LDD Pov-Ray Rendering tutorial

Several people asked me to provide more details on rendering LEGO models like the Trabi or the MiG-15. Until the surprise is built, let me entertain you with a tutorial on how to render LEGO models.

Before we start, let me underline that this is by no means a straightforward process. You should start only if you are ready to edit programming-language-like text files and download, unzip and manually organize files. It needs several hours, some debugging and tweaking, and possibly more hours to compute the final image.

Ok, if you have read so far, then you are at least curious to know what it takes. What follows is based on Koyan's excellent tutorial with some tweaks. Let's see how a typical render is made!

Step 1: I install LDraw. LDraw is an community-maintained database of LEGO bricks that will be needed for our photorealistic renders. As you can guess, this is needed once only. I download and unzip several files:

• LDraw official parts (Core Files and Libraries / LDraw Parts Library, zip format). I unzip them in a directory on my computer. This is my LDraw directory.
• Many bricks are not in the official release. I download the LDraw unofficial parts as well. Unzip those files as well and move them in the LDraw directory too. Some files will already exist, I don't overwrite them.
• LGEO is another parts library that is made especially for POV-Ray renders. It contains fewer parts but those are nicely modeled. I download and unzip it into a separate directory.

| The original dome in  Lego Digital Designer |

Virtual Mustang

While I am waiting to get all Mustang parts I thought I would make a virtual version. Unexpectedly, getting all the virtual parts was not easy either - the mudguard was neither in the official nor in the unofficial parts of LDraw. I was lucky enough to get some help from gzurti so I have everything now. The result illustrates the difference between images made by LDraw (or POV-Ray to be precise) and LDD (click for more):


Meanwhile I got the first package for the real Mustang - I hope I will get the rest soon as well.

SR 3D Builder

If you like to deal with bricks on your computer, you must know LDraw. There is another less known but very interesting builder: SR 3D Builder was covered by TechnicBRICKs this week. It is also free and the result of several years of work of Sergio Reano.


And what is it capable of? The incomplete list:

• support for popular file formats like .dat, .ldr and .mpd (incomplete)
• it knows about connected bricks, it is possible to select and move them
• it recognizes rotation axles and models the rotation of connected gears
• support for mirror building in the case of symmetric models

gzurti's LDraw page

I wrote about LDraw a while back. One of my faithful readers sent a link to his creations:
http://gzurti.uw.hu/

It is worth to have a look at what LDraw is capable of in the hands of a pro.

Five things you may not know about LDraw

As a kid my dream was to have so many bricks that I never run out of them during building. As time has passed I have realized that this is never going to happen. But there is a small hope - you always have enough when building from virtual bricks.

This post promotes LDraw. This is a free program that can be used just like some serious piece of 3D CAD software - to build models from Lego bricks. For example like that:


Matt Wagner, a famous Lego builder had a guest editorial on the Brothers Brick blog titled Five things you may not know about LDraw . It is worth reading, I think it is a great intro to LDraw.
Besides LDView you can also learn how to make raytraced images using Koyan's tutorial on how to render LDraw images with POV-Ray.



Now, if you happen to browse Brickshelf and find some .LDR files - you should know what it is!

(As a sidenote, Lego has their own official building program: Lego Digital Designer. I'll write about it another time.)