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Brickini LDraw Part

Brickini LDraw Part

Overview

Brickini

Brickini LDraw Part let's you import any brick from the LDraw library.

Parameters

  • Part Part number to load. Subparts and primitives are also supported.

  • Material Group The grouping directly relates to the ldconfig.ldr file that ships with LDraw. LDraw Colour Definition Reference

  • Material Solid, Transparent, Chrome, Pearl, Metallic, Milky, Glitter, Speckle, Rubber, Trans Rubber, Other Choose color. LDraw Part exports an attribute material_type that can be used in shading networks to drive the look of your bricks with a single material.

Note

Only the dropdown chosen in Material Group will be visible in the Interface.

Warning

The Solaris/Karma example scene that comes with LDraw2Houdini currently only respects some of the material_type attributes, namely Solid, Transparent, Chrome and Rubber. All other types are ignored and look like default solid bricks.

  • Print Handling
    • Default Loads geometry as is
    • Separate Loads LDraw brick twice: without print to get clean topology and second time, only the print section. We apply a slight offset to avoid Z-fighting.
    • Texture Autogenerates UVs and a texture that gets applied to the base brick that has the clean topology

Info

LDraw prints/stickers are traditionally not textures but modeled detail with varying vertex colors. This results in multiple issues for high end rendering. The topology is usually pretty bad (tris that can't be subdivided) and round shapes aren't actually round due to limited poly count. Choosing Texture mode autogenerates a texture of the modeled vertex color detail and reprojects it onto the basic clean brick. This allows to subdivide the brick, while still retaining the print. Furthermore the texture can now easily be manipulated in photoshop or even vectorized to create a high quality print that doesn't suffer from low resolution.

Note

Texture Print Handling automatically enables UVs. You might want to disable it again if you change your mind and stick with another Print Handling mode.

  • Logo On Studs Adds the logo on top of each stud

  • UVs Autogenerates UVs. This feature requires SideFX Labs

Note

UVs feature requires SideFX Labs

  • Gap Shrinks brick so they don't align mathematically perfect when stacked and tiny gaps become visible.

  • Gap Width Width of gap - amount brick is shrinked.

  • High-res Loads high-res primitives from LDraw library if available

  • Bevel And Subdivide Bevels edges based on LDraw lines and adds subdivison.

Warning

LDraw topology is not the best and was mostly modeled during a time where minimal polycount was preferred over clean quads that can be subdivided. LDraw Part tries its best to clean up and use the LDraw edges as guidance for beveling. It works great for some bricks, but certainly not the entire library. If using bricks with prints/stickers Print Handling in Texture or Separate mode is highly recommended.

  • Bevel Distance Width of beveled edge

  • Bevel Divisions Divisions of bevel

  • Subd Subdivides geometry

  • Subd Depth Amount of subdivisions

Note

Instead of using the built-in subdivison here it might be more efficient to enable subdivision at rendertime in your render engine. This way the tessellation can be dynamic based on camera distance. It should also speed up time to first pixel. Bevel And Subdivide (explicitly without Subd) should still be enabled in LDraw Part otherwise rendertime subdivisons will produce junk.

  • Pack Packs the part. This is mostly useful for instancing workflows with hundreds of parts. The LDraw Model shelf tool makes use of this.

Tip

See Brickini Pantry to find out how to instance LDraw Part onto brickified geometry.