Minecraft has pretty brilliantly combined two things no nerd can ever resist: resource management games and playing with Legos. It’s the “Settlers of Catan” Lego set, except digital. OK, there’s a third thing no nerd can resist, zombie killing, but let’s face it, it’s really all about finding weird types of materials and building something out of them, or constructing something enormous.
And now, thanks to MIT’s Media Lab, you can actually run off those creations in a 3D printer and have…well…an exceptionally elaborate and overly expensive nerdy paperweight, but at least it’s a really neat paperweight. Essentially, they’ve designed a simple program that scans the Minecraft environment using specific points you lay out, and creates a 3D printer file of whatever you want. Check out the example video on the next slide.
[ via the crafty miners at Geekosystem ]
