I had to add ‘For The Serious Fan’ because this app for the true building blocks fan. With 3D Builder Brix you can select from many different brick typs and colors, rotate, connect, build and then move about to use the scenes as you like. In the right hands, you can pretty easily do a stop motion movie that is far more detailed than the usual ‘Lego’ YouTube vids.
At first, the user interface can be a bit much to jump into. It is very much not a Apple style. To get to many functions for fine tuning, you have to hold on a object and at the same time tap on the action. It works once you get the hang of it. You start… with a blank canvas:
Tapping ‘brix’ at the bottom of the screen brings up your building blix options. Each group on the left is a general shape, select one to get the multiple of options within that brix type, color choices can be scrolled through on the right.
The little person icon at the bottom can be chosen to bring up the face, body and leg options you have to add Minifigs to your creation.
Once you have your ‘Minifig’, you can make adjustments to them like turn their head on their body and adjust the position of their legs and arms. This is one of the items that requires you select and hold a ‘body part’ then select with another finger the ajustment you wish to make to it. If you were doing a stop motion movie, you will be using this screen a lot to tweak, shoot, then tweak again.
Here you can see where you are tap and holding on a item on the background, then with another finger choosing on the right what action you wish to take on it. In this case, choosing the arm icon would take you to the above screen shot, but you also have options to adjust location and delete the Brix item. While this seems much ‘different’ from what Apple may have done, it works well when you have a lot of Brix buildings and figures on the screen and wish to adjust just one item.
The actual 3D Building Brix pieces have many ways to adjust them so they are at the right angle as you create your building, space ship or other idea you have. This is a truly 3D world your working in so twisting and tiping to make things look correct is important.
As if the three adjusting gear handles wasn’t enough, you can actually choose to bring up many other adjusters. It took me a few times through to get the right angle on all the parts so the minifig and the objects looked correct, angles and depth. All the options really pay dividends when it comes time to start creating a movie as the parts look more realistic than what is available from most other brick type layout apps, even compared to most desktop software options.