LDD Toa Nathek

[Takal]

Long time no see, BZPower. I know I'm not the most active of members, but I've got a 3-part LDD project to give me incentive to post here. This is the first of the Toa I've currently got planned, and the only one completed thus far.I won't be updating the topic when I've done the others - I know the rules, and I expect the topic will be long gone anyway by the time the next is finished. Anyway, on to the MOC:IIYou can TL;DR this bit. It's the background of the buildA while ago, I built an LDD Toa Nuara to my dimensions measured in lego. It was pretty much a total failure. The limbs took ages to pose 'cause of the really incredible lag LDD generates trying to rotate body-sized lego structures, added to the difficulties of posing ball joints as opposed to hinges. On top of that, the limbs were stick-thin (I'm not exactly muscular, you see. I made the mistake of forgetting Toa are clad in quite significant armour), the... rear padding... was ridiculously disproportioned 'cause I'd estimated it and the mask (the one part I was pleased with) looked huge on top of the rest of the body, though actually the "head" it was built over was quite pleasingly proportional.I really wanted something to show for the many hours of effort I put into it, but the MOC itself was pretty much a washout. I could have revamped it (in fact, I still want to, but that's a pipe dream as of now), but I didn't want to invest that much time into building the same thing again, especially so soon. So I decided on one of the many Bionicle based Toa teams I've built over the years, and went for one I felt I wouldn't be tempted to put the same stick-thin proportions on: This one. Using what I'd learned not to do with the one failed MOC, I'd build three others.IIAnd this is what I've builtThe joints are, I admit, very gappy. In order to allow the limbs to move with a near-natural range of positions, I think it's neccessary. I replaced as many of the ball-jointed sections as I could with hinge arrays - the neck, fingers and wrists are the only joints that use the ball bearing method, which suffer heavily from lag when they're posed.The picture's not all that clear at this distance, so here's a range of pictures that cover pretty much all the surfaces in recognisable detail:Front of feet and shinsBack of feet and shinsFront of thighs, pelvis and lower armsBack of thighs, pelvis and lower armsFront of torsoBack of torsoKanohi Ruru(It's not actually supposed to be a Ruru, but that's not the topic, here)And yeah... Full body Articulation. (edited to right pic) Counting the three-hinge arrays replacing the ball joints as one joint, he has 43 points of articulation, while in practice it's 55.If you want the file to play around with, it's here. Bear in mind it's a huge, laggy model. It might not be supportable on some computers, and it'll appear to freeze whenever you edit an angle, change the group of bricks you're changing the angles around, switch the angle tool (after it's been used) for any other tool, when you load it or when you save it. These are all temporary effects, though. In the most severe cases (on this computer), they'll last three minutes at most (doing things like rotating the whole body around an extremity like a foot or a knuckle).So, comments? If you have any ideas, I'd really appreciate feedback on ideas to make the others less gappy, while still mobile. I don't think I'll be editing this one, though.

Edited November 9, 2012 by Takal

[Chro]

Wow.This is pretty epic.I'm kind of too dumbfounded by the awesomeness of it all to actually say anything useful. The proportions are better than the last one, for sure; the one thing I really dislike would have to be the neck. I know it might limit articulation to do so, but it seems way too skinny.Anyway, fantastic work, looking forward to the others (if you decide to make more).

[The 1st Shadow]

Woah....Can I just "ditto" what Chro said? :PThis thing is incredible. Very humanoid and quite lifelike. I think the only problem I have with it is the neck. Though I suppose with something that big it's hard to do too much. Also, the Ruru is recognizable, but I feel like it conforms to the shape of the head too much. Otherwise, it looks pretty good. Everything looks so smooth and well-built. Very impressive. I definitely look forward to whatever you make next!

[Mr. Cup of Fail]

oh oh my god that that is a epic MOC mate love of you use LDD to make this i give it a 10 out of 10Do not bypass the word filter! -Tufi

Edited November 9, 2012 by Tufi Piyufi
Filter bypass removed.

[Takal]

Wow.This is pretty epic.I'm kind of too dumbfounded by the awesomeness of it all to actually say anything useful. The proportions are better than the last one, for sure; the one thing I really dislike would have to be the neck. I know it might limit articulation to do so, but it seems way too skinny.Anyway, fantastic work, looking forward to the others (if you decide to make more).

Thanks, Chro. The "neck" is actually supposed to be that diamond prism rising out of the torso that only comes up three studs or so. The pillar there is more of a head support, if you understand me... I'm covering it over in the next one already, but it was difficult to mount anything inside the head to attach a neck onto in this particular one... Then there's the issue of not conflicting with the ball joint inside. I thought it would end up pretty messy or rough compared with the rest of it, so I thought omitting it would be neater.

Woah....Can I just "ditto" what Chro said? :PThis thing is incredible. Very humanoid and quite lifelike. I think the only problem I have with it is the neck. Though I suppose with something that big it's hard to do too much. Also, the Ruru is recognizable, but I feel like it conforms to the shape of the head too much. Otherwise, it looks pretty good. Everything looks so smooth and well-built. Very impressive. I definitely look forward to whatever you make next!

Thanks for the comment. Like I said above, that's not going to be an issue with the other two who have more conventional kanohi (as I attempted with the Ruru), the first of which is completed and more true to the original (with a few little augments), which allows me to cover the neck pillar more easily. If you're interested (and good at navigation - my brickshelf's a mess of mostly old rubbish), there's WIP folders for the others. I'm not going to post links to there... I know the rules regarding WIP topics. As a heads-up, I plan to scrap the current Tarthus work and start over. It's too much like Nathek.

oh oh my god that that is a epic MOC mate love of you use LDD to make this i give it a 10 out of 10Do not bypass the word filter! -Tufi

Thanks for the comment (and the edit, Tufi).

[The 1st Shadow]

Thanks for the comment. Like I said above, that's not going to be an issue with the other two who have more conventional kanohi (as I attempted with the Ruru), the first of which is completed and more true to the original (with a few little augments), which allows me to cover the neck pillar more easily. If you're interested (and good at navigation - my brickshelf's a mess of mostly old rubbish), there's WIP folders for the others. I'm not going to post links to there... I know the rules regarding WIP topics. As a heads-up, I plan to scrap the current Tarthus work and start over. It's too much like Nathek.

I actually did look at some of them. Didn't get a good look at the Tarthus one, though.

[Dralcax]

The joints are very tiny... Probably the ball joints are hopeless, but, I'm pretty sure it's possible to build massive hinge joints.