Subject:
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Re: More information on LEGO Digital Designer and other things
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad, lugnet.lego.direct
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Date:
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Thu, 1 May 2003 23:18:24 GMT
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Viewed:
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1718 times
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Lots of great stuff in here, please see comments (and <snips> below):
In lugnet.cad, Todd Lehman writes:
<snip>
> Obviously the LEGO-supplied LXF parts will have some restrictions. Do you
> also mean that homebrew LXF parts would also have restrictions? AFAIK, if
> I create my own part in LDraw .DAT format, I can sell it. I just can't sell
> parts I download from ldraw.org.
Probably something like that. We are still working all this out. (Thus one
of the reasons for the NDA that the LDraw developers were asked to sign)
> I think it would be reasonable if the restrictions disallowed commercial
> use of homebrew LXF parts which embody official LEGO parts (e.g., LEGO's
> intellectual property), but if someone makes, say, a birthday cake in LXF
> format, they should be able to sell it. IMHO.
Noted and will pass on to the group.
> > Which means if you want to make MEGAbloks parts, or anything else, then
> > you are welcomed.
>
> Yay! And K'Nex, Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs, Anchor Stones, Fischertechnik,
> Geomag, Roger's Connection, Modulex, Cuboro, Scalino Marble Runs, Zome, Zolo,
> and Zoob? Is it a general 3D description language?
I'm not personally sure, as that exceeds my tech knowledge and involvement
at this point. This is info that will come out soon though.
> If it's general enough, it might preclude the need for a Construction Toy
> Markup Language. :-)
>
> > If you wanted to make a part that looked like a birthday cake, you
> > can. You just can't sell parts made in our format or incorporate them in
> > commercial applications.
>
> That doesn't seem fair, if the thing I'm modeling is my own design.
I understand your concern, and you understand our position on non-commercial
use. Again, I will pass this onto the team. And again, more info on this coming.
> > (I know there are several "exceptions" that may be
> > asked about, and I am already working on getting those questions answered.
> > I will be back with answers as soon as I can)
>
> TIA :)
>
> > 3+ years in the making, we consulted the fans as both a large group and as
> > individual conversations. The format is both a binary format and a text
> > (human-readable) format.
>
> Yay text!
>
> BTW, do you mean that an LXF file would have both binary and text sections
> in the same file, or that the SDK can read/write LXF files in either binary
> or text forms?
Again, beyond my text knowledge, but we will release all this info as soon
as we can.
> > [...]
> > The SDK is a by-product of the DD efforts, and since we are only building DD
> > for Windows, the SDK we release will only be Windows. That being said, there
> > is no reason it can't be ported, since the SDK will be well documented.
> > Really all the SDK is going to be is a set of Windows DLLs. Now before
> > anyone strings me up from my toes, please understand that with such a very
> > small percentage of our LEGO.com users being non-Windows users, it just
> > doesn't make financial sense for use to develop DD for Linux or Mac.
>
> But the imporant thing -- very encouraging, IMHO -- is that you'll allow the
> SDK to be ported to Linux and Mac OS. I'm very pleased to hear that. I would
> love to see an open-source version of the LXF SDK for Linux.
That's the goal. We are working our tails off to make that happen, so the
desire is there. I will warn though, that there are legal issues involved
here that may cause a hangup, but hopefully you are clear by now what our
goals on this subject are.
> Will you supply a test suite so that authors of ported SDKs can test their
> code against the official results?
Good question, and I don't know quite yet.
> > I hope to be able to release the source code to these DLLs, but haven't
> > gotten final approval for that yet.
>
> Do you think it'll be released under GPL or a license like Perl's, or would
> it be a special LEGO license? (Just curious...I don't think it matters to
> much from a practical standpoint.)
Since I am not totally familar with those examples, I can't speak to this
directly. I will say that is likely to be something similar to an GPL, but
with certain "LEGO" issues, which in your example probably means it will be
a special LEGO license. Again, not sure quite yet. This is all part of the
legal issues currently underway.
> BTW, do the DLLs in the SDK do any rendering or graphic manipulation or are
> they primarily for importing, exporting, and internally manipulating objects
> and object trees in the LXF format?
Another good question to pass on to the team! :)
> > As far as the "certification process", there are still some details to work
> > out on how widely distributed the SDK is. So for the immediate term, let's
> > assume that we are taking about a undefined group of people. [Note: This is
> > for discussion only at this point, and may change later]. We will come back
> > to this later.
>
> OK, sounds like, at least initially, the SDK source would only go to a few
> people for the express purpose of porting the SDK to other platforms. If
> it's the case that LEGO doesn't want the whole world to have access to the
> SDK, then I'm curious what it means for ports to non-compiled languages like
> Perl and Python.
Most likely. As you have probably seen from LD, we want to get these kinds
of things out to as many as we can. But we may have to control that growth,
to some extent. Nothing has been decided yet, and I hate to keep referring
back to legal issues, but ....
> Curious also if the SDK is written in C or C++ or C# ?
You are full of good quesitons tonight! Another one for the list to answer
later.
> > - "Would LEGO like to see LXF replace LDraw someday? " - Only if you want it
> > to. For what it's worth, that's where we are putting our energies,
>
> Aha. I thought so. That's one thing that hasn't changed in 3 years. :-)
> Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Yep. We developed what we think is a robust solution. So logically, that's
what we are supporting.
> > and if you like it then hop on. But if you (you meaning the community)
> > doesn't like it, then just ignore it and carry on with the LDraw file
> > format.
>
> Well, there's a third option, and that's for the community to take what it
> has learned from .ldr and .lxf, and develop a format that's superior to both
> .ldr and .lxf -- both technically and legally -- but I don't think that would
> ever get off the ground, since LEGO is probably being open enough with LXF.
> :)
That's the hope. Plus, like I said, one of the advantages is that you have
people working on this project full-time, so the hope is that we can drive
it forward in a way that part-time fans simply don't have time to do.
That being said, we wouldn't try to hold you back from doing it if you
wanted to!
> > We know LXF
> > is a new unproven format, and that the LDraw file format has many strengths,
> > and may continue to have some advantages over LXF. We also know there are
> > some some shortcomings with the LDraw file format, which is why we are
> > attempting to create a next generation format. We're not trying to have a
> > battle of formats, just put our own new internal format out there for others
> > to use and if you like it, great! If you want to tell us what you don't like
> > about it or think should be changed, great!
>
> I think that's awesome. Way to go!
Seriously, glad you like.
> > - "I expect we'll see a press release this summer touting the fact that
> > AFOLs have embraced the LXF format" - Only if you actually embrace it!
>
> Ya, I fully expect that to happen, especially if we can get the cross-
> platform issues solved quickly. I think it's awesome that you'll document
> the file format in enough detail that someone could write converters without
> even having seen any LEGO source code. This was probably my #1 concern that
> I stated to Brad and Torben, with single-platform-ism being #2.
And hopefully you can see that we really did take both of those
considerations/concerns to heart. I know that sometimes it's hard to see
where and when we implement what we hear from the fans, but we seriously do
listen, then do our very best to respond.
<snip>
> > Please let me know if you have additional questions/concerns!
>
> How easily will it be to convert .lxf parts into POV-Ray .inc files? More
> specifically, does the .lxf parts format define sophisticated 3-D geometry
> primitives like spheres, cylinders, cones, bezier patches, blobs, etc.? My
> biggest technical concern about a new parts format -- one intended to be a
> master format -- is that it ought to contain enough information to be
> converted to multiple formats. Again, obviously I'm not a parts developer,
> but I'll be writing code for LUGNET that manipulates parts data for various
> purposes.
No idea. But this should become clear when we are able to more freely talk
about the format.
> What will happen to all the great 3-D libraries out there like LGEO, L3G0,
> L3P, etc.? I guess they would become obsolete, or be ported to LXF format?
Well, I'm not really sure, but again, we can take these things up when we
are able to more freely share info. I will say that these tools are
represented by the team that we have asked to sign NDAs.
> I would assume that LXF handles colors as materials rather than just plain
> colors, yes? A black tire is a different "color" in LXF than a black brick,
> right? Will LEGO be releasing a full set of internal color IDs and color
> names? The color chart I made here <http://guide.lugnet.com/color/> I'd
> love to update that with official color information.
See above about how LXF handles colors. Soon young Padwan. :)
As far as the colors list, I would love nothing more than to get that out.
However, I'm not sure when/how that will happen. The color numbering we used
is much more complex than the LDraw scheme because of production issues,
materials issues, design issues, and more. It's not necessarily correct to
say 6005 = 12345. It's more like:
The 4th generation 2x4 brick, design number 3004, using material number 123,
in color 345, in year 2003...... = element number 1234567890.
Or something. I know that the translation table for both parts and colors is
an issue and has been on our radar for a while.
> Could someone at LEGO shed some light on the patent issue? My sense is that
> it's not something that will really affect us, but it would be nice to hear
> that from LEGO.
Let me see who/what I can track down.
Jake
---
Jake McKee
Community Development Manager
LEGO Direct
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