Mike Thorn wrote:
> Ross wrote:
> 
>> thats funny. Reminds me of a book I saw this week at a little 
>> boutique. It
>> was The story of Genesis from the Bible, done with photos of lego 
>> creations
>> and one or two sentance passages. It was pretty funny. The lego creations
>> were very well done.
>>
>> you've made a nice looking model.
> 
> 
> I've heard of that book (I forget the guy's name)...just remember that 
> he took some artistic liberties and he was careful to choose only the 
> stories where people were doing something wrong.
> 
> There is actually a 3D modeller for LEGO available at 
> http://www.ldraw.org. There's some conversion necessary to get the file 
> formats right, but other than that it's pretty straightforward (drag and 
> drop, mostly). There's a little app there you can download that converts 
> the LDRAW format in straight POV (only primitives and no CSG, 
> unfortunately, which results in some very long files). From there it's 
> all yours.
> 
There are also the straigh POV libraries by Anton Raves at
http://www.antonraves.com

> I hope to be posting a number of LDraw renders in the near future. :)
> 
> ~Mike

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andrel wrote:
> There are also the straigh POV libraries by Anton Raves at
> http://www.antonraves.com

This is true, and while this may be more useful/intuitive for POV 
purposes, it is somewhat limited in scope. The LDraw libraries are 
approaching completion of just about every piece LEGO makes/has made, I 
think. At least it seems that way - only once have I wanted a piece that 
wasn't available (and it is now, I think).

~Mike

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Mike Thorn wrote:
> andrel wrote:
> 
>> There are also the straigh POV libraries by Anton Raves at
>> http://www.antonraves.com
> 
> 
> This is true, and while this may be more useful/intuitive for POV 
> purposes, it is somewhat limited in scope. The LDraw libraries are 
> approaching completion of just about every piece LEGO makes/has made, I 
> think. 
I think Anton is claiming the same (i.e. nearly complete ;) )

And he added MegaPov 1.1 and Pov 3.6.1 support while I wasn't looking.

> At least it seems that way - only once have I wanted a piece that 
> wasn't available (and it is now, I think).
> 
> ~Mike

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andrel wrote:
> I think Anton is claiming the same (i.e. nearly complete ;) )

Ah, ok. I must have missed something when I looked. :)

~Mike

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Hello!

> > This is true, and while this may be more useful/intuitive for POV
> > purposes, it is somewhat limited in scope. The LDraw libraries are
> > approaching completion of just about every piece LEGO makes/has made, I
> > think.
> I think Anton is claiming the same (i.e. nearly complete ;) )

Well.. Anton did excellent work but his library is far from completion... He
did around 950 different pieces which is amazing for a single person.

The LDRaw library on the other hand is containing more then 2300 pieces with
quality checked parts... (and its still far from completion too).
Additionally another 400 parts are waiting in line to get qualified.

If you want to build and render a really detailed model you NEED a modeller
and the related pieces.. and that is where LDraw & MLCad would be my first
choice.(Take a look at this picture made in LDraw and rendered with POV :
http://www.ldraw.org/gallery/album53/m2001_12_sava_large.jpg )

If I just want to build a simple small lego item then Antons library might
be the faster choice.

Play well

C.

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"Mike Thorn" <mik### [at] realitycheckmultimediacom> wrote in message
news:41b71d04@news.povray.org...
> For the SW POVers out there...
>
> I found this lurking around in the depths of my computer, a quick
> radiosity excercise from long ago. Someday I'll figure out how HDRI
> works and redo it.

Cute!  And well-modelled too; you managed to get the textures looking about
right as well.

Now it's time for rendering the obligatory arrayed-army of them ;)

rendertime++

Lance.

thezone - thezone.firewave.com.au
thehandle - www.thehandle.com

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Lance Birch wrote:
> Now it's time for rendering the obligatory arrayed-army of them ;)
> 
> rendertime++

The army is on its way, pending the learning of a couple features.

And rendertime? You wouldn't believe how long it takes to parse a 
100x100 array of these guys...I actually ran out of memory trying to 
create a 200x200 army. If the converter didn't do such wacky things with 
the positioning (it uses matrices for everything and I hate those) it 
would be easier to align the camera in such a way that minimal numbers 
of units could be used with maximum exposure and effect.

~Mike

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"Mike Thorn" <mik### [at] realitycheckmultimediacom> wrote in message
news:41b7c987$1@news.povray.org...
> Lance Birch wrote:
> > Now it's time for rendering the obligatory arrayed-army of them ;)
> >
> > rendertime++
>
> The army is on its way, pending the learning of a couple features.
>
> And rendertime? You wouldn't believe how long it takes to parse a
> 100x100 array of these guys...I actually ran out of memory trying to
> create a 200x200 army. If the converter didn't do such wacky things with
> the positioning (it uses matrices for everything and I hate those) it
> would be easier to align the camera in such a way that minimal numbers
> of units could be used with maximum exposure and effect.

Heh, yes I figured as much :)

Did you make the model in another program and are importing it into POV-Ray?
If so, don't do the duplication before converting it to a POV-Ray file...
convert the model first, group it together using a union and declare it as
an object, and then use a loop in the POV-Ray file to duplicate them the
required number of times.

Lance.

thezone - thezone.firewave.com.au
thehandle - www.thehandle.com

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"Lance Birch" <-> wrote in message news:41b7f0cf$1@news.povray.org...
> "Mike Thorn" <mik### [at] realitycheckmultimediacom> wrote in message
> news:41b7c987$1@news.povray.org...
> > Lance Birch wrote:
> > > Now it's time for rendering the obligatory arrayed-army of them ;)
> > >
> > > rendertime++
> >
> > The army is on its way, pending the learning of a couple features.
> >
> > And rendertime? You wouldn't believe how long it takes to parse a
> > 100x100 array of these guys...I actually ran out of memory trying to
> > create a 200x200 army. If the converter didn't do such wacky things with
> > the positioning (it uses matrices for everything and I hate those) it
> > would be easier to align the camera in such a way that minimal numbers
> > of units could be used with maximum exposure and effect.
>
> Heh, yes I figured as much :)
>
> Did you make the model in another program and are importing it into
POV-Ray?
> If so, don't do the duplication before converting it to a POV-Ray file...
> convert the model first, group it together using a union and declare it as
> an object, and then use a loop in the POV-Ray file to duplicate them the
> required number of times.

Addendum:  And if you're importing it as a POV-Ray mesh object, declaring
the mesh as an object and then doing the duplication in POV-Ray will use
hardly any additional memory (as the mesh is only stored in RAM once,
despite the fact that you may have it 40000 times in a scene).

Lance.

thezone - thezone.firewave.com.au
thehandle - www.thehandle.com

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Lance Birch wrote:
>>Did you make the model in another program and are importing it into POV-Ray?
> 
>>If so, don't do the duplication before converting it to a POV-Ray file...
>>convert the model first, group it together using a union and declare it as
>>an object, and then use a loop in the POV-Ray file to duplicate them the
>>required number of times.
> 
> Addendum:  And if you're importing it as a POV-Ray mesh object, declaring
> the mesh as an object and then doing the duplication in POV-Ray will use
> hardly any additional memory (as the mesh is only stored in RAM once,
> despite the fact that you may have it 40000 times in a scene).

Lance - yes, I'm converting it from MLCAD's native .ldr format (but 
unfortunately it's not a mesh). Already doing the loops.

Here's a progress shot of the army. I'd still like to play with the sky 
a bit - I had another heightfield at one point that was supposed to be 
mountains in the back (looked more like a volcano exploding right behind 
the troops), but a rotation mistake put it above the camera and it 
looked great as a sky plane. :)

I also need to add some explosions and blaster bolts (which may be the 
most difficult of all, though trace() will help a lot to make sure 
nobody gets shot in the back of the head).

~Mike

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