Getting Started with LDraw, L3P, LP3Add On

[Jonathan Smith]

Hello all,
I'm new to the forums and digital lego drawing and have a question regarding the ray tracing side of things.

I've installed the latest all in one installer from ldraw.org. I then downloaded l3p and l3pAdd-on. Upon running LP3Add-On GUI, it asks for the path for LEdit.exe. I'm trying to follow the ldraw.org tutorial, but I can't seem to find where this file goes. Is this the older dos program, of which doesn't get installed in the modern Windows installer? Is there a work around for this?

I tried to open the irunin.dat file to see if I could trick it, but it looks like it's not completely text.

MLCad, LEODraw, etc. all run fine - I'm running Windows 7 64 bit.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[Orion Pobursky]

Hi,

Instead of L3P, I recommend that you download and install LDView. LDView has an export function that will output a much better POV-Ray file than L3P. Please post here if you have any questions on how to set this up.

[Jonathan Smith]

Thanks! I was able to get this to work. Is the current practice to still use the LGEO libraries with LDView when generating the .pov? There were some include files that required me to add a library path in the povray.ini file:

Library_Path="C:\Program Files (x86)\LDraw\LGEO\lg";"C:\Program Files (x86)\LDraw\LGEO\ar";

Thanks.

[Damien Roux]

To use the LGEO library will give you nicer render as the parts have been redesign to be more pov compliant.
There is also the ar library which can be useful for some parts, but personally I don't like how those parts have been modeled.

Problem is than LGEO development is currently on hold (if not dead) so there are a lot of parts not handled by it. Then if you want to dig into it you can still have the ability to create you own LGEO parts and add them.

I you care about high quality renders I would advise.to use LGEO, if not keep with the standard Ldraw files which will still give good results in povray anyway.

[Willy Tschager]

There were some include files that required me to add a library path in the povray.ini file:

Library_Path="C:\Program Files (x86)\LDraw\LGEO\lg";"C:\Program Files (x86)\LDraw\LGEO\ar";

The All-In-On-Installer should have set these paths for you - taking for granted that POVRay was already on your disc or that you have installed it through the AIOI. If this isn't the case something isn't working properly in the AIOI and I have to check it. Though this would be the first time that I hear of such a problem.

w.

[Jonathan Smith]

Thanks for the information.

The library path might have been my doing. There was an updated POV-Ray 3.62 64 bit that I installed after the all in one installer. I wanted to see if I could get better performance from it over the 32 bit version.

[Steffen]

as I'm also running POVRay on Win7 64bit,
maybe you can share some of the 32bit vs. 64bit experiences here