User blog:BrickfilmNut/LDD Stuff

I understand that there will likely be a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to seeing LDD screenshots in a project for LEGO game-making, and I even felt a bit disgusted uploading these images. I can't just render every concept that comes to mind, though, so LDD it is unfortunately.

Not all of these are necessarily things I think will fit in LDD, and a lot of these still have imperfections or are at very basic stages. The point of this blog is mainly to perhaps inspire something or lead to a discussion; some of these designs, if popular, could work their way into the game, or perhaps you guys will be able to take something I failed at and turn it into something brilliant. :P Anyway, on with the blog.

Robots
Trying to work with small scale beings, especially robots, has been what I've come to focus on with building. As a former stop-motion animator (hoping to get back into that), it would bug the freaking heck out of me that LEGO had very few robotic leg elements that could move independently from one another. They're starting to work on that now (the main problem today are those big-figs), with the new Hero Factory minifigures for example, but I'm still exploring brick-built solutions wherever I can.



My first bot is not really something excelling in the mobility department. It's just a little hovering thing.



Here I have some more combat-oriented bots. The original idea behind thesespider bots were that they'd be one "species" of robot to exist on the Obsidian world, but I dunno if they fit in with the vision.



Some alternative legs for the larger spider bots above.



This guy came out of wanting to find an alternative usage for the old Exo-Force robot torsos. For a fairly limited piece, I think it turned out well, though it doesn't have much poseability and has a fairly large base.



These are some of my latest creations. Hunchbots using that new Chima gun piece as torsos. These have minifigure-level articulation. The one on the right is definitely better; I tried to make a smaller robot using that torso piece on the left, but couldn't come up with anything good for the legs/feet.



I think I've shown some of you this before, but may as well include it here still. I had to do this one in Blender since it uses two illegal techniques. If this were to be used in-game, the model's technically ready barring a few rigging touch-ups, but it's at about 10000 tris and I bet the normals are messed up, so it'd be a fair a bit of work to get game-ready.



This is all junk, pretty much. I'm just including it for completion's sake. There are some incredibly-underdeveloped small bot bodies, the LDD form of the robot rendered above, and an old pot-bellied version of the same above robot.

Creatures
In a similar vein to the robots, I've been trying to find a way to make small brick-built, unique creatures.



I know that this element has to be used as a beak. It's just too perfect in shape to not be. I clearly have no clue how to go about the body, though. Technically a "WIP", though I'm not actually working on it...



An incredibly-simple little bug, but I think it works. It's unique, yes?



I honestly have no freaking clue what happened with this. I started trying to use those lightsabers to make a quadrupedal creature, but then I guess I added some binoculars and a claw or something? I wasn't coming anywhere with it anyway, though. Consider this a failure, but if you have an idea of what to do with it, go ahead and suggest/try it. Also, LDD doesn't render those 1x1 studs' bottoms on those lightsaber pieces? Huh.



The scorpion is not very different from the Galaxy Squad creature and may be a pain to model, but it fits in the desert world, I think. The head with the horn is nothing right now, just a little self-reminder to try and turn it into a creature.



Three variants of a sort of bird-insect hybrid creature I've been working on. Two are identical but with different leg choices, and one is just a small-sized variant.



A fish.

Tools
This is where the knee-jerk reaction will likely be the strongest, so luckily it's reduced to two images. :P



Melee weapons. Jeyo's warhammer is, well, Jeyo's design by name. :P I just fiddled a bit with the bottom.



I think I may have a subconscious thing for those LEGO ax blades.

Interior Environments


Pretty self-explanatory. The two left ones are supposed to be the bases of pillars (the middle one doubling as a place to put weapons) and the right-most one is quite underdeveloped, but I like the shape.



You know how in this set LEGO used upside-down baby dinosaurs as heads? And how upside-down they kind of looked like them, with eyes and a mouth and stuff? I tried something similar here with the Ninjago snake, and it could probably be implemented in-game in a temple or something. One thing I do not have an image for is a similar use of the mostly-useless Mars Mission alien torso upside-down. It looks more like a head than the alien's actual head, though it only has one "eye".

SoA Figs
OK, these are SoA related. These are very rough LDD concepts for how I imagined the minifigures on two of the worlds to look like.



First is the jungle world. The pirates are green and the raiders red.



Then this is the castle world.

Miscellaneous


A suit of armour or some sort of strange being or something. It's a little messed up, so it's a WIP. It also looks much better in person, but I can't upload pics from my camera right now.



A jet-pack concept I worked on using something of Kahuka's as a basis. Basically, this was sort of something I used to illustrate an idea in a discussion with him.



A couple of techniques that I may want to try, but Jeyo will probably find these most useful if he hasn't thought of them/found them already, which he probably has. :P The left one can be tightened in a way where it fits onto the end of a lightsaber blade.

I'll update this blog later if I have more to show.