Ronald Vallenduuk (Duq) has recently added a couple of sets of instructions to Flickr and kindly showed me how to get LPub working again. I actually reverse engineered the seat gondola many years back after seeing a picture of it and coveting it so it’s great to see Ronald making it available to all and sundry.

I used to make more instructions but had to stop for a while due to a problem I had with LPub. With Ronald’s fix I’m back and running so did some instructions for my latest.

And to continue with some trains this one from Peter Normal (swoofty) has a fabulous brick-built eagle logo for the US bicentennial.

Brickshelf user Bambi not only makes some of the nicest steam and old-fashioned town models around, he (I assume) also takes excellent photographs. What’s more for this BR01-10 he has included photos and renders of the crucial bits to allow us to see how it all works. It works brilliantly in my opinion.

Of special note is the novel approach to the drivers and use of PFS lights.

The first screenshots of LEGO Universe have just been released and Jim Foulds has asked us to share them with the world. In his words

The first screenshots for LEGO Universe make their world premiere this week. These images show off the diversity the players will encounter in the game. It’s scheduled to launch in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, UK, and North America in 2010.

Safety is a huge priority for LEGO Universe. Many solutions are being explored through technology, processes, and people to provide the most creative and safe environment possible.

Of course since it is a LEGO product, one can expect a creative and building focus to give players the opportunity to do a variety of activities that allow for them to interact with the LEGO elements in a virtual reality. Building with LEGO elements in LEGO Universe will take many forms, ultimately allowing players to bring their real-life creations to life inside the game.

LEGO Universe will feature a subscription model. Lot’s of research and evaluation of various models went into this decision and we feel it provides the best method to provide a trusted online experience for the player.

We’re sure you wondering about beta and the “VIP launch”. We still plan on doing both, but we are not ready to announce dates or how to sign-up just yet.

Please keep an eye out on future updates and if you absolutely have to have the latest information make sure to visit www.legouniverse.com.

I also really like this Space Shuttle launch scene that incorporates a shuttle designed by Matt Holland.

Very few people render castle models and even fewer do it well. Aellaron is a rare and exciting exception. He even manages to put good minifig life in his scenes which is, from my experience, quite difficult.

Today we feature a guest editorial by Matt Wagner on virtual building. As some of you may have noticed I share a lot of these thoughts with Matt and find the prejudice against LDraw to be quite thoughtfree.

Anyway, I’ll pass you over to Matt.

Thanks to Andrew and Tim for the chance to share some of what I know about LDraw. First off, I want to make it clear that by no means do I represent the entire LDraw community; I’m only one of many virtual LEGO builders out there.

What I’d like to share is this:

Five things you might not know about LDraw:

1. LDraw is free. Anyone can download and use LDraw (and MLCAD and all of the associated programs), and the most often-used rendering program (called POV-Ray) used to create the 3D images is also free. Get started at http://www.ldraw.org/Article126.html
2. LDraw’s parts library is both unlimited and limited. Anyone who’s used the program knows that the extensive part library allows you to click and drag into your virtual model to your heart’s content. But since LDraw is not officially licensed by LEGO, all those parts files are created by everyday users out of polygons and groups of polygons called primitives. And since nobody’s getting paid for their work, the creation of parts is slow and up to the community. LDraw.org takes these parts and releases official parts updates periodically after ensuring that each part meets their quality requirements; however, no official parts updates have been released in over 5 years. Parts that are created in the meantime get placed in the “unofficial” parts library on the LDraw website, but have varying degrees of quality and mistakes until they are approved as official, and some parts that you might hope to find simply haven’t been created in LDraw yet. For example, the minifig heads with facial expressions other than the benign-looking smile, as well as all of the new male and female hairpieces, all pieces that have been available for years now in real life LEGO pieces, are still unavailable in LDraw.
3. LDraw has its own unique challenges. It is true that gravity and tension are not something you need to worry about in LDraw: as the program is basically placing bricks in a 3D space, it is possible to place a 2×4 brick going right through another 2×4 brick, something virtual builders call “impossible building.” This may be why some people consider LDraw to be less of a challenge than building with actual LEGO pieces. But building pieces at an angle, something that may require only the positioning of a hinge piece or the click of a bracket in real life, is much more difficult in LDraw. Anything built using SNOT is harder than in real life. Large models become very cumbersome in LDraw. Doing these things is possible, but they require complicated extra steps involving multi-part files and careful aligning of connections and angles.
4. Publishing LDraw models can also be a challenge, something that can become more complicated than photographing with a lightbox. LDView is a great program that creates a clean-looking image of your virtual moc in seconds. But for those who want to approach the realism seen in some of the virtual modelers who’ve been featured on Brothers-Brick before, you need to learn how to use POV-Ray: a free ray-tracing program. POV-Ray allows you to place light sources, floors, skies, backgrounds, and other tools to enhance your model’s presentation. POV-Ray also has a feature called radiosity which is something that adds a lot of light and realism to a render, but also stretches out render times to several hours or even days. There are a few tutorials out there on how to use some of these advanced features with POV-Ray; Brichkhelf user Koyan’s tutorial is one that I have used.
5. Virtual LEGO and real-life LEGO can complement each other. Say you’re wanting to build a new model, but you don’t have all of the pieces you need. You want to make sure you can fit everything together the way you’re imagining. You can build it in LDraw first to best visualize your model. Then you know exactly which parts you need to order on Bricklink. Or here’s another scenario: you’ve just built an amazing model out of pieces that you have, but another contest comes along that requires the use of pieces that are tied up in that last creation. You hate to have buy new pieces this time, so what do you do? Build it in LDraw and save a virtual version of your model, so that you can archive it forever and free up those precious bricks. Thanks.

I hope I’ve helped broaden your views on LDraw and virtual LEGO in general, and hopefully I’ve dispelled some of the misconceptions that cause virtual entries to be prohibited from competing in LEGO contests.

Andreas Weissenburg (grubaluk) is a mixed virtual and real life builder who is both one of my favourite renderers and one of my favourite designers. He doesn’t fail in either regard with this beautiful rendition of a working BR 78 DRG tank engine. Not only is it an absolutely excellent render but the model itself stands amongst the best. The use of the top hat is particularly clever.

I also highly recommend going on a good perusal of Andreas’ Brickshelf account.

Amusing subject matter aside, Matt’s design for the pipe organ is excellent.

As part of my Wild West Train project I’ve been trying to vary the presentation as well as produce useful instructions for each stage. The final stage let me try a new experiment: packaging the ‘train set’ in its own satin lined wooden box. Fabric is kind of difficult to render without special tools so I decided to go for satin as the easiest.

And of course there are instructions for each part of the train: loco, passenger wagon, lumber wagon, boxcar and caboose.