*stops moping and starts to get ish done*

Coyote Creek, you have motivated me to get working again on my 3d blender brickfilm project.

Lets see what I can dig up to show you fine folks...

Edit:
Here we are...

Its from a possible upcoming film, entitled The Endeavour.  This sprawling space saga would be broken into 5 or 6 smaller episodes.  What you see here is from the trailer (yet to be released), where the main character is flying into a wall.  It is unfortunate that Cycles is currently lacking motion blur .

Link to picture

Last edited by Wingman_mn (July 11, 2012 (01:16pm))

Mind if I ask what is the problem you see with the mini-figs?  I'm always looking for a way to improve

I'm assuming you used the LDraw mini-figure here, and it's the LDraw figures I've got a problem with. The hands and head aren't proportionally correct, and the whole thing in general is a nightmare to work with if you want something smooth AND accurate working. Hairpieces are a big problem here, because it seems they're all hand-modeled.

I've been thinking about scanning my own LEGO pieces, but I find myself lacking a line laser (one of these). If someone does have a line laser and a good webcam, and would love to try some 3D scanning, here's a website you might want to take a look at. If someone were to get some high-quality scans and upload them for everyone to use, I would love them forever.

I'd think you'd be able to get enough detail from a scan that you could use as a base to model a cleaner, more proportionally correct piece.

There's a way to do the 3D scanning using a thin shadow instead of a laser which I might try tomorrow. It doesn't yield as good of a result as a laser would, but I'm mostly going for proportions anyway. If I can get those, the rest should be cake.

I think you might have to explain just how you do that...

I used 3DVIA Printscreen to capture 3D objects displayed on my screen (some people use it to capture models off computer games, In my case, LDD with all the parts I needed that wasn't in LDraw). It captures the scene and saves it into an 3DXML file.  I then had to use KoichiSenada 3dsMax converter and an old version of 3dsMax to import the 3DXML file.  The KoichiSenada is a plugin, fyi, and its functionality is limited based on which 3dsMax version you use (2009 64-bit worked for me).  The rest involved deleting elements I didn't need, like background, planes and whatnots.  I exported the remainder of the scene to 3ds and edited the mesh objects in Blender because I'm more comfortable using Blender.

I haven't tested it on the minifig torso, hands, etc.  I should at some point to see how they compare to LDraw's since I did have problems getting the 3D-screen-captured hair pieces to fit right with the head I already had, whose dimensions were derived from LDraw's.

Last edited by Lechnology (July 12, 2012 (02:28am))

cool! thanks for the info. but where do you get it?

Last edited by Coyote Creek Films (July 12, 2012 (08:06am))

A scene I'm working on for a short animation. Still got lots to model, such as stuff on the walls, stuff on the counter, and then to texture it all.

Made in Maya.

They've actually used 3D scanning for some of the LDraw parts, but for one reason or another haven't done it on the mini-figures. Once you get the scans, I'd be glad to work on getting them looking nice, because they're probably not going to look production quality right after you scan them. I'll only be able to do a few, though, since I'll be leaving in August and won't be back for two years.

On a side note, it seems you might need to use MeshLab to merge multiple scans of the same object. This should also be in DAVID, but it might only be the paid version.