OS X Code (r,s)

Posted on Thursday 25 August 2005 - Popularity: 4%

Since 1949 kids can enjoy Lego, those colorful plastic bricks everyone loves, but what about us Mac users that like to create things virtually? Is there a way for us to easily construct and render Lego scenes? Yes, there is and today I’ll show you the tools you need.

First thing you need is an application to construct your virtual Lego scenes. The application comes by the name Bricksmith. Bricksmith uses the LDraw library, an extensive collection of Lego building blocks to construct your Lego visions. Here’s a screenshot of the app. The app is really easy to use, you actually don’t have to be a 3D pro to handle it.

After you’ve constructed your Lego scene, you need the command line tool L3P (there’s an additional frontend for it if you don’t like to work with the terminal) to convert your LDraw scenes into the POV-Ray raytracer format. POV-Ray is an amazing raytracer you can use to render your final image. As with all the other applications I’ve linked above, POV-Ray is completly free and gives you great results without much previous knowledge, but if you really want to get the best out of it, read the documentations first.

Ok, that’s everything you need. Now you’re completely ready to finally visualize all your Lego fantasies, in case you actually have any.

Fredi

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