Making 3D fit reality: Greg Petchkovsky’s outdoor mini-sculpture. (Note: LEGO model section starts at 00:30.)

Australian VFX artist Greg Petchkovsky recently took time out from his day job to create this neat little bit of environmental sculpture, exploiting the power of image-based modelling and 3D printing.

Having photographed the broken corner of a set of steps, Petchkovsky recreated the stone block virtually using photogrammetry package PhotoScan, sculpted a matching set of LEGO blocks in ZBrush, Booleaned the two models together in 3ds Max, and got the result fabricated by 3D printing service Shapeways.

The result: a LEGO model that appears to be embedded seamlessly in the steps.

If you’re inspired to do something similar, Petchkovsky has posted a detailed walkthrough of the process on Instructables, for one of whose online contests the piece was created.

Read Greg Petchkovsky’s walkthrough on Instructables

Note: the contest took place earlier this year, but we only saw the video when it was posted on BlenderNation last week, so a tip of the hat to the folks there.

Tags: 3D printing, 3ds max, Agisoft, Greg Petchkovsky, image-based modelling, Photogrammetry, PhotoScan, sculpture, Shapeways, ZBrush