Building the Lego Millennium Falcon Brick by Virtual Brick

Although it was released back in 2007, Lego's "Ultimate Collector’s Edition Millennium Falcon" is still the biggest set they've ever released, topping even the giant model of Vader's "Executor" Super Star Destroyer. It's not in production anymore, but you can still pick one up for the price of a small car on Amazon. Clocking in at over 5,000 pieces and weighing about 24 pounds in the box, it's not something that you can just throw together in an afternoon, so naturally builders want to record the moment(s) for posterity. I did it myself with the much smaller VW Campervan model this Christmas, but with a set this size it seems that just setting up a camera on a Time Lapse just isn't good enough.

GeekDad Dave Banks did just that for the 30 hour build with his son, condensing it down into just under 8 minutes. David Gunstensen went all meta with his stop motion build and actually had the minifigs help do the hard work. Lego fans Paul Romien and Greg Radzimowski spent 38 hours turning the build of the smaller Falcon set into a little adventure movie, having a lot of fun along the way.

Francisco Prieto however, has taken it to the next level. He's spent 3 years creating the video you see above using 3D modelling software, painstakingly creating each brick as a separate model, then assembling and rendering them frame by frame. The 3D software has given him the opportunity to use some unusual camera angles, allowing us to see parts of the build that just wouldn't be possible in meatspace, for example panning along the underside of the ship as the bricks fall into place. The 5,344 Lego pieces have been turned into 3,572,568 polygons in the process and it took a total of 670 hours to render the animation!

Top work, Francisco, don't let anyone tell you that you must have too much time on your hands!