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Description
>>>> ORIGINAL UPLOAD: 4/1/2010 <<<<

Playing around with the LEGO generator I created from scratch in C4D.

So here's the story:
1) Using the XPRESSO node based expression system in C4D I created a single LEGO piece/generator from which every simple LEGO brick could be generated just by tweaking 3 integer parameters: lenght, width, height. The tough part was to get the spacing of the teeth, cylinders etc right, in order to be placed/scaled right, as the brick changed dimensions. The XPRESSO + Cloner Object combination proved to be really powerful.

2) After some testing with various brick sizes, I decided to make a more complex LEGO scene. So I made 7 copies of the generator, tweaked each one to a different size and then converted them to simple polygon objects (cause the system was getting reaaaaly slow). Those 7 different bricks were thrown in a Cloner and so a grid array of 343 bricks was created. Using Cinema 4D Dynamics, I let those bricks fall under the force of gravity and smash to the floor. I cached the whole animation, in order to be able to quickly move through frames and find the desired moment of collision.

3) After the materials were randomly applied upon the bricks, I exported the scene to Maxwell studio. Set up a few options, chose the sun to come from behind the bricks for a more dramatic look and that was it.

RENDER TIME: 166 hours (and there's still some fuckin' noise) on a Core2Duo 2.4 GHz, 4GB RAM iMac.

Some minor post work was done in PS afterwards. I hope you like it! The LEGO generator needs some more work regarding some small details on the LEGO bricks. I'm considering uploading it when finished, if of course you show interest!

>>>> EDIT: 23/8/2013 <<<<

More than 3 years after the original render, I decided to upload a completely new version of the LEGO scene set-up and rendered sometime in February of 2012. Rendered with a 4 times faster CPU, with 5 times more bricks (reaching 1500), SSS and Motion-Blur this time.

65 hours of rendering in Maxwell for a 1920x1080 image on a quad-core 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7 2600K processor with 16GB of RAM.

I kept the same C4D LEGO Generator I had created for the initial scene, and focused heavily on the photographic aspects of the render. Much more thought was given on the camera position, the viewing angle, the Depth of Field and the composition of the scene.

Furthermore, I spent many hours testing the Sub-Surface-Scattering properties of each brick color trying to get as close to the transluscency of real LEGOs as possible. I observed that the most noticeable effect occurs on red, yellow, and white LEGOS, each turning into strong pink, orange, and faint yellow, respectively, when backlit.

In order to amplify the sense of bricks wildly flying all over and towards the camera, I added shutter-based Motion Blur at a shutter speed of 1/250 second.

The addition of SSS and Motion-Blur slowed down the rendering considerably, introducing almost impossible to disappear noise in legos which were backlit, blurred due to their motion and due to the Dof at the same time. The noise problems in these areas where improved in post-processing in PS.

Description
>>>> ORIGINAL UPLOAD: 4/1/2010 <<<<

Playing around with the LEGO generator I created from scratch in C4D.

So here's the story:
1) Using the XPRESSO node based expression system in C4D I created a single LEGO piece/generator from which every simple LEGO brick could be generated just by tweaking 3 integer parameters: lenght, width, height. The tough part was to get the spacing of the teeth, cylinders etc right, in order to be placed/scaled right, as the brick changed dimensions. The XPRESSO + Cloner Object combination proved to be really powerful.

2) After some testing with various brick sizes, I decided to make a more complex LEGO scene. So I made 7 copies of the generator, tweaked each one to a different size and then converted them to simple polygon objects (cause the system was getting reaaaaly slow). Those 7 different bricks were thrown in a Cloner and so a grid array of 343 bricks was created. Using Cinema 4D Dynamics, I let those bricks fall under the force of gravity and smash to the floor. I cached the whole animation, in order to be able to quickly move through frames and find the desired moment of collision.

3) After the materials were randomly applied upon the bricks, I exported the scene to Maxwell studio. Set up a few options, chose the sun to come from behind the bricks for a more dramatic look and that was it.

RENDER TIME: 166 hours (and there's still some fuckin' noise) on a Core2Duo 2.4 GHz, 4GB RAM iMac.

Some minor post work was done in PS afterwards. I hope you like it! The LEGO generator needs some more work regarding some small details on the LEGO bricks. I'm considering uploading it when finished, if of course you show interest!

>>>> EDIT: 23/8/2013 <<<<

More than 3 years after the original render, I decided to upload a completely new version of the LEGO scene set-up and rendered sometime in February of 2012. Rendered with a 4 times faster CPU, with 5 times more bricks (reaching 1500), SSS and Motion-Blur this time.

65 hours of rendering in Maxwell for a 1920x1080 image on a quad-core 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7 2600K processor with 16GB of RAM.

I kept the same C4D LEGO Generator I had created for the initial scene, and focused heavily on the photographic aspects of the render. Much more thought was given on the camera position, the viewing angle, the Depth of Field and the composition of the scene.

Furthermore, I spent many hours testing the Sub-Surface-Scattering properties of each brick color trying to get as close to the transluscency of real LEGOs as possible. I observed that the most noticeable effect occurs on red, yellow, and white LEGOS, each turning into strong pink, orange, and faint yellow, respectively, when backlit.

In order to amplify the sense of bricks wildly flying all over and towards the camera, I added shutter-based Motion Blur at a shutter speed of 1/250 second.

The addition of SSS and Motion-Blur slowed down the rendering considerably, introducing almost impossible to disappear noise in legos which were backlit, blurred due to their motion and due to the Dof at the same time. The noise problems in these areas where improved in post-processing in PS.