I decided I’d like to brush up on my 3D modeling skills so I found a fun project for that: recreating a Lego Set. This is actually a rip-off of Lego, called “Enlighten,” but all the pieces that came with the set are real Lego pieces – nothing proprietary. I chose this set because I had it lying around in my closet. The sets title is “Pig Boat Series.”

I started by picking out all the unique bricks in the set and setting them aside. Then, one-by-one I used a digital caliper to measure and accurately 3D-model 1:1 scale bricks in Blender. After I modeled one of each unique brick in the set, I could just duplicate as needed to build the model. I followed the instructions that were provided with the set inside of blender, until I had the final scene. It was very rewarding to see that I had made the bricks with such high tolerance that they “fit” together without adjustment when it came time to build. Only two bricks needed very minor tweaking.

This was my first project using the new rendering engine in Blender, called “Cycles.” I learned a lot about the node-editor (Finally!!!) and making materials for Cycles in this project. This was also the first time I used the compositor nodes – I separated the foreground and background, and added additional blur to the depth-of-field. Overall I’m extremely satisfied with this modeling project.

I just purchased a new graphics card so I can now render with Cyles with GPU acceleration. To celebrate, I will be doing an underwater scene with this set! Stay tuned!

February 24, 2014 at 8:35 pm | 3D Modeling