Lego model

[detbear]

Hey everyone,

 

I saw a while ago where some A:Mers had done some cool stuff with Lego people. Is there an AM version of a basic lego man available from anyone here on the

forum. I'm thinking of doing a basic experiment but the obj versions of imported Lego figures are a huge mess spline wise.

 

Thanks for any help,

William

[robcat2075]

This is a basic Lego man, right?

 

[John Bigboote]

A perfect scenario for the retopology tool!

[detbear]

Hey everyone,

 

I saw a while ago where some A:Mers had done some cool stuff with Lego people. Is there an AM version of a basic lego man available from anyone here on the

forum. I'm thinking of doing a basic experiment but the obj versions of imported Lego figures are a huge mess spline wise.

 

Thanks for any help,

William

 

 

Yes Robert....That is the exact figure type. The basic lego figure can be restamped/ colored to whatever.

[robcat2075]

I'm sure any of the usual suspects could knock that out quick.

 

Several parts would be good candidates for the AI wizard.

[Xtaz]

Hi detbear .....

 

I modeled one right now for you and our comunity.... enjoy it

 

DOWNLOAD IT HERE

 

modeling time 14 minutes...

and here is the time lapse of the process

[jimd]

Brilliant!

[Elm]

cool!!

[Vertexspline]

wow....thanks for posting that Xtaz-------awesome.

[NancyGormezano]

Whoa - loved it - very fun to see the timelapse! I would have cheated with using already constructed beveled primitives for some of the parts, and still wouldn't have been able to do it in less than 1 hour, I'm guessing.

 

Now waiting for someone to do the 14 minute (or less) rigging time lapse video (TSM2?) or better yet, the 2008 rig (30 minute? by Mark or ??).

[Rodney]

Marcos,

That timelapse... and your lego model... are awesome.

As always you rock!

 

An additional tip to make modeling via rotoscope even easier (at least on the eyes):

Once you've set your Rotoscope in place crank down the Transparency of the roto to 66% or so. Then make sure the roto is unpickable by changing the pick icon to unpick in the Project Workspace. In this way you can even set your Rotoscope to be on top of your splining and still see everything just as clearly. Having the Rotoscope on top and partially transparent allows you to model without the patches you are splining ever obscuring your blueprint. If it ever becomes too hard to see some finer detail, adjust the roto's transparency.

[robcat2075]

I added a few splines so he could bend his knees and torso and put in TSM2.

 

LegoWalkH.mov

 

I recommend using the arms and legs in FK only. There are no limits built into the rig to stop you from making a bad, un-lego-like pose.

 

This PRJ includes a version with just the geometry bones inserted and weighted and a version after TSMRigger has been run.

 

LegoManRigged03.prj

 

 

update:

 

this fixes the unattached midsection noted below and weights the hip area to behave as a flexible accordion joint. It also adds a bone and constraint so that the shoulder can be moved a bit and the arm ring closest to it will approximately slide over the side of the torso rather than dig into it:

 

LegoManRigged12.prj

[livewiresrus]

Very nice,will that work in older verions,the prj & mdl I mean.

[detbear]

Wow!!! Xtaz!! That's awesome. Great model. I just got back to my computer here and see the posts. Thanks everyone for responding. This is a really cool model to be able to play with. Thank you for posting. This gives the community a neat opportunity to experiment in 3D much like people are posting on the web with live action lego story films. Awesome.

 

Xtaz....Also..I just looked at your time lapse. Very cool modeling. It's interesting to see how you approached it. Spline modeling is so flexible.

 

Robert. Awesome man. You already rigged it up too. Very cool. That's a great test animation.

 

I've been considering doing a 3D spoof with the lego characters(JUST FOR FUN) and I've seen so many done in live action on you tube. There is so much room for creativity and story there. I'm a big fan of the lego games and often have ideas for spoofs for them.

 

Thanks a bunch everyone.

 

William

[detbear]

Robert,

 

The rig is really cool man. I just went in to test it.

 

I notice that the mid section seem to have disconnected. What bone did you have it parented to?

 

 

William

[robcat2075]

Robert,

 

The rig is really cool man. I just went in to test it.

 

I notice that the mid section seem to have disconnected. What bone did you have it parented to?

 

 

William

 

Whoops! Attach that to "spine"

[robcat2075]

Modified rig posted above in the same post as the first: This treats the hips as a continuous flexible structure.

 

[Vertexspline]

Smiles for - Xtaz and Robert thanks for sharing your stuff. Had a little learning experience making legoman march with a few friends for 10 secs ---Thanks.

XtazlegomanRobertsrig.mov

[kwhitaker]

That was fun, i really enjoyed the marching Lego's , you've made it look easy

[robcat2075]

Very nice,will that work in older verions,the prj & mdl I mean.

 

That should work in versions 13 or later

[Xtaz]

Here is my shot ( quick one ) using lego model .... I'm working on a larger shot

 

 

softwares:

-A:M v16

-Pfhoe 2.2 Pro

-Ipisoft

[mouseman]

Here is my shot ( quick one ) using lego model .... I'm working on a larger shot

 

 

softwares:

-A:M v16

-Pfhoe 2.2 Pro

-Ipisoft

 

The results are really good. You have to figure out how to fit in ZignTrack, as well!

[robcat2075]

He looks like he's there!

[Rodney]

Sweeeeet!

 

I can hardly wait to see your longer shot.

[thejobe]

wow that looks amazing. much better than the lego model i made back in V14

Mine is actually in the forums contributor Cue if you want to take a look at it.

[Xtaz]

taking advantage of this thread I modeled some lego pieces too, for our community...

 

 

 

Lego+Newton

 

and here you can see a time lapse of the modeling.

 

the ZIP file is attached

lego_pieces.zip

[largento]

Very nice! And very generous!

[detbear]

That's some really cool stuff. I have a question on shaders.

 

****To get an ultra realistic finished render, what is the best way to obtain that lego plastic look photo-realistically. Would one of the shader plugins be the best route. If so, which shader? How would that effect the render(adding/ using shaders I mean).

[robcat2075]

That's some really cool stuff. I have a question on shaders.

 

****To get an ultra realistic finished render, what is the best way to obtain that lego plastic look photo-realistically. Would one of the shader plugins be the best route. If so, which shader? How would that effect the render(adding/ using shaders I mean).

 

The "Glossy" specular shader will probably help.

[NancyGormezano]

That's some really cool stuff. I have a question on shaders.

 

****To get an ultra realistic finished render, what is the best way to obtain that lego plastic look photo-realistically. Would one of the shader plugins be the best route. If so, which shader? How would that effect the render(adding/ using shaders I mean).

 

You could try matcap for the ambiant shader. But then you need a "sphere" type image that looks like the lego plastic (I don't have one, so picked something close). Make sure the diffuse color for the group/model is black. This was done with diffuse color = black, spec color = white, 100% size, intensity, glossy shader, 95% sharp, Matcap ambiant shader with image, 100%

 

You can also give it some reflectivity, if the lego pieces have any (a low number) and fool with other specular shaders as well.

[MJL]

Thank you, Xtaz, very generous of you. I watched the time lapse and you make it look so easy, which it musts be when you have such an intuitive grasp of A:M like you so obviously do.

[detbear]

That's some really cool stuff. I have a question on shaders.

 

****To get an ultra realistic finished render, what is the best way to obtain that lego plastic look photo-realistically. Would one of the shader plugins be the best route. If so, which shader? How would that effect the render(adding/ using shaders I mean).

 

You could try matcap for the ambiant shader. But then you need a "sphere" type image that looks like the lego plastic (I don't have one, so picked something close). Make sure the diffuse color for the group/model is black. This was done with diffuse color = black, spec color = white, 100% size, intensity, glossy shader, 95% sharp, Matcap ambiant shader with image, 100%

 

You can also give it some reflectivity, if the lego pieces have any (a low number) and fool with other specular shaders as well.

 

Nancy/ Robert.... I was thinking of experimenting with the MatCap shader, but I can't find those MAT CAPS in Willi's original examples. I don't have Zbrush... Does anyone have the realistic plastic sphere image floating around. That pixologic folder doesn't have a Lego"isk" plastic Mat Cap Image. ALTHOUGH, Willi's original post had some promising Mat Caps that you needed Z-brush to access. I think.

[detbear]

Doesn't appear that stamped decals show up on top of the mat cap shader. Is that possible?

[robcat2075]

Matcap puts a new image over a model so I doubt it works with decals.

 

Here's a regular plastic look with conventional specularity highlights and the Glossy Shader with rack focus.

 

LegosSpecDOF000.mov

 

In a real DOF shot the specular highlights woudl expand to circles as the became out of focus, but in Multi-pass DOF they become muted. This is because in real world, spec highlights are brighter than full white but in CG they are merely white. It's likely that with EXR rendering that can capture values greater than white, a post processing DOF plugin for something like After Effects could obtain a more realistic DOF spec look.

 

But the all-in-A:M result is quite nice, none-the-less.

 

The "GlossyPlastic" material only sets specular properties, the colors of the pieces are set in the chor.

 

the specific specular settings will need to be varied depending on the objects and lighting.

 

LegoGlossy05_DOF_rack.prj

[detbear]

Robert,

 

Looks really cool. I see where you are using a material format with that too. Cool.

[robcat2075]

Robert,

 

Looks really cool. I'm schooling myself on shaders 101 because I'm having trouble getting them to render. It's my user error(ness). I need to find the simple..."How to apply a shader and get it to render" forum topic. Nomatter how much I use Hash, I still find myself a Noob just about every project.

 

To use any of those "plugin" shaders that are in the drop down lists at the bottom of the "Surface" Props you also need to have "Plugin Shaders" ON in the Render Options when you go to render. Otherwise they will be ingored. And ignored.

[robcat2075]

In the real plastic world it's possible that there is some subsurface scattering at work in their overall appearance, especially in the lighter colors.

 

Someone pursuing more photo-real results might look into that.

[NancyGormezano]

I don't have Zbrush... Does anyone have the realistic plastic sphere image floating around. That pixologic folder doesn't have a Lego"isk" plastic Mat Cap Image. ALTHOUGH, Willi's original post had some promising Mat Caps that you needed Z-brush to access. I think.

 

Google "sphere" - click on images - you will find a plethora of sphere images that you can modify in photoshop, and use in A:M. You can create your own sphere image in photoshop/other image editing apps. Best results are a sphere with black background. You don't need zbrush. There are probably other easier ways to create a nice "sphere" image to be used with Matcap. The trick will be finding the lighting that you like in the image to be used with Matcap in A:M.

 

heres an image I quickly grabbed and modified (from googling). Start with this and modify to taste. (Yes as Robcat said - you will have to turn on plug-in shaders in render options (camera). In this render, there are no specularity settings on lego man - all highlights, specularity comes from the matcap shader.

 

EDIT: and yes decals work funny with matcap - you could create additional splinage for decaled areas to "sit" on top of the plastic that could have different surface settings (sounds icky)

Edited January 4, 2012 by NancyGormezano

[itsjustme]

I'm guessing that a material isn't what you're looking for, but just in case it might be helpful, John Ashton-Keller posted some plastics materials in this thread...a direct link to them is here.

 

Hope that helps.

[agep]

Here is a legovideo I made some time ago. I used a simple material with reflection and a luminaire with superbright white exr decal and rendered with AO

 

The video includes the breakdown

 

[detbear]

Hey Everyone,

 

Nancy.....That Mat Cap looks really good. I'm thinking as I experiment that the Mat Cap process might be a bit tricky to use. Especially since there are numerous

colors involved and layering more geometry to house the decals. BUT look like you really got a great match on that yellow minifig. I'm going to continue to experiment with it.

 

ItsJustMe......I would love to check out those materials. Looks like the link no longer works. When I tried to download them, it gave me a page error.

 

Agep.......That is really awesome. Could you give any more details on the setting of those materials.

 

Robcat.....I got some promising results with using basic ambient color/ specular size/ specular intensity.....But it seems as though the lighting has to be just right to get the best results nomatter what the setting.

 

THANKS everyone

 

Still experimenting.

 

William

[itsjustme]

ItsJustMe......I would love to check out those materials. Looks like the link no longer works. When I tried to download them, it gave me a page error.

 

It's a good thing I still have them...here they are.

 

Hope that helps.

Plastics.zip

[MMZ_TimeLord]

Agep,

 

I love the splinemanship you show on those models in your video. VERY helpful for those of us that wish to model things like this.

 

Excellent lighting and color correction too!

[detbear]

Worked out some setups. Still have a long ways to go. I had to reduce these down from HD size. Sorry bout the blurrrry-ness.

 

[robcat2075]

those look cool!

[itsjustme]

Nice!

[detbear]

I'm using the Fake AO plugin which has a lightning fast render time with the simple lighting setup....so I'm happy with the potential of frame render speed.

 

ONE drawback on the Fake AO plugin is that it shows it's shadows too strong underneath glow. Originally I had glow added to the teleporter blue. I used normal AO and it looked really good, but the render times were long.

 

The Fake AO is much more practical speed wise and I can add a glow in post.

[Rodney]

bump

 

...because Warner's lego movie is making its rounds.