As promised in my earlier post today, I was working on adding some of the assembled LEGO Spaceships and Ground Vehicles to the overall Luna 2013 display. This has been done now and the following units have been inserted:

• LEGO 928 Galaxy Explorer Ship
• LEGO 6929 Starfleet Voyager
• LEGO 6950 Mobile Rocket Transport and
• LEGO 6927 All-Terrain Vehicle

Especially building the Mobile Rocket Transport was a challenge: it has so many nested rotation points that it was quite difficult to construct. But as you can see – it has a twisting rear gear unit and can extend the launch arm just perfectly… well worth the effort.

Tomorrow, I will hopefully get a chance to add some more vehicles of the smaller and smallest sets and this will also be the time to add some of them not placed on the ground but actually flying – something you can only do in the computer-generated images…

An old Photo…

A little while ago, I found an old photo – must have been taken around Christmas 1983 – of a composition of LEGO Classic Space Sets. Those where the ones I once owned and played with. Unfortunately, the image is out-of-focus (those where the days where you did not have digital cameras to immediately see the results of your shots) but I was still able to identify the LEGO Sets involved.

From left to right, you can find the following sets:

• LEGO 6929 Starfleet Voyager from 1981,
• just above it, LEGO 6822 Space Shuttle (eh… yes, really resembles a Space Shuttle?!?) from 1981,
• just to the right of that, an hard to identify set, most likely LEGO 6803 Space Patrol,
• then, in the lower mid-section LEGO 6970 Beta-1 Command Base from 1980,
• above it LEGO 6930 Space Supply Station from 1983.
• Next to LEGO 6970, you can see LEGO 920 Launch Pad (which was sold as LEGO 483 in the US) – released in 1979 – and finally
• LEGO 928 Galaxy Explorer (sold as LEGO 497 in the US) from 1979.

There are also three more of the smaller Sets,

• LEGO 6844 Seismologic Vehicle from 1983 and
• LEGO 6821 Shovel Buggy from 1981.
• LEGO 6923 Surface Transport (incorrectly labeled as LEGO 6932 in the image)

Some of the smaller LEGO Sets may not have made the composition for I remember having a couple of those as well – although they are not on the photo  – amongst them

• LEGO 885 Space Scooter and LEGO 886 Space Buggy – classics that almost everyone had at that time (small, cheap, a nice in-between-christmas-and-birthday gifts),
• LEGO 897 Launcher (sold in the US as LEGO 462),
• LEGO 891 Two-Man Scooter,
• LEGO 6841 Mineral Detector,
• LEGO 6861 X-1 Patrol Craft,
• LEGO 6801 Rocket Sled,
• LEGO 6880 Surface Explorer,

And, of course, there had been a few of the larger LEGO Sets I never owned – two few Birthsdays & Christmas’s to gather them all (for they had not been cheap at all when it comes to the comparison of cost and available budget for a 10-year-old):

• LEGO 6950 Mobile Rocket Transport I remember I always wanted, but having been released in 1982, it is quite possible that it came too close to the end of my time playing with LEGO to actually put it on anybody’s wishlist,
• LEGO 6927 All-Terrain Vehicle was fascinating because of the large blue windows (which just had been introduced and looked pretty “futuristic” at that time),
• and LEGO 6980 Galaxy Commander which – being available in 1983 – did get in a bit late (as my focus shifted to Computers around 1984/85).

Bottom-line is that I did own quite a few of the then available LEGO Classic Space Sets – and I am truly upset not knowing where they are today (as I have once “borrowed” them to a friend and then completely forgot about them).

… and today’s Virtuality

Today, if you want to enjoy the looks of the Classic Space Sets (and not play with them) you can have that for free (and a bit of work). In my previous posts on the topic, I have shown you what software is needed and some techniques to build and render the LEGO Classic Space Sets on your monitor.

Since then, I have created most of the major Sets and some of the smaller ones using MLCad. I even did a quick & dirty Small Composition and rendered it.

Now, the time has come to put all that work together into a large Space Station Ensemble – I nick-name this one Luna 2013 as the photo in my album is labeled “Luna 13 Space Station”.

First of all, a layout of base-plates is needed which allows to position all of the desired elements. Unlike the original base plates (which have been sort of light-gray) I have chosen mine to be black (which when rendered turns into a darkish gray due to the reflection settings).

Being not limited by the supply of base-plates (which back in the 1980s was a constant problem due to cost and the space they use up!) I picked a 7 x 5 pattern – so 35 base-plates altogether.

This is a huge scene – setting this up in reality would provide some problems due to the number of base-plates needed. The lighter ones are of the original color the base-plates had (too light for my taste when it comes to rendering) and they are the placeholders where we will add the assembled base stations later.

But first, we are going to add some red position lights around the landing pads. I am doing this for the moment to serve as placeholders – when digging a bit more into the rendering, I would like to replace those with actual lights later-on…

Now is is the time to place the LEGO Sets – at the moment without any astronauts or vehicles. We will add those later. So starting in the “1 o’clock position” and going clock-wise, we are adding the following LEGO Sets (all created as independent MLCad Projects and merged using the Multipart -> Import Model feature):

• LEGO 920 Launch Pad,
• LEGO 6970 Beta-1 Command Base,
• LEGO 6930 Space Supply Station,
• LEGO 928 Galaxy Explorer,
• LEGO 926 Command Centre, and
• LEGO 6971 Intergalactic Command Base

So this is a well-equipped Space Station in LEGO Terms – the next step will be to add some of the larger LEGO Set Space Ships (such as the LEGO 928 Galaxy Explorer Ship and the LEGO 6929 Starfleet Voyager) as well as some of the major ground vehicles (such as the LEGO 6950 Mobile Rocket Transport and LEGO 6927 All-Terrain Vehicle sets). But that will be another post…

For now, just enjoy the (still life-less) scenery and the upcoming posts…

I have been busy this weekend – and here is the final result – a composition consisting of

• LEGO Set 483 – Alpha-1 Rocket Station
• LEGO Set 497 – Galaxy Explorer (with two Ships)
• LEGO Set 6970 – Beta-1 Command Base

All put together on a 3 x 3 Base Plate Set and rendered using POV-Ray. I admit, a bit of life is missing (no astronauts, no vehicles yet) but I am working on it… enjoy.

In my previous post, I have described how to create a replica of the LEGO Set 483 – Alpha 1 Rocket Base using LEGO Digital Designer. Following that, I explored the possibilities of using a different tool, giving me a more sophisticated rendering. The results of this search are described here.

This morning, I have re-created the LEGO Set 483 using MLCad and then rendered the result in POV-Ray. See for yourself.

In my previous post, I have discussed the items you need if you want to build a classic LEGO Set on the computer using LEGO Digital Designer as a modeling application. This post is going to take you through a step-by-step example on just how to do that. My set of choice: the Alpha-1 Rocket Base from the classical space theme.

Getting Instructions and Inventory first

The first duty of the builder is to find the instructions – lucky enough, sites like peeron.com have many sets including the sought-after items. Here is the link to the Alpha-1 Rocket Base. The inventory can be accessed from the top of the page where it says Inventory: Available.

Well, everybody can guess what the instructions are needed for – but the inventory? The key to success is the so called Part Number, the unique ID of each individual item used in the set. Having the official LEGO Part Number allows you to search for the item in LEGO Digital Designer directly – no browsing of hundreds of bricks – just typing a number… so let’s get started.

LEGO Digital Designer

First of all, if you want to build a classic set, you need to enable LEGO Digital Designer to used the “LDD extended” Scheme. Otherwise, you will not have access to bricks which have been discontinued or are not available for self-created models.

Once you have done so, you will see a new tab on the LDD’s Home Screen titled LDDextended.

With that selected, click the Free Build button to start creating the model. Looking at the instructions, you can skip the idea of the Crater Base Plate being available in LDD (but that is not an issue). Use Item 3811 instead and focus on the first construction step for the base, Step 2:

We are going to do that “left to right”, starting with the foundation elements of the ramp and then moving on to the control room later.

So we need a blue brick in 1×4 dimension and a rounded brick. Of course, we can start browsing the bricks in LDD but a quick look into the inventory tells us what we need:

On the left-hand side of LDD, make sure you are on the Bricks tab. Type the first part number – 3010 – into the search line. LDD will now display all bricks matching the search criteria – amongst them the Brick in 1×4 Dimensions.

Now we can just drag the item from there and drop it into the assembly area. Sometimes, you will not find the brick by its part number – the #3941 is such an example: is has been discontinued and replaced by a different part number. In such a case, nothing can save you from browsing the bricks manually.

You can now continue with the placement of the Control Room. There is a specialty to Part No 3479 – the four pillars placed on each edge of the to-become ground floor: they mount in between the studs and therefore require the previously mentioned base plate to be used (otherwise, LDD will mis-align them!). Everything done well, your assembly area should look like this:

According to Step 3 of the Instructions, we are now to add the second layer to the foundation items as well as the base plate of the Control Room. Before we do this, however, I am going to quickly color the placed elements of Step 2 so we can distinguish them from the new ones being added in Step 3. It is an assumption but I am using Color 195 of the Legacy Colors: Royal Blue.

Step 3 again from the left to the right shows that of the four elements already placed for the launch pad, we need an identical set to go on top of the existing ones. So instead of placing them brick by brick, we can simply select the existing ones, copy them (Ctrl-C) and then past them (Ctrl-V) to position them accordingly:

Quickly placing the base plate (Part No 3036) and the two Control Wheels (Part No 3829) completes the Step. All manually placed bricks are shown in red, the ones placed by copy & paste are prurple and the ones from the previous step are blue.

The next step – Step 4 – brings us a first “real” problem: the item Hinge Plate 2×5 does not exist in LDD! And it has not been replaced by an equally qualified item either… so we need to consider our options for replacements.

Searching for the term “hinge” amongst the bricks reveals several items that can be considered. Given the eventual use of the item (to hold and flip the vehicle support structure) The one that might come closest is a combinations of Part No’s 4275 and 4276:

It certainly requires the hinge used twice and maybe some stabilize plates around it since this one only has two connector studs on each side which might (when built in reality) be a bit too weak and instable.

However, for the virtual world (where we do not have to worry about stability and statics as everything is connecting and holding together just “magically” the replacement will do the job.

However, in support of the smaller size of the item, the support structure built up in Step 2 and Step 3 needs to be slightly adjusted. The whole construct will then look like this:

The blue bricks are from the previous steps. The purple bricks are from the previous step but have been repositioned to support the smaller hinge. The red bricks have been just added in the last Step.

Next, we are on to Step 5 of the instructions – which will show if our replacement hinge will work with the model:

Again, we are facing an element replacement: Part No 69c01 has now become Part No 9044. I was lucky to find it using the search term “tap”. The other items are straight forward:

In the next step, we can see the computers being placed inside the control room – which is going to be a bit funny for us using the LDDextended scheme:

But first things first – we start on the left again, building up the Launch Pad structure. Adding the four Launch Area Markers and the vertical support structure goes easily – the Part Numbers are correct. Entering Part Number 3039, however, produces the correct brick (actually a Roof Tile) but without the computer image on the front…

Now this is the limitation of the LDDextended scheme – all bricks are basic and need to be colored manually (and being generic, they don’t have special prints either). But there are “computer bricks” available – just in a different scheme!

So save the Launch Pad Project and create a new project – this time, use the DESIGNbyME theme. You will immediately see several bricks for Part No. 3039 – including some that show computer fronts (even if not the original ones we can see in the instructions).

The trick now is to drag & drop them into the drawing area, then copy them to the clipboard and switch back to our space station project.The remaining thing to do is to adjust the color of the “computer” to blue.

The next two steps – Step 7 and Step 8 – are bringing some more elements to the launch support structure and the control room – the only interesting one is Part No 3066 which is a 1×4 Brick without pins – these will – with a transparent color – become the windows of the Control Room. Since both steps have nothing new for us, I will just add the bricks and show the result:

The only thing that sticks out a little bit is the need for an adjustment in the vertical launch support structure: the original instructions show two 2 x 10 plates on the outer side, with an 2×8 and 2×6 plate each on the inner side. Plus, of course, the 2×4 of the original hinge. Since we are using a replacement hinge, you need to adjust the inner plate sequence: 2×2, 2×8 and 2×6.

The next step – Step 9 – is not adding anything we do not know about already – so this is also a quick skip, we are focusing on Steps 10 and 11. The first thing to find out is that the Part No 3956 exists and can be used – but we will have a problem finding a hose for the support structure. Fortunately enough, Part No 3839 exists so we can get the launch support structure worked out just fine.

Last but not least, we need a Rocket… and a parabolic antenna to support flight control. So let’s get at the rocket first:

The Rocket is straight forward – it really only consists of 6 different types of bricks:

• The Cone – which also serves as exhaust outlet. – Part No  3942
• The barrel style brick – Part No 6143.
• The Mini Handle which serves as antennas of the small satellite. Part No 3839.
• The Antenna – Part No 3957
• Four of the 1×1 Plates to serve as lights. Part No 3024 and
• A 2×2 Plate as cover for the lights – Part No 3022.

Putting it all together on the Launch Pad, it turns out that LDD cannot properly place the rocket in the location of the Launch Pad Area – therefore, this is moving one spot away from the support structure. The completely assembled rocket is now placed on the launch pad – red items indicate the addition in this step.

Last comes the Satellite Dish: this is interesting because it brings us three new bricks we have not used yet:

• The Turntable 2 x 2 Plate – Part No. 3680
• The 1×2 Hinge – Part No. 3937 & 3938
• The Satellite Dish – Part No. 3960

Quickly assembled, our Rocket Base is now ready for operations – just awaiting for the crew to arrive…

Fun playing around with old toys in new ways… and so much cheaper than way back when these have been sold… but then of course, it has always been nicer to have the real model to play with… when you were a child…