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[Sean Mirrsen]

Well, now that this is again Various Nonsense, let's do something various! Some of you may know of the LEGO Digital Designer, some may not, some may know and not give a damn, but in any case it's a rather useful, if somewhat awkward and incomplete, app for building stuff out of the, uh, "things that the LEGO company makes".

I didn't feel like making a dwarf though, but I suspect someone may try. In the meantime, look at this thing!

Spoiler: Warning, large picture: (click to show/hide)

It's also fully articulated:

Spoiler: Warning, another large picture: (click to show/hide)

The page of the LDD is right over there. It's freeware, if I understand right.

Come on, show your wicked creations!!

[Psyco Jelly]

Now order the pieces to build a real one.

[qwertyuiopas]

Can it simulate advanced mechanics?
Such as the effect of turning a shaft?

[Aqizzar]

Can it simulate advanced mechanics?
Such as the effect of turning a shaft?

No, it's all static, though you can rotate joints and such to see how they'll turn.  There's not a whole lot of mechanical parts anyway - the piece selection is surprisingly limited.  It also cannot differentiate linked groups of pieces, so if you want to make something with say a detaching roof, you have to use some tricks to design it.

Still a very cool toy for those of use deprived of our old lego reserves.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Run it with internet access available, and it'll update itself. Then, when designing, push the round button with the arrow to turn filters off, that'll make you able to use the whole selection of parts without being confined to just Factory, Creator, or that third robot thing (mindworks?). Some parts from the older sets are missing (I miss them 4x8 biplane-style wings), but there's really a lot to choose from. Animation, if I understood right, currently only works for the traincar, if it is on tracks. It has a physics system for that, btw, though it's a basic relative of Havok's, and not very precise. For something to become a part of the physics, it has to be connected to the car, just having it bump into it does not work. A good way would be fixing a workspace to 4 cars confined to 4 bits of railing, then you'll be able to do basic mechanic stuff, but the motors don't work, and you can't interact with it.

It HAS to have some sort of "part" system though, because there's a panel for that in the guide creator, but how to use it is completely beyond me. Just rotating individual parts on that mech is tedious enough (it has that weird tendency to rotate the whole thing around the part you're trying to rotate).

[qwertyuiopas]

Bah.

Lego makes a great looking program, and it turns out crappy in the important aspects.

Go look up any of the old versions of blockland(RTB 1.045 for example) and you can write your own physics engine, make it sav the changes, then animate it back, all while viewing the whole thing online from a first person view.(It uses a scripting language to control the whole game, so it wouldn't be very fast or smooth to animate them real-time...)

Or better yet, go make your own program to do all of that with a much better speed.

[Boogerman]

Or, best yet, find your old lego supply.
I have a whole (small) room full ^^

[Aqizzar]

Or better yet, go make your own program to do all of that with a much better speed.

Yes, that's such an obvious and practical answer for those of us who don't know a pointer from a whole in the ground.


My stuffs.  I stopped playing around with LDD some time ago, but it looks like they've added some new pieces and rendered my old models invalid.  I entertained actually ordering some boxes with this, but meh.

An APC thingy-

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The front and back wheels can pivot, the turret rotates and has a hatch to get a figure in and out, the roof lifts off to get to the driver and space for four-ish figures inside, and that junk on the side is a double door for realism.

WIP mecha-

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I tend toward a more compact and simpler design.  I know some people can build incredible life-like posing systems, but I'm too blunt and lazy.  Nonetheless, the legs pivot at the hip, and rotate at the knee and ankle so it can mimic articulation pretty well.  The shoulders rotate and pivot as well, but I could decide on a good elbow design before I lost interest.