Digital LEGO with Filmic Blender

Hello,

I started a research how to render digital LEGO in photoreal quality in 2014 with LDRAW and Softimage using Arnold. Then I switched to MODO to work out a proper workflow. The LEGO ressources on the internet are extremely limited. To be precise: you have three options. LDD (no export but capture of geometry possible with a nerd-workflow), LDRAW and Mecabricks.

LDRAW is most complete but causing heavy data load when you want to build complex models. But fortunately end of 2014 I found Mecabricks what was designed to build with LEGO and show the models by WebGL. I contacted the developer and gave him ideas and a list of features to unlock rendering Mecabricks models with instancing support.

Since 2 weeks I started to use Blender. It all looks very promising. The new Filmic Blender OCIO profile gives optimal control about the dynamic range. It’s a final boost to perfect quality.

Here’s a spintest rendered with BURP renderfarm. BURP supports Filmic Blender but you will receive PNG. So if you want to colorgrade the right way your result I would recommend to use the option to use compositing within the render process because Filmic Blender will be baked into the PNG. But you can use them of course as usual in another compositing software with the sRGB limitations.

To follow my research process and more LEGO renderings just feel free to check out Renderbricks on Facebook, YouTube, flickr and/or Twitter. Every follower makes me a happy Blender-LEGO-Panda :wink:

1 Like

Seeing that LEGO model was like a nostalgia overflow :wink: Looks great, and you should definitely keep working with Blender!