Hej guys,
I got a request from the German LUG 1000steine.de that some members would like to have the switches 2890 and 2889 as LDraw parts. As I don't have the part and the part is to complex for a photo based worked, I hope that here is someone who wants to accept this challenge. Thanks

/Max

Hi Y'all,

I hit a bottleneck in my performance optimization work with BrickSmith: LDraw parts have no concept of "level of detail."

If I open Datsville, I'm staring at 125,000,000 vertices. They aren't all necessary when drawing the entire model in an 800 x 600 window, but there isn't any meta-data to help me drop some of them.

This is half of the level-of-detail problem: for very low-resolution rendering of huge models, the parts are too detailed, burning GPU power. The flip side of this is that close up, the studs look like prisms and not cylinders because of the low vertex count.

This got me thinking: if parts (or sub-parts) had a level-of-detail scheme (with multiple versions of the parts for different resolutions) we could have our cake and eat it: for wide views a stud could be a cube or some other super-crude, super-cheap structure. At high res we could crank the vertex count, eliminating the need for viewers to do ad-hoc sub-part substitution.

Here's the question I have: how could/should a renderer decide _which_ level of detail to draw? I can think of a few heuristics:

- The levels of detail are arbitrary; the client program picks one based on current performance and context. In other words, when you say "export PNG" the highest level is always used. During rendering, the program steps down LOD one notch any time the framerate drops below 10 fps and cranks it up one notch any time it exceeds 30 fps.

- Levels of detail are based on scale. In other words, each level of detail specifies a range of pixels that an LDU covers. If the rendering scale is such that an LDU is less than "X" pixels, we go to the next LOD.

- (If LODs are based on scale, then we have to ask whether the cut-over points should be arbitrary or specified in the spec or library standards. There's a big technical win for programs if there aren't a million different cut-over points.)

Are the LODs advisory or required in their cut-over points (for programs that understand LOD)? Thoughts?

My hope with LOD is that with a little bit of work on a very small number of sub-parts, we could make a big difference. For examlpe, just by creating an octagon low-LOD stud, we could cut 90,112 vertices from every 32x32 baseplate - there are only 3 sub-parts that would need modification in this case. I think the strong factoring of the part library could be a big win here.

Cheers
Ben

Hi,
I often faced the problem to get the locations of other LDraw related applications like LDView, MLCad or LDDP, just to name the most popular in the past.

It would be great if we could have one file that stores all these informations.

This information file, lets call it maybe "LDrawTools.xml" should be stored in the LDraw base folder. So if I got the information from the enviroment variable %LDRAWDIR% I also know where all the other apps are located by reading just this single file.

Any new application should add its own entry in this file once it is started the first time.

What do you think?

Suggestion for the structure of the "LDrawTools.xml":

I just released a new version of LETGUI.

Now also version 1.1 of Selector is supported.

Please leave your comments for this version in this thread. Thanks.

cu
mikeheide

LETGUI website

I just rediscovered LDCalc.





Now also this little tool has a place on my website.

Hi all,

Is the abrieviation SEOC the accepted one for "Someone Else's Own Creation"?
Or should it be SEC = Someone Else's Creation?
Thoughts?

Jaco

Since we had only 5 confirmed nominees, no election is necessary.

Therefore, the 2013/2014 LDraw.org Steering Committee [1] is:

Chris Dee
Michael Heidemann
Orion Pobursky
Max Martin Richter
Willy Tschager

[1] Try not to confuse the LDraw.org Steering Committee (SteerCo) with the LDraw Standards Committee (LSC). The Steering Committee sets the course for the LDraw Organization while the Standards Committee deals with the LDraw File Format.

Congratulations to the new and a huge thank you to the outgoing members!

Willy Tschager
On behalf of the LDraw.org Steering Committee

Hi all,

I'm trying to put together a Yoda Minifigure. I've found the parts for his head and the short legs, but I can't seem to find his torso. On Peeron, the piece I'm looking for is called "Minifig Torso with Pockets, Belt and ID" - (973px158). See this link

Anyone working on this part, or know where I can find it?

Cheers

Reuben
=====================================
Download 3D Lego models and other resources from:
http://www.pearse.co.uk/lego
=====================================

After creating the Hips And Legs with Scale Armor Pattern, it turned out that there are at least two versions of the hips & legs pattern with different colors.
While one difference (the brown belt) is easy to see, i have a problem with identifying the color of the very dark red colored hanging cloth:

On the same pattern, i'm not sure which color to choose for the dark armor scales. The brighter ones are "Metallic Silver" (code 80), and i took "Speckle Dark Bluish Gray" (code 76) for all the dark ones. Because the pattern of the Rohan Soldier uses the same colors, i want to be clear which colors i have to use:


I tried "Flat Silver" (code 179), but then the contrast between the scales seems to low.

Any suggestions?

Hey,

Here is the new stable LPC 1.4.7 release with improvements in usability and precision.

Please uninstall older versions of this software before installing a new version.

Change log:

New features:

• The recommended projection mode will be marked (with a black "x")
  
• A saved file now appears on the "recent used" list.
  
• The projector feature is improved.
  
• The size and position of main and satellite windows will be remembered.
  
• On export, the "subfile-deletion" question is not shown anymore.
  
• You can now convert projection data to template data by clicking on "File"->"Projection Data -> Template".
  
• Minor improvemets on the template editor.
  
  

• The "Unsaved Changes" warning appears unwanted after the first file load.
  
• The template editor does not delete templates.