Quick question while I'm finishing an already-started test; how would I make the word Lego appear on every stud? I understand that JamesW did this, so It would be great to hear from him. Also, where do you find the image to map it onto the brick?

I got the parts installed after the third time! But does anybody (Lech, maybe?) know how to make these messages permanentally go away so that I never have to see them again?

Thanks.

Okay, sounds good for the parts I guess.

And because what if I want to mix animation and CGI? It would look really out of place if suddenly the floor had no more logos on the studs. Plus, if you've got something like a miniature model, since it's going to be viewed a lot more up close, again it would look way out of the ordinary if there were no Lego logos on the studs. But why would it open up a bunch of trademark worms? It's pretty much the same exact thing as using Lego piecies in a brickfilm. Plus JamesW did it, and he didn't get sued.

And sorry for all the questions on this topic, but how would you make LeoCad accept the unofficial piecies and export them also? I just can't find how, though I've looked and tried a lot of different things.

Last edited by BGanimations (May 16, 2010 (07:20pm))

Uh, I have the lastest version of LeoCad, but when I try to select more than about 5 or 10 parts to import, it says that there is an error reading the file.

I've actually tried bump mapping a few times before though, so I have an idea of how to do it in Blender. The thing that I don't know how to do is to smooth the edges of the studs.

Well, I was importing from the parts folder, so I'm not quite sure again what got messed up.

Ah, I wasn't aware that the bevel modifier could be used to do that. I'll give it a try and see how it goes.

I would say that would be a lot of redundant keyframes for a simple ball bounce.  Maybe it's your timing?  Have you considered using a physics simulator?  Even if you don't want to use it in your renderings, you can still use it for reference when you want to keyframe the max height of the ball at certain frames.  Splining with just the max height should be as accurate as with a physics simulator in an ideal setting (flat surface, no other objects that the ball interacts with).  Perhaps posting a rendering of what you've deemed as not smooth might help determine which approach is best.

Of course, if you do keyframe every frame, you should at least delete the redundant ones as you use the spline editor.

Well, do you actually want to animate it moving around and stuff? Even if you do, I think there's a really easy solution that you've missed. With your ball selected, go into the Object panel, then go to the Physics Buttons. Click SOFT BODY and deselect the Use Goal option. Then you can control the mass, gravity, friction, speed, and all the other really fun stuff.

Then, with your only plane (or whatever it's going to be bouncing on) selected, go the collision (on the left side of the panel) and click Collision. Then just leave all the settings at default, because if you change them you could get some pretty unexpected results. And yes, you can animate and the physics will still work fine. You will just have to use an empty thingy and parent the object to it so that it will still move around.

Honestly, I don't see why you'd want a LEGO earth. Even if it were made out of LEGO, at that distance, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Plus they just look clunky and probably aren't worth the time anyway.

BG, I think you've missed my whole reason for doing this test animation in the first place; I don't just want to animate a ball bouncing, I want to animate a ball bouncing as if it were alive. Anyway, even if soft bodies could do the job I need done, which I don't think they can, animating it myself should hopefully help get me started in full character animation.

Also, I feel like you're getting the impression that I hardly know my way around Blender; but I've had versions of it on my computer since about 2005, so I'm pretty familiar with it.

Last edited by Littlebrick (May 20, 2010 (10:28am))

Ah, sorry about that then. I knew your modeling skills are amazing, but I wasn't sure if you were aware of the soft bodies option or not. I wasn't really aware that you have been around Blender for so long also.

As to your solution of doing it frame by frame, I actually think that's a good idea. When I first started Blender, I did it frame by frame because I was comfortable with doing it the same way that I animate. Now I save time and don't do it every frame, but it still made it way easier for me.

Plus, I see that in your origional post, you said that you would post a render, but don't know where it saves to. The solution to that is easy at least, you the Scene buttons, and on the far left there is a panel called the Output panel. At the very top of the panel, click the small button that looks like a folder. Then just choose the location you want to save it to you, such as your desktop. (But if it isn't in a folder for the project itself, you might want to switch the file type to a Raw .avi, so that it's just one file).