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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Attachments:
Download 'legocars.jpg' (161 KB)

Preview of image 'legocars.jpg'

Come on, don't post photos here.

one word:  awesome.

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> 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.

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 :-)

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

Post a reply to this message

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.

On 2010-01-24 20:47, 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

Post a reply to this message

Le 2010-01-25 05:06, scott a écrit :
>> 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.
>
> 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 :-)
>
> PS is that a dog peeing against a tree in the background?!
>
>
For the old wheels, you are right. There where also large ones, with a 
2-4-4-2 pins array.
They worked very well.


Alain

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On 25.01.2010 03:21, nemesis wrote:
> one word:  awesome.

Thanks ;)

-Ive

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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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On 25.01.2010 18:31, Rick Gutleber wrote:
> 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. :-)
>
I started when I was 5 but I'm a bit older than you ;)

> Now my kids are Lego freaks.
Great!

>Thanks for the wonderful render.

You're welcome.

-Ive

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On 26.01.2010 02:18, Alain wrote:
> For the old wheels, you are right. There where also large ones, with a
> 2-4-4-2 pins array.

Yes. I'm currently rendering a scene with those ;)

But as I'm using high quality radiosity settings (and no light sources) 
I guess the render time will be the same as at the time when I had 
originally written the scene and rendered it on something like a 200 MHz 
Pentium machine IIRC.

-Ive

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"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

Post a reply to this message

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
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>

Post a reply to this message

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

Post a reply to this message

Le 2010-01-27 09:22, Jörg 'Yadgar' Bleimann a écrit :
> 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

Post a reply to this message

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!!!

Post a reply to this message

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

Post a reply to this message

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:
> Le 2010-01-27 09:22, Jörg 'Yadgar' Bleimann a écrit :
>> 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

Post a reply to this message

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 
"Märklin Metall", as it was called in Germany) in POV-Ray?

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 ;-)

Post a reply to this message

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

Post a reply to this message

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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