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In brick films, there are often times when it would be impossible to build or animate some things. For example, it would be unreasonable to try to film a large-scale space battle by animating models of ships in stop-motion, then compositing in the background and stars in postproduction. While the technique discussed in my "digital manipulation" tutorial provides convincing results and may work for a small crowd, a crowd of hundreds of minifigures would obviously be more suited to CGI. In "Attack of the Drones," there were several scenes with a lego X-Wing. I did not own one, so instead of building one, I made a CGI model instead and composited it into the shots. CGI has numerous uses in brick films. Sets can be extended using computer generated imagery to make a minimal set appear to be a huge hangar bustling with ships. But modelling bricks from scratch would be an immense amount of work. Fortunately, this is not necessary. LDraw, a database of brick parts in a 3D format, has lead to several freeware programs that allow the user to build large LEGO models on the computer. Often, scenes are composed in a program such as MLCad or LeoCad, and then converted to a POV-Ray format for rendering. POV-Ray is a powerful rendering program that produces very realistic results. The downside to POV-Ray is that its animation capabilities are somewhat limited. Therefore, the method I use is to model objects in MLCad, then transfer them to a 3D animation program. The program I use is called Carrara Studio. It is made by Eovia (www.eovia.com) and is an excellent moderately priced program. Other, more expensive alternatives include 3D Studio Max, Maya 3D, and Lightwave 3D. There is also a powerful freeware 3D animation program called Blender, which can be found at http://www.blender3D.org . The point of this article is not to teach you how to use these applications. The following article is a guide to building models in MLCad and then transferring them to a animation application. First, you will need to download and install the LDraw All-In-One installer. The Windows version can be found here: www.ldraw.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=104 Simply download and follow the instructions given on the page. I would recommend the "basic" installation, as this is all that is needed for the purpose of building models and transferring them to another application. This will install MLCad, LDView, and the LDraw parts database. Next, you will need LeoCad. The file can be downloaded here: www.leocad.org/files/leocad-0.74-beta-windows.exe LeoCad is no longer updated and maintained, and as a result, using my method will not allow you to use some of the newer parts in your models. I have never really found much need for them, but it is possible to model them yourself within the 3D animation program if you are in need of them. Once you have installed LeoCad, you will be ready to continue. Of LeoCad and MLCad, MLCad is probably a better program for assembling models. Learning it is fairly simple, though the LDraw website contains a lot of information for learning to use it. Once you have a model in MLCad that you would like to transfer, go to file>save as> and save it to the appropriate folder. When you save it, use the file type .dat. If it does not allow you to save as a .dat file, this is likely because the it is multipart model. This is easily fixed, however. Simply go to multipart>Remove Model... and remove all submodels except for the main model. Once this is complete, save as a .dat file. Now load LeoCad, and open the .dat file you just saved. Go to File>Export>3D Studio. You could also use WaveFront, depending on what formats the software you are going to use supports. Now simply open your 3D application, and load the exported file! LeoCad automatically assigns textures to the bricks, though these can easily be change to suit your taste. I have found the default LeoCad textures to be a little dull, and not as shiny and reflective as real lego, but the choice is yours. A Note on Compositing Your shots may require compositing real stop-motion and CGI. In some cases, CGI can easily be layered over stop-motion footage, by setting the video as a backdrop. At other times, you may wish to composite your shots using compositing software, such as Axogon Composer, for which I have written a tutorial which can also be found on this site. Original Artwork and Media copyright © 2008. LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of companies which does not sponsor, authorise or endorse this site in any way. This site is in no way affiliated with Tolkien Enterprises or the Tolkien Estate. |
