Oh hey, a custom Bionicle/Hero Factory head pack

(cannot seem to find any on the web, or I'm bad at finding things, so)

There is mainly two head types in the pack, Matoran Universe head and Agori/Glatorian head. Had to differentiate them cause apparently they have different eye heights and the latter type is a lot less forgiving in space

The Matoran Universe head is compatible with Mata, Metru, Okoto connections (except Hewkii Mahri's Garai, rip, also prolly Teridax's Kraahkan). The Agori/Glatorian head is compatible with Agori/Glatorian, HF Breakout, HF Brain Attack (screw HF 2.0 and 3.0 heads)

(Edit) Things to note about the models:

-Garai is incompatible due to space needed for the Okoto's mask connections, may be revised soon

-had to cut a bit of the bar from the HF Brain Attack to make the head fit into Agori/Glatorian helmets

-Agori/Glatorian heads are smushed to make sure Brain Attack visor+helmet fits

-the heads are a little bit taller (half an axle/pin taller) for light pipings

-will prolly edit the models soon so the light pipings will work better, especially for the nyan head

-idk why but stud.io seem to make the parts ricochet wildly when inserted

Also bonus torso piece and foot, its articulated (why haven't they thought of this)

Also apparently every rendering software I had broke when I tried exporting the stud.io model for render

File is here, idk what other free anonymous file hosting sites there is, remind me if you want it reuploaded since PixelDrain only hosts it for a few months

it's 8/10nicle day officially, time to advertise

download your 8/10 celebration Stud.io parts from @valtarshol, Galva_Nize, Rothanak, @nattarthetimedragon, OhluCG, and SomeoneKiri here!

Happy Bionicle Day, and happy building!

Wow Bionicle day have some new mata parts

I know nothing about lego building but i'm curious, is there a program you use for it or a set of programs? Are there other options the community likes to use as well?

There are currently a few options!

First of all, there's Mecabricks, which is a web-based digital designing platform with some powerful rendering capabilities. For examples of Mecabricks-based works, you can check my friend Gunn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/buildinggunn

There are also a few obscure LEGO CAD programs that I am personally not familiar with, and also not sure they are as popular.

Then there are LEGO Digital Designer and Bricklink's Stud.Io.

The former used to be an official LEGO digital building software but got discontinued in 2019 after several years of neglect. It is not currently obtainable from the official LEGO site, but there are those (including myself) who keep the installer stored on their hard drives for media conservation purposes. It is also still very much functional, and there are clever minds on Eurobricks.com who learned how to update the part palette with more recently released bricks and pieces.

I've been using LDD since 2013 and I am very much used to the simplistic, albeit buggy, interface it has. It is also purely building tool; there are no bells and whistles.

Stud.Io, on the other hand, is LEGO's new groove: BrickLink have been developing their own stand-alone CAD called Stud.Io prior to the LEGO Group acquiring them, and now it's a new official digital building tool. It has a lot of bells and whistles to talk about, such as:

A Blender-based "photorealistic" Cycles rendering engine, as well as POV-Ray.

A BrickLink intergration which allows to check color availability, as well as approximate price of your design. It also can upload your designs to BrickLink's build sharing platform, but this one has some dubious terms of service and content policies, so it's recommended to avoid BrickLink's gallery.

An in-depth instructions manual making tool that lets you design instructions for your designs! It's very cool!

A simple yet efficient Part Designer tool allowing you to create custom LEGO part designs for all your digital building needs. For examples of insane mad skillz Part Designer usage, please refer to my good friend Valtarashol: https://twitter.com/Kureesko

A one-way compatibility with LDD's file format which lets you import LDD models into Stud.Io for further processing. This is an essential part of my workflow. =)

An ability to export your model in several different 3D object formats, including Collada and LDraw. Useful if you want to pick up Blender and fuck around with your design there.

To be honest, by now I am somewhat confident in building in both programs but still prefer LDD. :D

Thank you for the ask!

For as much as I love Bionicle, it kinda sucks that it’s getting harder to acquire certain pieces thanks to the flow of time. The 2001 mask packs were blind bags before blind bags REALLY took off and you got all sorts of neat recolors for what functionally acted as a character’s face. If you want a lot of variety in mask options of one color type you’re gonna be looking at that first batch of masks, and it kind of sucks that they’re inherent collectability makes them much pricier and than your options that came with standard sets. (This primarily applies to MOCs and custom characters in general, since your standard sets are either gonna be display pieces or sourced for parts.)

It’s like if you were customizing a character in a game and you had 12 options for their face, but if you bought a card pack you would get 2 of a possible 60 other options exclusive to those packs with exclusive options. Now imagine those cards are out of production for 20 years but the game itself is still online thanks to fan servers and such.

A lot of that problem can be alleviated by 3D printing parts, but then you’d still have to do some painting to match other parts on a model. Programs like Stud.io are great for digital MOCs and allow for infinite possibilities through recolors that never existed, but then you lose out on being able to have that physically on a shelf. Bionicle being Lego means there’s kind of an unspoken rule that while, yes, you can always modify your parts, part of the challenge is working within what part limitations of that system. This isn’t even mentioning how the friction joints have aged, leading to less friction in many parts or stress cracks from use.

All this to say, Bionicle is cool but it being a collector’s item now makes it harder to engage with the figure side of things like you could back in the day. It’s fun making new characters for this setting but you gotta grapple with the aftermarket if there’s pieces you really want for a build.

So, Bionicle side of Tumblr, help me out here: I'm looking for something I know I've seen before, but can't find again. Here's the details...

So, sometime in the last couple months, I saw a custom 3D-rendered Bionicle part someone was working on (probably for Stud.io, but I can't remember exactly), and it looked really cool. It was partway between the old Metru heads and the G2 heads, and was designed to take G2 masks. The lower part of the face had an opening mouth, and if I'm remembering correctly, the creator was in the process of adding some kind of functionality that would trigger once a G2 mask was knocked off the head... I think it had something to do with the brain piece popping out? Not certain. Anyway, I definitely remember having a conversation with the creator about it.

The real kicker is, I also can't remember if this item was shown here on Tumblr, over on Twitter, or Reddit, or in some Lego/Bionicle Discord server so I'm super lost... So, if you know what I'm talking about, (or better yet, if you're the person who actually made it!) then please hit me up with a link/directions to information regarding the item...? Thanks!

i tried out leocad to see if i could use it instead of stud.io but for whatever reason it isn't agreeing with custom parts in my os setup ;_; unfortunately, the base ldraw parts library is too sparse on bionicle elements for it to be of use to me...

How in tarnation do you use stud.io without going nuts?

I spent about 4 hours the other day trying to add a piece onto a mata torso so that itd be resized to inika scale and almost threw my comp out of a window.

Though honestly I probably oughta get that box of parts I have lying around and prototype with that.

If you think that building physically first for a prototype will help, go for it! I don't personally do that, but I know a lot of people do, and it works for them.

Regarding the mata torso thing, I could probably help with that, but first I'd need to know what part you were trying to add, where you were trying to connect it to, and what the problem was (was it clipping, or just not connecting?). And if you were using part designer that's an entire other can of worms.

Tips for Studio in general, though:, a lot of my characters use the same three custom torso designs, so I only have to build them once or twice (some have two different necks, depending on if they're using a metru or glatorian/G2/HF head) so I just copy it and and re-color it. I also use a lot of CCBS, which uses much less parts and is generally easier to work with then complex technic. My stuff isn't usually that complicated.

For complex technic when the axle/pin keeps on going in OH MY GOD THAT'S THE WRONG FUCKING HOLE, THE OTHER ONE, NO NOT THAT ONE THAT'S TOO FAR GOD DAMN IT, try using the connect tool to get it slightly in. What you want to do then is click the piece, press T and use the arrow keys to move it slightly. If even that is too much you might have to manually punch in the numbers.

Also, I've been using stud.io since 2018 and have experience with the much more annoying Lego Digital Designer, so I'm just used to the bullshit.

Thanks for the ask, dude!

Quick blog update

Hello everyone! Man, it's been a while since I've updated this blog, hasn't it?

I'm not gonna give you the whole lowdown of what's been going on IRL that's kept me away, I'm just here to say I'm excited to hopefully be posting stuff here a lot more again and to give you a bit of an idea what to expect for the next few days (or weeks? hopefully months.)

First of all, I'd like to get on top of organizing my various projects a lot better and making them easier to access. So expect to see me making a few "hub" posts dedicated to some of my old projects that kind of explain what they're all about and link to their posts in an order that makes sense.

Second of all, there was a good chunk of time a while back where I was making a bunch of mocs in Stud.io that never actually made their way here. (I shared a lot of them with a bionicle discord server I'm on, so if you're also there they might be familiar to you.) Expect to see a lot of mata builds, because I went through a bit of a phase after some custom part packs came out where I was really into it. It's nice to use the simple, limited framework of the classic mata build to unlock your creativity. But there is some other stuff in this backlog as well, even some really old non-Stud.io mocs.

Even though I can't promise anything about how much life will let me get back to making new mocs in the coming weeks, having all these old projects in reserve that I've always wanted to post anyways means that you can be fairly sure to see lots of new posts here for at least a little bit. Glad to be back!

ITS FINALLY HERE

About a month in and 21 parts later

Contents include:

Kanohi Good Guy, mask of hope and perseverance, based on the legend himself and the Metru head

Kanohi Lossus, mask of Great Anger and Distress, and the Lossus Sword

(Also yeah, that specific hand model got phased out cause it was impractical but I was too lazy to re-render it)

Also new Toa Mata Weapons for Kopaka, Lewa, and Onua, in line with 2015 style. All weapons have secondary forms.

Parts pack also include my previous head models (hopefully the models are fixed this time). The previous torso and foot part from my old parts pack are discontinued, haven't got any idea to integrate gear function, waist articulation, and neck flexibility thing

(As good as it gets rn)

Also parts still ricochet wildly when inserted or rotated in stud.io, idk how to even fix it

okay this is my favorite addition to the Metru revamp pack ive been working on breaking up the arm into several pieces, mostly so you can use the larger Mata hand, which always bugged me that you couldnt use it, but the way i made it also means you can have Toa Metru with weapon hands, or arms as long as you want Theres also a secret little bar connection, if youre clever

oopsies.

it has come to my attention that, oops, some of the masks in the galvapack were broken! i can officially blame stud.io for this one, but i should've vetted them better and for that i am sorry. they're all fixed up now, and there's something new in the pack too! as always, you can download the new, non-geometry-scrungleified version at https://linktr.ee/vootcaboot!

Dear Captain Future fans, Here I would like to introduce my version of the spaceship Comet. I hope you like it. How did you come to build this model? The decisive factor was that I saw many models of the comet, but didn't really like any of them. Except for one model, which unfortunately goes haywire at Ideas. So it was impossible to get hold of this guide. So I decided to design something of my own. As for the model itself, I have to say that you can clearly see that the Comet from Ideas inspired me a lot. Here I would like to congratulate Marc Philippi (AIORI), who designed a very successful model there. As for the end result, you have to say that you can clearly see the inspiration but also my handwriting. The model was built by me as a test and is hanging on my ceiling. But I designed a stand for it, because the model depends on this help. Due to the shape of the template. Model information: 3310 Parts 81.3 Cm Width 39.1 Length 39.1 Heigth Building instructions: 4 PDF Instructions, created with Stud.io and LDView 4.3 ("A little harder to build") 2 PDF Instructions for the Stand 1 for LEGO and 1 for GoBricks   Special: 1 PDF hang up instructions XML file vor LEGO and GoBricks XML file vor the Stand (LEGO and GoBricks) PDF - parts list, for LEGO and GoBricks Information about the spacecraft: Captain Future is an American pulp series created by Edmond Hamilton that ran from 1940 to 1944. She is best known in Europe for the Captain Future anime series that aired on television in the early 1980s. Captain Future's spaceship, the Comet, was constructed by himself and is superior to all other spaceships in the solar system. The Comet has a compact laboratory that qualifies her as a research vessel. She is also equipped with a cloaking device that makes her appear as a comet and armed with "Proton Cannons". It is not until late in the novel series that the ship gets superluminal propulsion. In the animated series, it also has a small dinghy called the Cosmoliner.   #legocustominstructions #legoinstructions #lego #legomoc #legomocs #moc #iinstructions #custom #legocustom #mocs #mocsmarket

Lego digital designer custom decals

Lego digital designer custom decals how to#

Lego digital designer custom decals install#

Lego digital designer custom decals how to#

I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial on how to create custom digital minifigures. To do this, you will use the LIF Extractor you downloaded previously. Now we can add some original models from the LEGO Idea Book 6000, some roads and greenery and we have a perfect first shot. In order to add custom decals into LDD, you will need the following: LIF Extractor by JrMasterModelBuilder Notepad++ (or any decent text editor, this is free and recommended) A decal in PNG format Before you can add in custom decals, you'll need to prepare LDD for modding. The complete model is available for download here. We can search now for Bill and find this part.ĭrag and drop the torso into the scene and add the other parts to the model. In studio, we have to select the custom parts library. Make sure that you give the part meaningful names and include the proper LEGO ID number is the optional section. Only the torso of Bill and Mary are unique and I uploaded 973bp0386.part (Bill’s torso) and 973pb0385.part (Mary’s torso) to my website. Next, it is time to safe the new part, ideally with its official LEGO number. Design any shopfront vinyl decal graphic design window sticker, realtor sign. We can now delete the legs, arms and head. Create custom sticker,signature logo,badge, label,decals design. When you create a new document, use the minifigure template.Ĭlick on the little mountain icons on the torso and select the PNG file we just created.

Lego digital designer custom decals install#

Now it is time to export the graphics as a png file.ĭownload and install PartDesigner. Q: What if my design is not ready for print A: Dont worry - we have a dedicated Design Services team here to help you with any graphic design or image tweak. Navigate to your Application Data directory, and locate LDD's folder. Next, we create the artwork without a background layer, since this will give us transparency later. Before you can add in custom decals, you'll need to prepare LDD for modding. So let’s start with creating a new Illustrator document with these dimensions. PartDesigner’s manual has the specific dimensions: 605×512 pixels. I used Adobe Illustrator to create the graphics and Bricklink’s PartDesigner to create the custom LEGO parts.įor the decal design, I used some of the available shape templates. This tutorial will show you how to create your own custom digital LEGO Minifigure.įrist, I had to create the decals for both figures, since the original minifigures had stickers. The two main characters in this story, Bill and Mary, are not available in any of the major LEGO digital design software packages, such as LEGO Digital Designer, Stud.io or Mecabricks. I used to own LEGO Ideas Book 6000 when I was a child and still own a copy.

Some sort of Turaga. Turaga of Vaporwave. I haven't done anything in Stud.io in a long time, this was kind of a warm-up. Like I mentioned earlier, I decided to download some custom Bionicle parts, I got them from here (Galvapack and KhingK Pack) and here (Biopack). BTW, I chose this mask and the colour because I 3D printed that one in pink two years ago.