Suddenly addicted to rendering Legos

Apparently I can't get enough of this.

And apparently from now on, my blog posts will always be at 2 in the morning.




Here's a little bit of the process I finally got to work:

Step 1: In LeoCad, I build the model I want to render. In this instance, I based my model very closely on Horcik's Space Sweeper, as I wanted to focus on rendering rather than designing.

I only build one side of symmetrical portions, and I don't get too caught up in how the interior of the model fits together, as long as the superficial layers look like they work.

Step 2: I export a wavefront OBJ of the model and import into maya. I then spend a few hours duplicating all symmetrical parts to the other side, fixing normals (because CAD), and reassigning materials for Vray.

During the process, I will grab pieces at random and 'loosen' them to create a more handmade look.


Because of CAD, the topology of pieces is all over the place, which makes for very fake looking renders. The lighting can be used to work around this, but I find that after a couple preliminary renders, I can figure out which pieces break the illusion and fix/replace them, so that I don't have to model EVERY piece from scratch in Maya.

I will also bevel the key edges of the pieces that I feel look too perfectly sharp. I don't do it to every piece for time purposes.

Step 3: My favorite part -- bringing it all together in Photoshop. Here I can add a simple Tilt-shift to create the illusion of Depth of Field, alter the exposure, add glowy bits, and finally do a final curves adjustment to get a nice color in the shadows and highlights.

Then, voila!