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Subject: 
Lego Creator Review
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.cad
Date: 
Tue, 27 Oct 1998 02:41:53 GMT
Viewed: 
1476 times
  
Hi All,

I've spent the weekend getting to know Lego Creator better, and here is
my
review:

Pros:
1.  It is an interactive world.  You can set it to day, night or real
time.
2.  You can save models that you build and reuse them in other worlds.
3.  You can give people and objects sounds.  (Not anything elaborate,
but
they give you the choice of adding your own.)
4.  You can use either the keyboard or the mouse.
5.  You can blow up models.  (A really neat effect.  Good if you are
having
a play battle and you want to watch your models get destroyed.  Or a
helicopter crash into a bank.)
6.  You can point-click the piece or group of pieces you want to work
with.
(No searching through lines in LEDIT for the piece you need to change or

move.)
7.  The minifigs walk.
8.  They included flowers and lots of trees.
9.  They have transparent bricks that can light up at night.
10.  There are active bricks, like hinges that move, helicopter blades
that
spin, etc.
11.  Lots of patterned bricks (all Town JR.).
12.  The structure of the software is such that it would be easy to add
in
new pieces and models.  They will have a web site up and running soon,
and I
believe they will have additional parts and models that you will be able
to
download.  It is really set up a lot like LDRAW as far as files go.
There
is a folder for models, worlds, parts, etc.  Once a file has been placed
in
the folder the program can access it.
13.  Once you have built a model you can click on an icon to go through
its
building steps.  Even if you enter someone else's world you can just
select
a model press the icon and see how it was built.
14.  Limited animations, but they are easy to set up.

Cons:
1.  Viewing window is too small (for me).
2.  Movement around the world is ok, but not the best.
3.  It is hard to build a large model.  When you zoom out to look at it
the
pegs on the ground disappear so it's hard to make changes.  You end up
having to zoom in and zoom out a lot.  Gets a little frustrating.
4.  You can't rotate pieces in spherical coordinates.  You can only
rotate
them in the xy plane (or on the ground).
5.  You can only move pieces by 1 peg, no 1/2 peg movements.
6.  They have only included about 1/4 of all the pieces that are out
there.
(Basically 1998 Town Jr.)  They didn't even include a 6x16 plate.  No
4x3
Windows, no 4 holed 4x5 doors, no brick hinges, no arches, only a few of
the
basic roof pieces, the list goes on.
7.  The game was written with a proprietary modeler, so you can't create

something using a better one and transport it in.
8.  Some pieces were not created with as much detail as we are used to
in
LDRAW.  Handheld tools are blocky, and all of the pegs appear to be
fairly
shallow.
9.  You can print out models and the steps to create them, but I
couldn't
find any way to save them as jpg or bmp files.

Summary:
I think its something we all should have.  If for anything else just to
see
where we would like LDRAW to go in the future with an interactive world
that
you can play in.  LDRAW still has it beat hands down as far as ease of
model
building, selection, and flexibility, I really don't see that changing
anytime soon.  LDRAW's quality is still much better, both in program
use,
add-ons, and parts.  (That's saying a lot for a program that was written
a
few years ago.)  Also, POV-Ray rendered legos look a whole lot more
realistic, and the possible environmental settings are endless.

Adam Howard



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Lego Creator Review
 
Adam Howard wrote in message <363532F1.3B0B53CA@m...ne.net>... (...) Just a quick question: Who made the Lego Creator program ? Was it Autodesk again ? Leonardo (26 years ago, 28-Oct-98, to lugnet.cad)

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