POV-Ray Library
Download the POV-Ray library Version 1.2 (.9 MB).
View (and download--it is not included in the above download) the minifigs_all_official image (3.8 MB). It is a big image that shows all 91 official minifigs supported by macro.
View minifigs_all_moc image (.3 MB). It is a smaller image with 7 MOC minfigs (and is included in the download).
Description
James' POV-ray library includes the Walking Lego Minifig POV-Ray Macro and the start of his Utility Macro.
The walking Lego minifig POV-Ray macro can be included into scene files so that you can easily make minifigs that walk and have other abilities.
The utility macro currently is beta and includes things like crosshair, debug_vector, grid, and Anton's scene and lighting code wrapped up in macro functions.
Requirements
The POV-Ray rendering application.
You should know how to use POV-Ray as well. If you are not afraid to learn and don't mind reading, feel free to contact me and I'll help you speed up the learning curve quite a bit.
The latest version of Anton Raves' parts Library (the files are named material_510.lib & library_500.lib).
Chris Colefax's Spline Macro (spline.mcr).
Walking Minifig Features
- All minifigs created with the macro take advantage of the walk code (lib_minifig.lib)! The only exception is the skeleton, which has not yet had the walking code tailored for the different limb lengths of the skeleton.
- 91 ready to use official Lego minifigs (minifigs_official.mac) and 7 MOC minifigs (minifigs_moc.mac).
- All ready to use minifigs use the same names and follow the same syntax used in Anton Raves' models: "man_051 (0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,red_tex)" so you can swap out any of Anton's minifigs with versions that walk!
- You can create your own minifig using any of the 27 faces (smile, sunglasses, female, etc), 56 shirts (classic space, Star Wars, city, etc), or other 18 decorated helmet, leg, or other bricks (lib_decorations.lib).
- You can create your own minifig using a variety of options: 3 leg (flipper, ski, skeleton), 9 neck (airtank, backpack, etc.), 27 head (cap, hair, helmets, etc.), 1 hand (hook), and 52 hand accessories (cameras, swords, guns, tools, etc.)
- 4 example scenes for creating a walking minifig (walk_circle.ini & walk_circle.pov), a single minifig (minifig.ini & minifig.pov), all 91 official minifigs (minifigs_all_official.ini & minifigs_all_official.pov), and all 7 MOC minfigs (minifigs_all_moc.ini & minifigs_all_moc.pov).
- My minifig walk is different from other minifig walks because mine doesn't "bounce-hover" the body and swing the legs like others do. Mine actually anchors the foot in one spot, rotates the rest of the body, lands on the other foot, and then lifts the back leg and rotates the body around the front foot, etc.
- Walking paths are controlled by a spline, so you can easily create complicated paths with turns and such.
- The spline controls step distance. So you will notice in the animation linked at the top of this page, that the minifig isn't walking a real circle, it is kinda squarish. When the minifig gets to the corners the steps get smaller.
- Walking rotations are actually anchored on the inside of the feet, so when the minifig makes turns, the outside of the feet will slide a tiny bit.
Here are a few of the minifigs that the minifig macro can make (click it to see more--3.8 MB image):
Credits
All images are representations of toys created by the LEGO Group, which does not sponsor, endorse, or authorize this library. Anton Raves did all of the POV-Ray modeling and digitizing. Anton has a separate file for each minifig. This library is just a combination of his files. It also includes images that he created with Adobe Illustrator.
All of the lighting and world generation code in lib_util.lib is copied from Anton Raves' scene files.
Pieter Desnerck started the minifig walk macro, and I took his work and made the walk macro.
James Reynolds did all of the work unifying the minifig and decorated brick macros into the grand lib_minifig.lib and lib_decorated.lib macros. He made the walk code, and some of the utility macros.
Instructions
Instructions are kinda lacking. There are sample scenes ready to render and hopefully you can figure out how to use the macros from the code.
Be warned, at the settings included in the download (settings=4, radiosity=on, aliasing=on) the scene minifigs_all_official.pov will take a long time to render, like a whole day... The single most effective way to speed up renders is to turn off radiosity (in the ini files). However, when you do this, you will loose a lot of detail in the shadows.
Future
I did have intentions of adding more to this but since it has stayed version 1.2 for several years and my time is spent on other things I doubt this will ever change.