketed in the US?

See you in Khyberspace!

Yadgar

Now playing: Sehnsucht nach Allem (Yello & Joy Rider) - German New Wave!

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Lego went through a period in the 80s and 90s where they moved away from 
mostly generic bricks to less flexible stuff.  I recall seeing the 
sailing ship where the whole body of the ship was one huge piece. 
Likewise the castle was built of huge monolithic pieces.  I felt that 
Lego had betrayed the very quality of what made their toy great, but it 
seems that they too realized this and have returned to emphasizing 
generic bricks.

Although I'm not really a fan of licensed sets, I've always enjoyed 
buying the Star Wars sets for my kids.  The sets are very faithful 
reproductions of the various spaceships, etc, but they are composed of 
very generic pieces and retain the key element of flexibility.   The 
kids usually build the model once, and then spend all their time 
creating their own spaceships, etc.

When I was little I also had the train set with the blue tracks and the 
small red wheels without tires.  The tracks and wheels were grooved 
perpendicular to the direction of movement so the train's wheels 
wouldn't slip.  You used 2x8 white flat pieces as the crossties.

Later on I recall the Moon Landing kit with the original "maxifigs" (for 
lack of a better name), which were about 2" tall.  While those figurines 
where nicely designed (especially the arms), the minifigs which came 
around after I was no longer buying or receiving Lego (at least for 
myself) were a much better scale for Lego action.

On 2010-01-26 04:07, Ive wrote:
> On 25.01.2010 11:06, scott wrote:
>> Great render - I remember those old wheels and tyres too, they had a
>> metal axle that you pressed into a special 2x4 brick didn't they?
>
> Exactly. At the time I played with them the wheels where always red and
> the 'axle'-brick always white. The black wheels did come a view years
> later so I'm a bit cheating.
>
>> I preferred the technic wheels and axles that you actually connect to
>> stuff :-)
>
> Those had not been invented when I was playing with them ;)
>
>
>> PS is that a dog peeing against a tree in the background?!
>
> Well, I guess he does ;)
> And this is one of the things I always liked about Lego and especially
> about the old ones with the very limited amount of brick shapes. There
> is a quite high level of abstraction involved but still you could build
> everything and it is even recognizable.
>
> -Ive

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> High!
>
> scott wrote:
>
>> Great render - I remember those old wheels and tyres too, they had a
>> metal axle that you pressed into a special 2x4 brick didn't they? I
>> preferred the technic wheels and axles that you actually connect to
>> stuff :-)
>
> When I got my first Lego set in 1974, the tyres were black, not gray...
> and also later, I never encountered any gray tyres! Could it be that
> Lego sets with gray tyres were only marketed in the US?
>
> See you in Khyberspace!
>
> Yadgar
>
> Now playing: Sehnsucht nach Allem (Yello & Joy Rider) - German New Wave!

In the early 70's, they changed from gray to black. Maybe, if you had 
your first set in 1973, the tires would have been gray...


Alain

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Ive <"ive### [at] lilysoftorg"> wrote:
> I have only defined the basic colors (again the ones I actually did
> have) and the values are taken from
> http://www.peeron.com/cgi-bin/invcgis/colorguide.cgi
> but are inverse gamma corrected to have them in linear color space as
> they should be:
>
> #macro GI(C)
>    #local C = color C;
>    <pow(C.red/255, 2.2),
>     pow(C.green/255, 2.2),
>     pow(C.blue/255, 2.2),
>     C.filter>
> #end

You are so clever Ive!  I've been struggling using the peeron "official colors"
and being so light.  Wow, what a difference!  Sadly, I'll having to render all
my scenes again. :(

I may try your finish.  Here's what I've been using:

// brick finish
#declare lf_brick = finish {
    #if (l_ambient) // normal
      diffuse 0.5
      ambient 0.3
    #else           // radiosity
      diffuse 0.8
      ambient 0
    #end
    phong 0.6 phong_size 40
    specular .1
    #if (l_shiny)   // reflection on
        reflection { 0,.05 falloff .5}
        conserve_energy
    #end
}

Thanks for sharing!!!

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