LDraw is a program, that can display 3D models of lego models. The official homepage is at http://www.ldraw.org.

There are also many open source viewers available.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to view those cool models on MorphOS aswell?

But the best thing is that I'm already working on it

It's not ready for public release, but here are some pictures I created with it:
car.png
jeep.png
There's still (obviously) lots of work to do, but it's getting more complete every day

Mmmmmh.... it can "display", but its is called LDRAW so it should also allow to edit/create such models.

Oh, and those pics look like you could need some serious anti-aliasing

When I was young I played many, many hours with Lego. Oké, this is just a start but I'm very interested. Go on with your project!!!

Tom

Finally got z buffer working (new screenshots edited to the original post)

Next step would be trying to get lights working...

It sounds easier than it really is, as I'd need to know which side of polygons are facing front (knowing that would also speed up the program rather nicely)

About speed... After some new optimizations the car model rotates at 7.5fps, which sure isn't too much (more complex models obviously even slower)

In general, models are VERY complex, that car alone consists of 19388 lines, 5004 triangles and 12288 quads. (Can't do much about that really...)

Hi!

Been improving ldraw quite a bit recently (I needed it for a school course too)

Lights are still far from perfect, but works a lot better than earlier, and makes models look more 3D:
(removed images as I had deleted them long ago)
Models use solid shading, simply becouse it looks much better than smooth shading (which "loses" the edges of blocks, but you can enable it anyway)

Currently the program supports only .dat files, but draws also .ldr and .mpd files (with variable success)

I also added "low detail" option which speeds up both loading and rotating the model A LOT.

Also colors (including transparent colors) work much better now.

cool!
I like the lego models of space vehicles.

so this just renders stills, not "animations"??

excellent looking project. Good luck!!

Quote:
Something like this?
6986.png

Quote:
Currently it can only display models. Some limited animation (turning certain parts of model, for example) might be possible, but at the moment it's not top priority.

It will NOT be able to turn every "axel" in model, only some "pre-set" points defined in the model file.

Getting .mpd files to work better is top priority (becouse it's so widely used format)

Quote:yup!
and those little fellas ("Astronauts") are SO darn cute!

[ Edited by cecilia on 2004/12/21 13:51 ]

As you probably noticed, I've already released the first public beta (see morphzone downloads)

Currently I'm doing quite big modifications on how the models are loaded & drawn, and that should speed up loading a LOT and lower memory requirements considerably (The biggest model I tried with the current version needed over 100 megs of memory!)

Those modifications should make it more easy to (finally) add support for .mpd format, which seems to be quite widely used nowadays (much more than ldraw .dat format)

After that probably some work on the user interface (asl filerequester, for example)

(the current version was also used on "Virtual reality technics" school course, and I had to try to maintain compatibility with other platforms, even if I did the demonstration on my Pegasos 2. That's why it doesn't yet have much any "MorphOS specific" features other than setting the task priority)

And after that...

How many of you would like to see a ldraw model editor perhaps?

i want a barbie/G.I Joe/Action Man editor/renderer

Finally got the new code working... The next version will have (at least) the following features / bugfixes:
-Bugfix for shading (as it currently looks a bit "weird" at some parts)
-Support for .mpd files
-New controls (possibility to move "camera")
-Possibility to view separate parts / submodels used in the model
-Part counter (doesn't work too well yet)
-Faster loading of big models
-Lower memory usage
-No more need for ldparts: assign

All listed features are already implemented, but I think I'll still add a few more & do some bugfixes and testing...

Okay, new version (0.8) of ldview finally released, and available at the "downloads" section, enjoy!

Requirements:
-MorphOS 1.4 or newer
-Supported 3D gfx card
-tinygl 0.2 (comes with morphos 1.4)
-ldraw parts library
-some models

What's new in version 0.8:
-Support for .mpd format
-Smooth shading
-Faster loading of models (also uses less memory)
-Possibility to display parts used in the model
-Different display modes (lines/solids)
-Automatic fixing of broken transformation matrices
-Automatic fixing of bowtie quads
-Camera movement
-Better transparency
-Possible to change background color
-Support for high detail primitives

Read the readme before using

Obviously more people should be able to use this program now

Maybe it's time to remove some tinygl 0.2 workarounds...