I've been amazed by some of the lego models/renders in the gallery - until now. Some of them are modeled from scratch but most of them are surely not. For some of you this may be old news but If not then keep on reading to find out how to make your own lego models yourself - quite easily actually. The image you see here is made this way. 1) First of all you need LeoCad or LDraw. These programs are quite simple if you are familiar with a 3D-environment and can be downloaded from here: http://www.leocad.org http://www.ldraw.org Don't forget the latest piece liberary when you download. Personally I prefer Leocad because it has better import/export functions. You may find it a bit difficult in the beginning to find the right pieces in the liberary but after a while you will get a hang on how the pieces are named and categorized. 2) Now you need building instructions. Tonnes are available on the net. Here's a good one with hundreds of building instructions: http://library.brickshelf.com/scans/ 3) Assemble your model in Leocad or LDraw, export as .3ds or .ojb. 4) Import to Bryce, edit materials and render (don't forget to smooth the meshed a bit before you render your final image.) tadaaa!

Cool, going to download now...:)

Now that's a cool tip! Thank you, this will definately be a lot of fun to explore. J.

here's another bunch of instructions: http://www.koroptev.cz/instructions/

I have this prog....never bothered to try it out.....guess I'll have to now....:-)

I have leocad, Its quite cool but the exported models have a really high polycount. I tried to build a couple of houses but when impotred to bryce, they made my computer crash.

Yes, the problem is that every piece is exported as a single object. The above go-cart is about 37 kb (saved in Leocad format) 5100 kb (when exported to .obj format) 24 mb (when imported and saved as a Bryce4 file).

downloaded it long ago, along with a library of about 500 pieces, now where did I put it?

Thanks bazze. This is awesome. They even have plans for a Lego oil rig. Stick a fork in me, 'cause i'm done. Kiss whatever extra time I had goodbye.

Cool program!!!

Bazze, when you mentioned the lego galleries, was it a gallery at one of the links you left or here. You gotta forgive me, I literally just woke up 5 minutes ago and this are still on th e foggy sidr.

Heheheh... So that's how they made that car ad I saw not too long ago. And I was wondering how much they spent on the legos. LOL... Shoulda known better...

Yep rocket propelled, all new alien turbo cart!!! Brings back memories of my young lego days... Now were did I put that firecracker.

Fire is good!!!

Playing around with it while I was on the phone. Looks like I got a little carried away.

I don't know? I think ya need more jets 8P

Boomer - no I was speaking about the lego-models/renders in the Bryce Gallery here on Renderosity.

By the way, here's another pic. There's one wrong piece in the small fire car because I could find sloping front brick with the fire logo.

CW - Damn, I knew I should have put one more jet underneath the rear spoiler. hehe bazze - No, I haven't seen them, but I am going to go looking for them now. Also, how did you set up your lighting because it looks great. I can never seem to get soft lights like that that give you such a sharp image.

Do a search for "lego" and you will find a couple of lego images in the gallery. The lighting is a 3/4 light globe consisting of around 225 radial ligts. The diffusion is set to about 60-70 in the materials settings.

I like fact that when you export from LeoCAD, and import in brice that the model is a group of individual bricks. You can then do alot of post work in bryce. Didn't notice a file size thing but I haven't tried anything really big yet I am still learning lighting, bazze do you have any tutorials on some of these lighting technics? I would really love to see some screen shots of your setups in bryce.

I tried the dome thing, not quite 225 lights/ What intensity is the light set at? I dropped it al the way down to 1 becasue it just looked like pure crap any other way. Way to bright. Ditto on the screenshots. My file size for the car was 1.8 megs in 3ds format and 15 megs in Bryce. Just a plain old scene with the lights in it.

CryingWolf & Boomer. The lighting techniques I used are the ones described on this page: http://www.bryceanworlds.com/pages/simulated_radiosity.html The light intensity is dropped to 1 as Boomer said. The light dome is enlarged quite a bit which also lowers the brightness. The diffusion setting on the materials is about 60-70% (or even lower). OK I'll submit some screenshots next time I log on (I'm at work now)

How does this one look? The dome isn't exactly a dome, more like a cone of sorts, I think, or something...like that. Light intensity is set to 1, ambiance is 60 and for the hell of it, I turned uf the specularity, but I don't think that's going to do anything. So what say you?

Turn of the sunlight aswell and you will get rid of the "hard" shadows. You don't have to build you own domes. You can dowload them from the page I linked to in my previous post.

CryingWolf - "I like fact that when you export from LeoCAD, and import in brice that the model is a group of individual bricks. You can then do alot of post work in bryce." That is right. But that also makes it diffucult. A technicsmodel consists of hundreds of pieces and assigning materilas and changing settings on each and every of them is a real hassle. Selecting them and grouping them in Bryce is hell aswell. I found a way of exporting the LeoCad models grouped by color and I also use a trick that makes the different color groups fit perfectly when imported to Bryce. I'll make a couple of screenshots and post them here along with an explanation.

Oh, right on bazze!!! That is one of the reasons my models are so simple. I didn't know how long it would take me if I tried a technics model. Probably end up importing it in sections but if you can group by color that would rock!!! All my models so far I did redid the material piece by piece, and only picked simple fast textures to give it the plastic look (ok somewhat) Thanks bazze, I think one of my problems is not increasing the dome size. I keep getting a very bright washed out effect not soft like yours. Thanks again for giving me a step in the right direction.

Here are 3 screenshots showing how the lights are set up. The 1st one is from the rendering angle. No ligths visisble there. The 2nd is from the top and the 3rd from the side. The light domes are quite big so the grey little thing in the middle is the actual scene. Summary about the light settings: Shadow intensity : 100% Sunlight: Off Radial lights: Intensity set to 1 and arranged as seen on the screenshots (about 175-250 radial lights) Diffusion settings: Quite low (about 60-70% or even lower) Hope this helps

CryingWolf - read my latest post (with dumps) about how to manage all those hudreds of bricks. HERE