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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On 28.01.2010 01:13, SafePit wrote:
> 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. :(
>
> Thanks for sharing!!!

You are welcome.

And do not forget to adjust the other colors also. Also increasing the 
key light intensity should help.
Another cheap trick: when no radiosity is used put a shadowless 
light_source exactly at the camera position, like:

light_source {cam_location, color rgb 0.1 shadowless}

this looks in most cases much better than adding an ambient value to the 
finish.

-Ive

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On 27.01.2010 12:04, Jaime Vives Piqueres wrote:
> Very nice... as usual.

Thank you. Luckily you are not aware of all my usual failed attempts ;)

-Ive

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My oldest Lego definitely had grey tires, but later they were all black, 
so a change of around 1973 sounds right to me.

On 2010-01-27 16:39, Alain wrote:

>> 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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Larry Hudson schrieb:

> 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...     ;-)

Speaking of which - has anyone ever modeled some Erector / Meccano (or 


Anker stone construction sets might be a thing to try, too...

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Absolutely great.

But aren't the transparent parts wrong? AFAIK the transparent parts of 
that time had "inner pins" just like the non-transparent ones.

I also think you got the axle blocks wrong, IIRC the holes were a good 
deal lower (but I might be mistaken about that).

The rounding of the corners seems too strong to me (it's perfectly right 
for the knobs though).

For the perfect finishing touch, try randomly rotating the 1x1 pieces 
ever so slightly. You'll never ever get them perfectly straight in RL ;-)

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On 10.02.2010 00:07, clipka wrote:
> Absolutely great.

Thank you!

> But aren't the transparent parts wrong? AFAIK the transparent parts of
> that time had "inner pins" just like the non-transparent ones.

The 'glass' tiles I did play with looked like the rendered ones (without 
inner pins) and they did not hold very well together. AFAIR the ones 
with pins did come later.


> I also think you got the axle blocks wrong, IIRC the holes were a good
> deal lower (but I might be mistaken about that).

You might be right. I have no actual reference and the axle bricks are 
just modeled from memory.


> The rounding of the corners seems too strong to me (it's perfectly right
> for the knobs though).
>

I still have exactly one old 2x4 red brick (the one I used as reference) 
and its corners are indeed a bit more rounded than those of later and 
contemporary bricks.

> For the perfect finishing touch, try randomly rotating the 1x1 pieces
> ever so slightly. You'll never ever get them perfectly straight in RL ;-)

I'm already cheating a bit as I never had black wheels (but AFAIR they 
did exist) nor did I have black 'window'-bricks, only white and red ones 
and I even think they did not exist in any other color at that time ;)

-Ive

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Ive schrieb:

>> But aren't the transparent parts wrong? AFAIK the transparent parts of
>> that time had "inner pins" just like the non-transparent ones.
> 
> The 'glass' tiles I did play with looked like the rendered ones (without 
> inner pins) and they did not hold very well together. AFAIR the ones 
> with pins did come later.

Ah, so they must have been phased out for a while, but later (somewhere 
around 1980) phased back in.

>> I also think you got the axle blocks wrong, IIRC the holes were a good
>> deal lower (but I might be mistaken about that).
> 
> You might be right. I have no actual reference and the axle bricks are 
> just modeled from memory.

I still have some of them around here, but I'll need to dig them up.

>> The rounding of the corners seems too strong to me (it's perfectly right
>> for the knobs though).
>>
> 
> I still have exactly one old 2x4 red brick (the one I used as reference) 
> and its corners are indeed a bit more rounded than those of later and 
> contemporary bricks.

Are you sure that is not due to wear and tear?

>> For the perfect finishing touch, try randomly rotating the 1x1 pieces
>> ever so slightly. You'll never ever get them perfectly straight in RL ;-)
> 
> I'm already cheating a bit as I never had black wheels (but AFAIR they 
> did exist) nor did I have black 'window'-bricks, only white and red ones 
> and I even think they did not exist in any other color at that time ;)

You're probably right, but I'm quite sure the black 1x1 windows did 
exist at _some_ time, if only as part of some model in a series of 
vintage car sets. Must have been somewhen in the mid- or late 70's though.

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