Orthographic and/or Realistic View in Ldd

[Obsessionist]

I wanted a digital rendering of a Lego design to use as a header for a blog, so I tried using Ldd. My first problem is that I could not get it to display in Orthographic view, that is, things look the same size no matter how far away they are, and objects don't "curve". For example, if you have a long brick in Ldd and look at it from directly above, you will see the sides of the studs. I also need the rendering to be, if not realistic, then at least with clear lines instead of the cell-shaded look....I know nothing about the technical or graphic design lingo, so if you don't understand, I'm sorry. Any help with the problem described or the communication of said problem would be appreciated.I have also tried Ldraw, only to encounter similar problems. If you know how to make a good rendering with Ldraw/LView, that would be helpful as well. I don't care what program I use just so long as the final rendering is good.

[Meiko]

I'm not sure if LDraw has a setting for your needs or not, but it probably does.Besides that, the programs I know that could do this would require you to dimension the parts and sketch them in the program. If you're up to taht, and have money to buy the program, AutoCAD or Autodesk Inventor have worked for me when I needed similar things.

[JrMasterModelBuilder]

I wanted a digital rendering of a Lego design to use as a header for a blog, so I tried using Ldd. My first problem is that I could not get it to display in Orthographic view, that is, things look the same size no matter how far away they are, and objects don't "curve". For example, if you have a long brick in Ldd and look at it from directly above, you will see the sides of the studs. I also need the rendering to be, if not realistic, then at least with clear lines instead of the cell-shaded look....I know nothing about the technical or graphic design lingo, so if you don't understand, I'm sorry. Any help with the problem described or the communication of said problem would be appreciated.I have also tried Ldraw, only to encounter similar problems. If you know how to make a good rendering with Ldraw/LView, that would be helpful as well. I don't care what program I use just so long as the final rendering is good.

LDD doesn't have an orthographic view, it only has perspective view. You'll need to use a proper rendering software to render your models.There a couple of tools to convert LDraw models into other formats like OBJ, but most of them are old/semi-broken/unfinished, but if you decide to go that rout, you could then open them in a 3D modeling program like Blender (free), Maya, 3DS Max, etc.I don't know if it has orthographic capabilities, but I have seen a number of LDD models rendered with LDD to POV-Ray and those results are very impressive.

[Obsessionist]

I'm not sure if LDraw has a setting for your needs or not, but it probably does.Besides that, the programs I know that could do this would require you to dimension the parts and sketch them in the program. If you're up to taht, and have money to buy the program, AutoCAD or Autodesk Inventor have worked for me when I needed similar things.

Ldraw and its affiliated programs don't, but there is something called L3P that takes Ldraw files to POV-ray, which is supposed to do what I want. L3P won't download, though, and besides that I'd need some serious help to use POV-ray at all. I know nothing about code save for a little HTML.

I wanted a digital rendering of a Lego design to use as a header for a blog, so I tried using Ldd. My first problem is that I could not get it to display in Orthographic view, that is, things look the same size no matter how far away they are, and objects don't "curve". For example, if you have a long brick in Ldd and look at it from directly above, you will see the sides of the studs. I also need the rendering to be, if not realistic, then at least with clear lines instead of the cell-shaded look....I know nothing about the technical or graphic design lingo, so if you don't understand, I'm sorry. Any help with the problem described or the communication of said problem would be appreciated.I have also tried Ldraw, only to encounter similar problems. If you know how to make a good rendering with Ldraw/LView, that would be helpful as well. I don't care what program I use just so long as the final rendering is good.

LDD doesn't have an orthographic view, it only has perspective view. You'll need to use a proper rendering software to render your models.There a couple of tools to convert LDraw models into other formats like OBJ, but most of them are old/semi-broken/unfinished, but if you decide to go that rout, you could then open them in a 3D modeling program like Blender (free), Maya, 3DS Max, etc.I don't know if it has orthographic capabilities, but I have seen a number of LDD models rendered with LDD to POV-Ray and those results are very impressive.

I tried LDD to POV-ray, and while it should do everything I need, I like the tech know-how to use it.