A pink staircase in 530 plates

Any picture can become a brick relief or a flat plate mosaic, and fewer colours means bigger plates and a shorter part list.

One of my Stairset pieces as a Brixels mosaic: 64 × 45 studs, about 51 × 36 cm, 530 plates in four brick colours, one flat layer.

This staircase was never photographed. It is a render from my Stairset series: flights of steps, a thin railing on each side, a pink backdrop, seen through a fisheye. Brixels asks for a photograph, and a picture with a clear near and far works the same way. What is left of it when every patch of one colour has to be a real plate you can order?

Below is how it went from upload to mosaic in four decisions, and what it takes to build. The picture itself can't ride in a link, but the settings can: open Brixels with these settings and upload a picture of your own.

The input: the Stairset piece, scaled to 2,000 px for the upload. The steps give the depth model a clear near and far.

How this one got made

The picture first becomes a relief

Open brixels.krshi27.art, set Build from to Photo and drop the picture onto Photograph. It opens in the Grid layout: one brick column per cell, 64 × 45 at the default Mid size, and the caption says the heights come from the model.

That model is a depth estimate. It works out how far away each part of the picture is, and nearer parts stand taller: the railing, the edge of the nearest flight. I use a depth model rather than brightness, because brightness reads a white shirt as a mountain. If the model can't load, brightness stands in and the page says so.

Picture, depth estimate, Grid relief. The depth map is computed with the same model the app runs; follow the railing from the middle panel into the bricks.

The relief reads well, and it is heavy: its build runs to 40 steps over four 32 × 32 plates.

A flat mosaic carries the picture in colour

Open Bricks and switch Layout to Mosaic. Every cell drops to one flat layer, the picture is carried by colour alone, and each patch of one colour is covered with the largest real plates that fit it. The build drops to 8 steps. At the default 8 colours it takes 852 plates.

The mosaic's controls, set as for the piece at the top.

Four colours instead of eight

How many colours is the control that makes or breaks a mosaic. At full photo colour almost no two neighbouring cells match, and the fill can only lay 1 × 1 plates. Fewer colours give larger patches, larger plates and fewer parts.

Push the slider to 32 and the snap to real brick colours leaves 14, in 978 plates. Drop it to 4 and the staircase survives in pink, grey, tan and beige, in 530 plates. A plate is only laid in a colour Gobricks has it on the shelf in. I chose what is available over what is merely possible, so the part list can be ordered as it stands.

The same picture at 32, 8 and 4 requested colours. Watch the grey steps: from dozens of small plates to a few large ones.

Where the joints fall

Fill from picks the corner each patch is packed from. It changes nothing in the picture and everything in where the seams between plates run, and a few plates in the count: 530 from the top right, 525 from the bottom left.

The same corner of the mosaic packed from two sides. Only the joints move.

From screen to object

Downloads holds the same list a map build gets.

The caption is the build in one line: 64 × 45 studs on twelve 16 × 16 plates, 8 steps, bound as four 32 × 32 sets.

Mosaic (PNG) is the picture at the top of this post. 3D model (LDR) is free and holds every plate in place, which makes it the part list too. Order these bricks sends it to Brickwith, Gobricks' own shop, where every part is listed with its price; the caption under the button says it is an affiliate link.

Want one plate instead of four? Turn on Limit to plate size, pick 32x32, and turn on Scale photo to plate. The picture shrinks until it just covers the plate, the overhang left and right is trimmed, and Brick size greys out, because the plate sets the number of studs.

The same settings on one 32 × 32 plate: 239 plates, two build steps, the middle of the picture.

The designed instruction sheets are sold as a PDF at one flat price; the Building instructions (PDF) fold-out links a finished World kit to leaf through first.

Other controls, one line each

• Brick size sets the cells on the long side: 32 at Coarse, 64 at Mid, 128 at Fine.

• Preview brick colours (Grid only) swaps the picture's colours for real brick colours; the mosaic always uses them.

• Orientation turns a chosen plate between landscape and portrait.

Your turn

Open Brixels with these settings, upload a picture with a clear near and far, and change one thing: try 3 colours, or switch back to Grid and see how tall your foreground stands.

Then send me what you made. I'll ask before I show it anywhere.

Next: The Feldberg, brick by brick, the same machinery reading a mountain instead of a picture.