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1:1 scale L.M.S. Explorer (+ldraw/studio 2.0 file downloads) - 2021-10-21: "Oh hey, this thread is 10 years old and still going!"


Arthuriel
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Here I repost most parts of a post that I originally made in another thread about half a year ago (and later on I found out that I posted in the wrong thread by accident XD) since it fits to this topic:

Many, many months ago I started recreating the rooms of the L.M.S. Explorer that you can see in the (extended) intro and outro. So far I recreated the hangar bay/room and the teleport room in LDD (LEGO Digital Designer) as a start*. Then I started doing the same with the reactor room from the outro and I haven't finished it, because the room and its inventory are at three different scales and I couldn't decide, which scale is the right one (I will probably pick the gates from the other rooms as a size reference and go from there).
Behold the scale madness!

large.reactor_room_scale_differences.jpg.0486e32160e225112f7a08a86715f107.jpg

*you may have seen the pictures in the Rock Raiders and Manic Miners Discord groups. Basically they are the basis for the models that baraklava is going to use or is already using for the Rock Raiders remake Manic Miners. Maybe I should also upload pictures of those rooms in a separate thread.

P.S. I wrote the post originally in the following thread: https://rockraidersunited.com/topic/7462-the-fmvs-contain-some-minor-issues/?tab=comments#comment-140602

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I mean, so far I think you could have this as a fully flyable ship even with the interior. I'm still trying to master lighting. That eats up GPU power real quick. Here's some lighting tests I did with an Outpost I made. I imagine long hallways from bow to stern with all kinds of room along the way. That engine room is looking great! 

 

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The interior lighting sounds like a cool idea : ). I added the post, because I posted it in the wrong thread many months ago. I haven't really continued the project, because the objects in the reactor are all at different scales and it's just a mess. Maybe I continue the project one day since only the reactor room is left.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I eventually want to make 'planets' in UE so you can fly space to surface with no transition, but the LMS would be sweet to be a full blown ship in space, and you could park it in orbit around a planet, and then drop ship the vehicles to the surface to use planet side. Lot's of work but could be super cool. I know Baraklava was looking at the ship more as a 'level', but I think it would be sweet to just have it as a large controllable ship. Space Engineers LEGO, here we come!

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  • 4 weeks later...

I cleaned up the entire model in Stud.io. All those micro gaps are gone I think. Stud.io still crashes when I try to group everything but I'm working to group the sections so I can create a rudimentary interior. I'm going to import it into my 'Island Test map' so I can finally get a scale of how absolutely humungous this ship is!

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On 9/9/2021 at 5:19 PM, Raven319s said:

So... turns out this Nanite stuff in Unreal Engine 5 really makes things kind of auto optimized. A couple more tweaks and I think I can make this pilotable. 

 

Is there a more current download for the model?

goddam, dude. it's absolutely *wild* to me that game/realtime rendering tech is now at a point where importing a gigantic ldraw model like this is feasible. like, I'd read a big technical breakdown of how nanite works and went "oh wow yeah that's an innovative method, cool", but it hadn't sunk in just how powerful it is until just now. fantastic

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Oh for sure. I watched something too. What I gathered was it optimized polygons... which I realized is exactly what Ldraw files were. I gave it a shot and I was amazed how simple and effective it all worked. It was one of the reasons I stuck to UE. I've talked to some LEGO people and the common question came up why I don't use Unity, and it was pretty much easy tutorials and this Nanite magic. I don't want to become a game dev, I just want to fly my MOCs. This LMS explorer model is fantastic to test the limits.  

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@Raven319s: you fixed the micro gaps? That's really good to hear : ). Thanks to Nanite it sounds like a feasible idea to use the model on a test map like you mentioned before and it would be cool to see that in action. It also serves as a cool benchmark for Nanite like lol username said (e.g. "How good is Nanite? Well just look at this before & after with this giant spaceship!").

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  • Arthuriel changed the title to 1:1 scale L.M.S. Explorer (+ldraw/studio 2.0 file downloads) - 2021-10-21: "Oh hey, this thread is 10 years old and still going!"

I wrote a text at the start of the thread since this thread is now over 10 years old (anniversary time!). I also post the text here so you don't miss it : ).

With a delay of about three weeks I noticed that this thread is 10 years old XD. Let's see, if I can come up with something insightful on the spot to distract from my "perfect" timing^^:
I still think that this is a cool project and I would probably do it again . With today's software and hardware that's easier to do than 10 years ago and makes you appreciate the effort that the people at DDI & LEGO put into designing the ship over 20 years ago.
In regards to what I expected from making this thread/model and what actually happened the results are a bit all over the place: on one side I hoped that it would get featured on blogs and websites besides RRU and maybe even getting the attention from the LEGO Company itself, but that didn't really work out (I only remember two times, where the model was featured in a blog or video). Maybe I am too introverted and not annoying enough on social media to make the existence of this ship known to everyone XD. On the other side this thread has gotten a ton of views and replies over the last decade and people started to integrate the ship model into a game (like Manic Miners from baraklava) or game engine or make MOCs based on the digital models. Also a big thanks to Cyrem and Cirevam, because otherwise RRU wouldn't exist as a central hub for Rock Raiders related content.

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