Digital A Taste of What is to Come...

[Jimbob]

UPDATE: The final download pack can be found >here.

 

Click on the image for a full 1080p version.

 

Thanks to le717 for his technical support with both modding LDD and using POV-Ray, and credit for the decals goes to LuxorV from Eurobricks.

 

I'd really like a suitable cave background to place behind this, something akin to the game's loading screen if possible, but definitely 1080p - can anyone suggest such an image?

[The Ace Railgun]

That looks awesome! I agree it would look better with a cave in the background though. It's a great start though and I love that refraction effect with the energy crystal.

[le717]

Ooooh! I can't wait until you get the cave!

[lol username]

The faces appear somewhat squished, but otherwise it's looking fairly good so far. Well, the LDD minifigure model has awkward hands, but I doubt you can really do anything about that with these tools.

[le717]

The faces appear somewhat squished, but otherwise it's looking fairly good so far. Well, the LDD minifigure model has awkward hands, but I doubt you can really do anything about that with these tools.

 

Not unless you enable to brick includes, which are higher quality models that overlay the LDD bricks. However, the quality of those are at the mercy of the converter's dev. They are saved in some .bin format, and while he mentioned open-sourcing the include format, I don't think he ever did. And judging from one of my last renders about 6 months ago before the laptop crashed, the includes... were pretty rough.

[Lair]

It is beautiful but yeah the faces bug me

[lol username]

Oh, and Jet's visor seems slightly off-kilter. Also, are the colors of Axel and Jet's visors correct? They appear slightly darker than they should be, but maybe that's just because of the darker colors behind them or something.

[Lair]

The Energy Crystal is also darker than it should be. They look green, they need to be yellow-green, and the crystal might want a little glow if that's possible.

[Jimbob]

As the original square images that are used for decals squish the faces somewhat, I tried to manipulate the decals so that they came out neatly, I thought I'd nailed it by I guess there's room for improvement. With regards to the visors, they are the correct green in LDD, for some reason it has changed during conversion - perhaps because I let it use custom colours rather than LDD ones. And dang, I just realised Chief's left hand is the wrong colour. This thing took me a dozen hours to render, I really don't want to have to render it again...

 

Anyway, there's more on the way!

 

Also, I've had a look around for caves, but I just can't find one that fits. I might try creating one from the game textures, but it won't look as nice.

[Lair]

And dang, I just realised Chief's left hand is the wrong colour.

Not according to his in-game model. 

[Jimbob]

And dang, I just realised Chief's left hand is the wrong colour.

Not according to his in-game model. 

 

Ah, well that's a relief. In which case I'll continue to render my other images for now, and if I feel it necessary later I'll go back and re-render this, along with getting its colours right.

[Lair]

I more meant by that that yes, you got it wrong, but you shouldn't feel too bad because the people who made Chief's model for the game where he presents mission briefings got it wrong too, and gave him a flesh hand at the end of his robot arm for whatever reason. And that was even sillier, since you just forgot to paint in a hand while they modeled it all from nothing.

[Jimbob]

Please... Don't think that what you see below represents my ability, or that it's in any way a final image. I just thought I'd have a go at creating a cave for myself, as after a decent amount of searching around I can't find a cave that fits Rock Raiders.

 

 

As you can see it doesn't work. So, I ask again, if anyone knows of any suitable cave images, I would be really delighted to have them. That, or if you think you can create one yourself (on the computer, obviously), please let me know.

 

About the hand and visors, I'm going to re-render those parts only and layer them on top, so that should fix it. Also, I've nearly finished rendering everything. I'll either post 'what is to come' in the cursors topic I made a while back, and change it, or create a new one for everything.

[Ben24x7]

What minifigure design do you use (where do you transfer your models from LDD before putting them into POV-Ray). Is it able to export into icd folders?

[Jimbob]

What minifigure design do you use (where do you transfer your models from LDD before putting them into POV-Ray). Is it able to export into icd folders?

 

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, if you're asking how I convert the LDD models into the correct format to use with POV-Ray, I use the LDD to POV-Ray Converter. Although I only found out about it through Alcom's models

[Ben24x7]

Sorry... forgive me for my mistranslation. Is there a LDD to Blender converter? I don't want the LDraw to Blender thing because it dosn't work for bricksmith, mac, and it dosn't work for Blender 2.64 alpha.

[le717]

Sorry... forgive me for my mistranslation. Is there a LDD to Blender converter? I don't want the LDraw to Blender thing because it dosn't work for bricksmith, mac, and it dosn't work for Blender 2.64 alpha.

 

I would assume you are referring to the Blender script I maintain, correct? Yea... complete Bricksmith support is a while off. I don't know the Blender API too well, and it is somewhat hard to work on this script, considering it was originally an Blender 2.5 script and the creator left few comments. Blender 2.64? Blender 2.67 is about to be released. You need a new version. I haven't tested 2.67, since I do not test Betas/RCs, but I will once it is released.

 

LDD to Blender converter though... yea... All we have is an LDD2OBJ converter, but all texture spaces (AKA decals) cannot be imported, so a minifig head is mostly empty. So, unless you want to use non-textured bricks (and even then, you had better use those bricks for yourself only, as it is a legal gray area (most likely illegal) to redistribute those), the answer is no.

 

Sadly, the creator of the LDD to POV-Ray tool gave it a confusing and semi-misleading name by adding "Converter" to the end.

[Ben24x7]

First off... thanks for noting to me that Blender 2.67 is coming out, cannot wait!

 

But I hate sending my models from LDD to Bricksmith (for correcting) to LeoCAD (I need to switch to my windows to do this(I use LeoCAD for exporting)) which the exported file is saved onto my Mac (I then have to switch back) and then it is imported into Blender. I just don't like the fact that each brick's model is all bunched up into the base of the model and it takes time to sort out and also Bricksmith needs more stuff. If they had a RR or PM helment that would be fine by me because then I wouldn't be complaining about this right now.

 

But I cannot simplify the above so please do read it as it is.

[Jimbob]

^ Please can this discussion be kept off this topic? It's rather unrelated.

 

I've decided to not use cave backgrounds, and instead keep the plain white background. It actually looks really nice. Also, I've had some more rendering ideas so am processing them now (I've been performing renders every day since I posted this topic). There's just one pretty major render I've been staving off, for fear of how long it will take...

[Ben24x7]

*Sigh* All I asked was how to do a certain thing and I expected the answer from JimbobJeffers. Then everyone started jumping in to solve my problem. Forget that this discussion ever happened as I will start a new topic somewhere in which people (anyone) can answer.

 

I created this using someones model (anyone was free to download it anyway) and used the textures from LoxorV from Eurobricks to create this:

 

 

Right, JimbobJeffers, you may put this topic back on track.

[Fush]

I think that it may be possible to make a decent-looking background using the in-game textures... the problem with the one you showed was that it was too... horizontal. there was a back wall, but no side walls- you should try it the other way around. Make it look like they're going through a tunnel- show wall on the edges but have the background obscured in shadow, if that makes sense. Try it.

Or... maybe not. That might be dumb. A realistic cave BG would be best, but I'm not seeing that be a possibility.

HmmmmMMMMMmmmmm.....

Just don't give up on the BG yet. I'm sure you can figure something out...

[Jimbob]

I think that it may be possible to make a decent-looking background using the in-game textures... the problem with the one you showed was that it was too... horizontal. there was a back wall, but no side walls- you should try it the other way around. Make it look like they're going through a tunnel- show wall on the edges but have the background obscured in shadow, if that makes sense. Try it.

Or... maybe not. That might be dumb. A realistic cave BG would be best, but I'm not seeing that be a possibility.

HmmmmMMMMMmmmmm.....

Just don't give up on the BG yet. I'm sure you can figure something out...

 

Well, I actually think I'm happy without a background for now. Unless I can find THE perfect cave (like in the loading screen and main menu of the game), the white backgrounds actually look pretty good. Check out this second preview, for instance:

 

 

I may as well say what I'm planning in full, I'm too excited about it to keep it hidden now

 

Basically I've got about 14 renders to perform, and most have already been completed. These will all be used as backgrounds, but also certain sections will be cut into avatar images too. The idea I had was to create a forum kit of sorts, or a download pack, containing many different backgrounds and avatars all based on Rock Raiders. Additionally, using the more suitable images, I will create banners for signatures and headers. I already have the renders I've performed in use as changing backgrounds on my Windows 7, and they're beautiful! Especially as they're 1080p.

 

After this first step was complete, I figured I'd make a PS3 theme from them, as I've done a custom theme before. Various objects can be used too, such as a wrench for the settings icon. I wasn't as sure about this one though as I don't know what kind of demand there'd be on this forum for it.

[Brickulator]

These renders looks so good. And I'd love to see a RR PS3 theme of this quality!

One question though, how do you get the custom decals to work when converting to pov? I have them working in LLD but when I try to convert I get an error because I'm using a modified db folder instead of the lif file.

[Jimbob]

These renders looks so good. And I'd love to see a RR PS3 theme of this quality!

One question though, how do you get the custom decals to work when converting to pov? I have them working in LLD but when I try to convert I get an error because I'm using a modified db folder instead of the lif file.

 

Ah, le717 helped me with that one.

 

In your LDD model, make sure all the decals you want to use are substituted with decals in the standard database. It may help to take a screenshot as well. Also, ensure that the .db file is in the correct directory, as POV needs to find that. Then, on the POV-LDD Converter, once you have loaded your .LXF file, click on the 'Decorations' tab and tick 'Use Custom Decorations'. A list of all the decorations in the LXF file will load, and you can click the '...' buttons next to each one to assign them to the correct modified textures.

 

Ta-da!

[Jimbob]

Alright, I'm so close to having this pack finished. There are just two renders to update - the one featured in the first post, and Jet's Hover Scout which had its colours rendered awfully, due to a mistake in the settings selected. Additionally, I have on more render to perform using Arthuriel's method involving LeoCAD/MClad and LDView.

 

After these are done I will have 14 backgrounds and many more Avatars (mainly taken from the backgrounds), and will probably post them all in a new topic (if this is okay) for a fresh start.

 

Finally, I am also a fair way through making the PS3 theme - I doubt I will have it finished at the same time as the forum kit, but I can post an unfinished version alongside them if it's desired. So far I have custom sounds from the game (e.g. selecting an item uses the selection sound from the PC game), and a fair amount of icons too, all relevant to Rock Raiders, and generally using small LDD renders alongside the occasional PC game asset.