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In 2016 I emailed the company that was in charge of the 3D animated intros and cutscenes for the LEGO games of the late 90's and early 00's. The one who answered was Stuart Green and he told me about the LEGO Racers intro which I was interested in knowing about how it was made as I plan to remake the intro in HD myself one day. Our back and fourth was quite brief but he definitely had some interesting things to say about their work back then. Q1: Do you still have the original files for the animation? could the intro be simply re-rendered on a modern 3D animation program at a higher resolution? A1: Unfortunately we don't have the final sequence saved. it was rendered in Lightwave from our 3D models so it could have easily be rendered in HD quality. We made the models usable for the Lego Adventurers comic, we also did Lego comic strips for three years, so they were high enough detail and hi-res textures for print. Q2: Do you know anything about the 25fps higher quality yet shortened version of the intro used for the LEGOLAND Windsor Rocket Racers attraction? I understand the ride is now closed but did you also provide the higher quality clips for this? A2: I cant remember a specific version for the park, but if one was done it would have been us, we were their preferred developer, they shut down their own CGI studio and used us exclusively for this work, we did TV adverts, motion simulation rides, ingame animations, books, comic novels - everything! Q3: What program did you use to make the cars originally? did you make the cars out of real bricks and then model them from scratch? A3: All the models were made from real Lego bricks, then modeled and animated in Lightwave, and the textures made in photoshop. We had all the computers linked together as a render farm, we designed and composed during the day and sequences were rendered over the night and weekends, to either pleasure or frustration when we came to viewing. Q4: Interesting you mention a render farm, the animations are very good quality so I suppose a render farm was best for such projects? A4: Yes the render farm was needed, I think our machines were only about 300MHz at this time and everything was single processor, although we did have 4 machines that held 2 processors on the motherboard, (very unusual) we had 40 machines, the majority used by programmers so not usable by day, but left in render farm mode, at night. Q5: What types of computers were used at the time? A5: Our machines were constantly being upgraded to new hardware, so there was no uniform specification, they were around 309MHz at this time, I think the dual processors were 266MHz, so a 4GHz machine is about 32 times faster, and as quad core that's like 128 times faster, more than our whole render farm on one modern PC! Q6: Three Beta designs for the cars are seen in the intro in a few scenes which then switch back to the final models, was this because the intro was being made at the same time as the game was being developed? A6: Yes, we had to start and finish the animation sequences before the game was complete.

I turned the incomplete Spaceman from inside LSW's game files into an actual playable character. This was accomplished by taking animation files from other characters and placing them into the Spaceman's folder. It took me quite a while to find the perfect character to copy files from because many of the animations files from others were incompatible with the Spaceman's bone structure I assume and resulted in the character looking quite funny to say the least. Although the Spaceman plays well, it is noticeably missing an eye and a helmet. Images:

Track editor When the BMP format was finally cracked, I wanted to make a new GDB viewer that showed textures, and using WillKirkby's LibLR1 that wasn't too hard. But why not an editor? So here is my track editor! Current features: - View GDB files (3D objects), with textures. - View and edit SKB files (Skyboxes). - View and edit PWB files (Powerups). - View RRB files (AI paths). - View the static object part of WDB files. Planned: - Edit RRB files (AI paths) - (partially) View and edit WDB files (Static/animated objects). - View and edit startup positions and checkpoints Known bugs: - Dragging bricks acts weird from certain angles - Semi-transparent textures only work in native LR bitmaps, and are not yet depth-sorted. NOTE: You need to have XNA Framework 4.0 installed, otherwise the application will crash. Download: http://www.rockraidersunited.com/files/lego-racers-1/tools/track-editor-12-r59/ Current version: v1.2.0.365 New in this version: (full changelog included in download) Let me know what you think! Massive thanks to WillKirkby, for making LibLR1 and the original GDB_viewer and to Sluicer for helping with both GDB and BMP file formats.

" If you think it's a new BOY BAND launching that disc... " Ah, yes, TECHNIC boy band figures with throwing discs. My first guess.

It's been a while, huh? I got a couple more of those Donald Duck magazines with lego booklets in the center. Nothing quite so exciting as a UFO ad calling them Zotaxians, but here's photos of what I got. I translated the big Time Cruisers story and the Slizers ad. Enjoy! Time Cruisers Slizer Or if you prefer, just the important things: French names for Time Cruisers cast Professor Cyber Tim Timebuster (asdf) Kikol the monkey Gloup the robot Mention of a "Captain Fortune," no clues as to whether they correspond to an actual fig slizer boy band