Although I haven’t posted many picture lately, I haven’t been idle. Old, new, large, and small, I’ve been trying out a few different things over last two months. Of course, this was between working, running, and other projects. So, time to catch up! Here are five images to round our your day.
Portal was one of those games that game out of no where. Released as an add-on to the Orange Box, the Half-Life 2 box edition for consoles, the puzzler shined. Combining wry humor with entertaining game play, Portal gained a place in pop culture. In one of the more memorable levels, you are given a weighted companion cube. This heart embossed cube replaces the more generic ones used in early, and later, levels. Given a game filled with loneliness, the companion cube helps fill that void. Portal does such a good job of hamming it up, that it comes as a surprise when you must dispose of the cube to continue on. It’s heartbreaking, even if the cube is an inanimate object. As an iconic part of the game, I was excited to replicate it in LEGO bricks.
I was actually working on a different model when an idea struck me. Wanting an object to look abandoned and old, I grabbed a spider web and threw a black spider in it for fun. But, the web was too large, so I left it off to the side. Getting back to it yesterday, inspiration took a different direction.
July 4th is bitter sweet for me. I’ve always enjoyed the holiday with its fireworks and celebration. Food, fair and patriotism mix for a usually fun day. Yet, my wife’s mother died on the 4th, making it a day of remembrance and sadness. Time to find something to take my mind off it.
Each month I check to see what the latest LEGO mini build is. Since I don’t have a local LEGO Store, I often build and render them using virtual bricks. This month, I only needed to render it as as mathieub already built it. Yet, I decided to give it a little character.
The lively colors in this Duplo ostrich caught my eye and inspired me to render it. My version of this lonely ostrich uses standard LEGO bricks, I was never a big fan of Duplo, nor do I have models of them. Yet, the simplicity of the model is quite effective. The render recreates that charm well.
I saw a great Pirate Ship render yesterday by saabfan. The water in it impressed me, and I had commented that I didn’t know how to model it in Blender. Scrubs informed that it was easy, providing me the how. Off I went to try for myself.
Although it’s been a month since my last LEGO® post, I haven’t been idle. With my current workflow, it only takes about 15 minutes to kick off a render, but I often don’t have the time to blog them. Correcting that with a few spare minutes, here are my last ten Blender renders.
I follow a number of LEGO sites through RSS feeds, looking for inspiration on what to render next. A long time back, I booked marked this article, Build the Big E Cow. It was small, had instructions, and was kind of cute. Something my wife would like. I booked marked the site, thinking someday I’d get back to it. I finally did.
Up until now, all my Mecabricks work has been from me importing models. Sure, I’d tweaked a few pieces here and there, as I noted in my last post. Yet, I was still designing them in LDD and exporting them to render in Blender. LEGO model 352 is my first attempt at building something only in Mecabricks.
I’m still messing around with Mecabricks. Originally modeled in LDD and rendered in POV-Ray, this is the Blender version. It’s shiny! I like the lighting, but would have preferred to put a nice sky like I did in the first version. Perhaps I should go hunt down some Blender tutorials and figure out how to do that. Maybe later. For now, the model looks great with its realistic bricks.
Since 1995, I’ve been rendering LEGO models using POV-Ray. For most of that time, I’ve used scripting to place and build those models. It’s been fun and I’ve learned a lot over the years, each model looking a bit better than the first. That said, I’m never quite happy and always looking for new ways to render my models and, below, are my recent attempts using Blender.
Trying to get back into my LEGO ray tracing yesterday, I begin looking for old instructions on the internet again. It’s been awhile since I’d done that. Like coming home after being gone awhile, I enjoyed browsing through the old and new scans that are out there. I remembered liking the old house sets and, when I landed on 353 Terrace House, I thought it would be nice to render it. Yet, something made me think I’d already done that.
LEGO’s May mini build was a Blue Jay. I thought he’d look better in a tree which I modeled in LDD. I rendered the scene with POV-Ray 3.7RC7.
I’m a little behind in sharing some of my recent LEGO renders. One is an updated model, and one is a new one. Let’t take a look.
LEGO released this set in 1975 in Europe, and in 1976 as 485 Fire Truck in the US. Having grown up with these old sets, I have a special place in my heart for these short-lived LEGO mini-figs. Although I enjoy the great designs of today, I miss how simple these models are.
Happy Thanksgiving! This is the November Mini Build from LEGO rendered with POV-Ray. I love the Mini Builds as they are quick to render and fun to build.
Blast from the past. This set is one of mine from 1980. I believe one of the last I received while still in Norway. This was rendered with POV-Ray 3.7R6.
Goofing around again with some simple LEGO fireworks. Still waiting on the larger render to finish. Fireworks was the LEGO Club Monthly Mini Model Build for November 2009. Flame part courtesy of LDRAW and LeoCAD. A simple, yet effective model. Rendered with POV-Ray 3.7RC6. MMMB016 Fireworks by Safe
Happy Easter! This is a great little set. The ducks are well designed and I love the little ugly duckling. I wonder if he'll become a swan? This is rendered with POV-Ray 3.7RC5.
I posted this a couple of days back on Flickr, but hadn’t made it around to posting here. Happy belated Valentine’s day to all!
Short and sweet. Monthly mini-build for Jan 2012 rendered with POV-ray. Interesting that these in-store promotions are now numbered. 40036 Cobra by SafePit, on Flickr
I actually started 21009 Farnsworth House before my last model, but made the mistake of rendering it on my older desktop. It took over a week to render due to the glass and higher anti-alias requirements. I should try this on my daughter’s iMAC to see if how fast it renders with a newer computer.
Ran across this model from a YouTube stop motion video and thought it’d be a fun build. You can see more pictures of the real model on BrickSet. I think my render came out well, even if I had to do a little color correction first.
It's a rainy Saturday afternoon which provides a perfect opportunity to render LEGO's monthly mini build with POV-Ray. Bird by SafePit, on Flickr