Try this at home: outdoor mini-sculpture with 3ds Max
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.