For sure. Especially for non close up shot, the current brick geometry and materials are more than enough if you compare with pictures on flickr. Development time to add this extra look is a big effort as I discover!

Hehe, Yes I guess that for product commercials, you don't want realism but perfection.

I just did some experimentation with a new blender addon that uses depth maps from the Mars rovers. Using the addon really messes with some scale things and other settings in blender, which also affected my ability to get rid of the noise. Anyway, the cool thing is that this image's surface is an actual map of Mars.

For those interested: https://github.com/phaseIV/Blender-Navcam-Importer

Ooops. Forgot the link. Thanks wlange!

8051-1: Motorbike

Here a first rendering, but I'm sure there can be pulled more out of this model to show it off. Time will tell.

How is zanna actually doing? 👻

8051-1: Motorbike by W. Lange, on Flickr

Thanks go to Scrubs, who has helped me to complete this model.

Edit: rendering replaced by darker version.

This is (motor)rad!

Hi guys!
I'm very happy to see a lot of new (awesome!) models these days 😄
And awesome renders, too: congrats for your huge work of re-design wlange 😮

I know guys... these days I'm not rendering anything... work, holidays, school, work, work... 😩 😭
I think I'm going to open again Blender next month 😛

Meanwhile, I rendered this to celebrate Rome's birthday (next 21th April) 🇮🇹 🎉 🎉 😄

Felix Natalis Dies, Roma!

Nice rendering, zanna! CU next time!

I don't really know that much about blender and rendering, unfortunately 😦 but seeing all of your posts and your impressiv renderings, that makes me want to try 😛 Thanks for that already.
Having say that, I have a question for you who renders : what kind of machine (PC, MAC, ...) and GPU do you have ? I have got a (very) old Macbook Pro 2009 with its beautiful (?) Core 2 Duo (yes, that's still exist 😉) and I presume it will be not be powerful enough to render in acceptable time.

Hope that the right place for this post.

thx

Oby1, using Blender, you'll usually render on your CPU, since the edge shading needs OSL support. Alternatively, you can use a render farm, e.g. https://www.sheepit-renderfarm.com

I'm on a PC with a 4-core i7-3770 and a nVidia GTX-670 running Win7 x64. I mostly do my Blender renderings at night on CPU, which still works out ok-ish for now. Mid-term, I'm considering a switch to Cinema 4D with Octane, though (also for my non-Lego stuff).

Blender needs some time to get into it, but it's worth the effort, since despite some drawbacks, it's actually pretty good, as you can tell from many renderings here. You could use some commercial app, if you already own a licence or can afford one, but there's no instantly usable template for any except Blender (yet), i.e. you'd have to build your own workflow to get the models exported from MB into your 3d app and develop your own Lego material library. So, for the beginning, I'd recommend to start with Blender. You can find some good tutorials here in the forum, others on http://www.blenderguru.com By investing some time and being a little patient, you'll be able to achieve good results in the foreseeable future.

Thank you wlange. I think I could spend some time to play with Blender next holidays (not necessarily rendering). We'll see what will comes out.

Yes. You should go for BLENDER. It's free and you have a strong community support. Just go through SCRUBS' tutorial and you will have your first successful rendering without too much knowledge. I am using MODO due to my profession and I shared a while ago the basic settings with SCRUBS. The BLENDER setup is pretty nice and will evolve for sure. I am still finetuning my MODO setup since 2014. I will do a Redshift3D (commercial GPU renderer) setup the next weeks. There's a company called Doodle Picture Studio from Connecticut working for LEGO rendering impressive animations with MAYA and Redshift. The renderer is extremely fast and it's worth for me to give it a try.

But all the commercial software costs constantly money if you want to keep it updated. So BLENDER is the way to go. If you look what people do with BLENDER it's not really different to commercial software regarding the possibilities. The GUI is very strange for someone who's used to work with more self-describing intuitive software using some well approved GUI-standards.

I also tested sheep it!. It's a great option to expand your limited render-power. You even can render single frames by so called Distributed Rendering. But be careful. If you load up animation scenes rendering too long you get temporarily blocked for the specific project. I asked the people running sheep it! maybe to expand the limitation from 20 minutes to 40 minutes each frame (animation) because nice stuff will render longer and it's frustrating when things seem to start nicely and you get blocked again one hour later.

Blender is a great tool. It is probably the software I use the most on my computer along side the browser. My main use is not rendering but modelling which I like a lot. I come from a parametric modelling background - SolidWorks. So this is quite different. The community behind Blender is very large and therefore it is very easy to find tutorials or someone to help when you have an issue.

I definitely try Blender. I used Autocad and Catia in the past, so 3D software are not unfamiliar to me.
And you're right, I'll find a lot of tutorals and people who can help. Already on MB, I see that people are pleased to give a hand to others 😛 👍
Thanks for your advices.

Nissan S30 Fairlady Z

Nissan S30 Fairlady Z by W. Lange, on Flickr

Original model by Carragin

60113-1: Rally Car

Rally Car by
W. Lange, on Flickr

Wow wlange!
Hey but this is an off-road car! 😛 I'm joking, I like it very much: this is my version I started rendering last night 😉

Lego® Rally Car (60113)

Thanks, zanna. Let's call it asphalt ralley - like for example the Ralley Monte Carlo is one... 😉 A nice render with an all-purpose show room, btw. #rebuildnoise

@Scrubs: See the shadows at the borders of the wall plates in zanna's render? This is what I mean with the 'SSS isssue' in template v1.06 (SSS value increased by factor 3 over v1.05, which I think is off). In this case it helps to stylize the render, though...

I'd really like to see the Rally of Monte Carlo 😃
Fortunately this weekend where I live there is a national rally competition, so I can't wait to see those cars running in our hills 😄

And... a car that I don't suggest to join rallies ... Citroën 2CV 😁 😂

great new renders 😃