It was only after hours of searching that I finally came up with what I was looking for: a way to take a polygon mesh (OBJ or similar) and convert it into a blueprint for building LEGO sculptures.

Don't get me wrong, there are tons of tools out there for LEGO CAD. But strangely none of them mention being able to go from a mesh to a LEGO layout. It's surprising, since it seems like such a natural fit. The rise of 3D printers has rejuvinated interest in voxels, voulmetric pixels, and as evidenced by all the LEGO sculpture artists we seem to be in a golden age of LEGO. 

Armed with Blender and a giant LEGO collection, I set out to get the computer to do the hard work for me. I used Blender, graph paper, a pencil, and of course lots of LEGOs.

Step 1: Voxelizing a Utah teapot

Let me preface this by saying that the Blender UI is not for the faint of heart. I took classes on Rhino and 3DSMax in college, and thought to myself "how different could it be?" The answer: very. If you're new to blender, don't fear the manual. You're going to need it, particularly the parts on installing/using python scripts.

To voxelize the teapot I used a script called Add Cells which covers the surface of any object with any other object. First I imported the teapot, and scaled it up a bit. Then I created my "fundamental unit" of LEGO. LEGOs have an aspect ratio of 6:5, so I created a 1×1 LEGO, a 0.6×0.5×0.5 rectangular prism in Blender.

Selecting both the teapot and my 1×1 lego I ran the Add Cells script (go to the Scripts menu –> Add -> Cells). I chose the Teapot for my object to be voxelized and the 1×1 LEGO as my voxel model.

Tada! A blocky teapot!

Step 2: Graphing each layer on paper

In order to make the build process easier, I went through layer by layer and drew a map of each layer on graph paper. This way when building with LEGOs I could shade in with a pencil each voxel I'd built. It sounds redundant, but when things all start looking the same after a few minutes and something isn't lining up, it's very helpful.

To see one layer at a time in Blender I went into Sculpture Mode, side view, and used ctrl+shift+right mouse to select and hide all but the layer I wanted to see. Then I switched to Top view and copied the layer onto my graph paper. By the end I had a sheet of paper full of wobbly circular outlines.

Step 3: Building it with LEGOs!

The completed model uses 244 LEGOs, many of which are tiny 1×1 and 1×2 bricks. The model is hollow, but the walls need to be fairly thick to be able to support the top. As it is I probably should have made things a little thicker; putting the last two layers on was a delicate operation.

I built each layer sequentially. There were a few overhang pieces near the bottom which I had to append to the layer above them, since they couldn't anchor to anything below.

Overall the project took about 4 hours, with a break in the middle for breakfast, church, etc.

Total LEGO count for the project was 244 individual bricks, distributed thusly:

• 44 2×3 Bricks
• 46 2×2 Bricks
• 58 2×4 Bricks
• 27 1×2 Bricks
• 17 1×3 Bricks
• 8 1×4 Bricks
• 8 2×2 L shaped Bricks
• 33 1×1 Bricks
• 1 2×8 Brick
• 1 2×6 Brick
• 1 1×8 Brick
   

Video of our presentation at Hackday:

In the video,

Ben Combee is speaking, Max Henstell is working the stabster’s pneumatics and Mark Tabry is standing by to protect bystanders, and I am off camera to the left looking pretty for the cameras.

Not in the video is Bill Ward, Charles Pax, as well as the original Max.

* Special thanks to my friend Adam from Twilio who provided us with some assistance in the effort.

For the blow by blow of the event check out our time lapse. Trust me it was 24 hours of tedium just as grueling as watching this 2.5 minute clip.As you can see this was an pretty large effort by NYCR and a hell of a lot more went into this project than is readily apparent. Just getting the equipment there was an event all its own. Max and Charles worked tirelessly to repair Stabby’s pneumatic stabber arm. Max also worked on wiring up the actuators and accompanying arduino code to link up with Ben, Bill, and Marks twilio interface code base. I worked with Mark on a display that showed debug info from the arduinos ( blogarythmic cred ) as well as caller ( aka stabber ) id when stabbing.

We finished up about 5 minutes before time was called… literally. Came down to the wire. Stabby was awarded a runner up award, and supposedly will be on display at Tech Crunch on Wednesday some time during the day.

We had a hell of a lot of fun, and were excited to present a functioning project ( a first for me =P ). Even more exciting was winning a runner up award in a contest that didn’t actually have runner up awards. I guess they were afraid of being stabbed.

We’re time lapsing, and Mr Stabby is here getting his API action on… literally.

Stop by what we are calling battle station resistor in the deep recesses of the hacker caves.

If you have spare sparkfun line relay breakouts… we could use 4 to six if you have some to spare… otherwise we’ll be rube goldeberg a solution.

When you plug in, or join the wireless network at NYC Resistor, you are joining a very special network. We’re one of the first networks to join with Agora Link. The North American arm of a global Research network that is linking hackerspace’s internal networks together into one awesome collaborative mesh. We’re tied in with the ChaosVPN in Germany, and as of this past weekend we have 50 registered ( not necessarily active yet ) end points. Anyways, if you are interested in this sort of thing, you can read more about that here:

• Agora Link Homepage
• ChaosVPN Wiki
• Periodically updated network map

What does this get us? What’s the payoff? Well, we’re just starting to get to work on demonstrating that. First up on deck is a plan to host an international CTF competition using hackerspaces and other labs as the meeting points for teams. So look forward to more details on that in the near future. But, it won’t stop there. We’ve got a bunch of really great ideas that should be popping up over the next year.

Shuttle Atlantis just lifted off on its final voyage. There are 2 shuttle missions left before the end of the shuttle program. I suggest not missing a single launch, and if possible seeing them live. The shuttle program has to be the most inspirational scientific program currently operating. Nothing really makes me more proud to be a human being, or living in the times that we do than watching one of these rather good looking vehicles get launched into the heavens and far beyond.

Really looking forward to another more ambitious space program from anywhere at all, since it seems NASA won’t be pursuing constellation. =(

But let’s look at Atlantis’ rich history. This good ship has flown 32 missions ( 31 of which have completed successfully, with 32 looking beautiful ). She’s been in the shuttle fleet since her flight readiness firing Sept. 5, 1985. 25 years this shuttle has been in service, defying a decision to decommission it in 2008. Atlantis was intended to be relegated to a support role for Endeavor and Discovery, but Atlantis was born to fly and that’s just what she’s doing right now at 2500 mph.

Atlantis made history June 29 of 1995 when she was the first shuttle to dock with the Mir space station as part of STS-71. Before that during STS-30, Atlantis launched the first interplanetary probe launched from a shuttle. The Magellan probe was sent to explore Venus.

Many people have contributed to Atlantis’ successful missions over the years, but Rockwell International has the distinction of having built her. So to the engineers over there, I am sure today’s flight is especially gratifying.

Anyways, Atlantis, from all the folks at NYC Resistor. Thanks for being utterly amazing. Enjoy retirement, I hope you find a really great home.

Fun Fact, Atlantis has traveled 115,770,929 miles ( 186,315,250 km ) and counting…