Announcing BrickPix – a LEGO Mosaic Generator!
Until the launch of the LEGO Art and Dots themes, making mosaics has been something of a niche for LEGO builders. With only a few apps available to make LEGO mosaics, Boris Estulin decided to make his own app, BrickPix, which is available on iOS, Android and online. While still a work in progress, BrickPix has a lot of potential for builders wanting to try their hand and bricks at making mosaics.
BrickPix was inspired by Boris’ sons, who are thanked in the app for initial testing. Boris himself has been building for the past 12 years, introducing his sons to the brick. As a result, their house has a “ton of LEGO bricks!”
With all those bricks, Boris and his sons wanted to build mosaics, but found that the apps available were either unsatisfactory or required the user to buy sets to get their instructions. This led Boris to create BrickPix.
The app was built in phases. Initially, Boris just wanted to build something that he and his sons could use. A software engineer by profession, Boris also used BrickPix to work with some technologies he doesn’t ususally get to use, such as WebGL for 3D rendering. With all of this, Boris realized that BrickPix could be a useful app for other builders so he decided to publish it and make it available as an app and a web app. Altogether, it took 6 months to create.
The app runs quickly in all platforms and creates mosiacs using diffferent plates as needed, as opposed to only 1 x 1 plates. A color palette can be set up for a mosaic, and a listing of all the parts can be made. The back size can be adjusted by baseplate size. A preview of a creation can be rendered in 3D, where one can rotate and zoom in/out to see exactly what the final mosaic would look like. A 2D preview can also be selected that shows where each brick needs to be placed. There’s also a “parts list” screen that shows exactly how many lego bricks of each color/shape are needed to build the mosaic.
At this point, the app is in beta stage – most of the functionality is in BrickPix, but there is still fine-tuning to do. Boris released the apps with this in mind and invites builders to download the app and work with it. He welcomes your thoughts and suggestions.
So what are you waiting for? You can get the iOS app here, the Android app here, or go here at BrickPix.app to play with it. You can also see some mosaics done by the app on Instagram.
