
Recreating the Death Star Trench Run Scene with Lego - syck
https://blog.arduino.cc/2019/01/09/recreating-the-death-star-trench-run-scene-with-lego/
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benj111
Interestingly the original Death Star trench was also made out of standardised
interlocking tiles, (rather than bricks).

I've tried finding a link, but surprisingly Star Wars is a popular subject on
the internet.

Edit: [https://nerdist.com/take-a-look-at-the-practical-effects-
for...](https://nerdist.com/take-a-look-at-the-practical-effects-for-the-
death-star-explosions/)

Leads to: [https://m.imgur.com/a/jRHNa](https://m.imgur.com/a/jRHNa)

~~~
bcraven
And the little details on those tiles are called 'greebles'!

[https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/star-wars/36450/greebles-
ho...](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/star-wars/36450/greebles-how-tiny-
details-make-a-huge-star-wars-universe)

~~~
nmyk
Interesting. There's another documented usage of the word 'greeble' to mean
the little rolled up bits that tend to form when you overuse a facial tissue:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/09/wo...](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/09/words-
david-foster-wallaces-mom-invented/261917/)

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cyberferret
Great build. Wonder if they are all standard issues LEGO pieces or they used a
lot of the specialised Star Wars pieces in there as well? (For the death star
part, I meant).

I built the LEGO Saturn V last year, and 1969 pieces was enough of a headache
for me, so hats off to the artisan who created this with 80,000 pieces!

~~~
mstade
Looking at some of the close ups from the Instagram page[0] it does seem to
have a number of non standard pieces, but mostly for the figurines as far as I
can tell. Stickers too, but other than that it looks fairly standard.
Difficult to tell from pictures alone of course but nothing really stands out
for me as all that non standard.

I too built the Saturn V last year, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Particularly as
it had zero stickers, and very few non standard pieces. Despite having so many
pieces it didn’t feel “inflated” with a bunch of really small pieces where a
single bigger piece would do just fine, as was the case with the UCS Y-wing I
built over Christmas. Great build, but there were so many times I got annoyed
by having two or three small pieces, like two or three 2x2 pieces, where a
single 2x4 or 2x6 would do just fine. What’s the point in inflating the piece
count like that? I’m also not a fan of stickers on the pieces, but at least
there weren’t that many..

[0]:
[https://www.instagram.com/wani_brick/](https://www.instagram.com/wani_brick/)

~~~
braythwayt
As I'm sure you know, there are two incentives for inflating piece counts.
First, many people consider the number of pieces in the set a metric for its
"size," and to them, "bigger is better."

So you get sets with over 5,000 pieces that could have been constructed with
fewer, larger pieces, but the people buying the set actually feel some
satisfaction from the piece count, so... win-win?

Secondly, many reviews of lego sets trot out a "price per piece" number as if
you're buying pieces in bulk and get an instruction manual for assembling a
set as a bonus. Smaller pieces make the set seem less expensive by that
metric.

I dunno how to fix that problem. We'd need to find a better metric (price per
stud? price per gram?) and somehow get everyone to start using that metric in
their reviews.

For me personally, I find the whole exercise meditative, so if the set has
several small pieces that could be one larger piece, that means I spend more
time building the set, and at the end of the day, that's the experience I'm
paying for.

My question would be whether they find a way to make the construction
interesting, or in reverse, whether it is repetitive enough to be relaxing.
There are a lot of subjectives around that.

My son built the Saturn V and loved every moment of it. If you didn't love
working with small pieces that could have been replaced with larger bricks...
I 100% accept that it was not an ideal experience for you. The pleasure of the
build is subjective in many ways, we just have general heuristics to go by.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Secondly, many reviews of lego sets trot out a "price per piece" number as
> if you're buying pieces in bulk and get an instruction manual for assembling
> a set as a bonus.

To be fair, while some people do approach Lego sets like build-and-done
models, lots of people do approach them with adaptability to other uses
besides the one you get instructions for as a key feature, and more pieces
even if they don't make a difference for the build shown on the box are a
benefit for that use.

> We'd need to find a better metric (price per stud? price per gram?) and
> somehow get everyone to start using that metric in their reviews.

The idea of a "better metric" depends on knowing the One True Value Function
of Lego. But I don't think that exists.

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aboutruby
I'm getting a blank page, works on archive.org though:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190110110159/https://blog.ardu...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190110110159/https://blog.arduino.cc/2019/01/09/recreating-
the-death-star-trench-run-scene-with-lego/)

Links to the instagram of the project:
[https://www.instagram.com/wani_brick/](https://www.instagram.com/wani_brick/)

Another very similar blog post with some images:
[https://mikeshouts.com/custom-lego-death-star-trench-
run/](https://mikeshouts.com/custom-lego-death-star-trench-run/)

The flickr:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/72984233@N02/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/72984233@N02/)

The creator's blog post:
[http://www.hobbyinside.com/NeoView.php?Db=IndustryReport&Mod...](http://www.hobbyinside.com/NeoView.php?Db=IndustryReport&Mode=view&&Number=169)
(in Korean)

Also his video channel:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjMW9mMyPnHD2ALOdGnkPyA/fea...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjMW9mMyPnHD2ALOdGnkPyA/featured)

But couldn't find the video

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Fricken
Here's another interpretation of the trench run rendered in Lego as a small
animatic:

[https://youtu.be/WvIC6gjKIMw](https://youtu.be/WvIC6gjKIMw)

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evanb
> includes a cutaway of the back to reveal the insides of this astronomical
> object.

Can you really call it an astronomical object if it's no moon? Is the ISS an
astronomical object? ;P

~~~
sparkzilla
"That's no moon. It's a space station."

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mikkom
> South Korean LEGO Certified Professional Wani Kim

LEGO certifies professionals?

~~~
dagw
[https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/lego-group/programs-
and-v...](https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/lego-group/programs-and-
visits/lego-certified-professionals)

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drewcon
I wouldn’t have even had the patience to post those pictures to instagram the
way they did let alone reconstruct the trench run. Amazing.

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rcarmo
I found it hilarious that this includes a shower room for the stormtroopers.

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em-bee
i love the detail on this.

can someone estimate how many bricks it would take to build out the whole
death-star at that scale? :-)

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matte_black
The savage thing about the Rebels blowing up the Death Star is that they never
evacuated any of the civilian family members. Just blew millions of women and
children to smithereens and cheered.

Also did anyone else expect this to be a Lego stop motion video instead?

~~~
gaius
If only they knew they could have used a single droid-controlled hyperdrive
ship instead

~~~
krapp
A lot of people criticize that part of TLJ as somehow breaking combat in Star
Wars, but it is consistent with the established physics of that universe. Of
course if you accelerate a ship to some significant fraction of lightspeed it
can probably do some serious damage to whatever's in front of it. At least,
tactically, it makes more sense than a lot of things in the original trilogy
(like the Death Star waiting to orbit Yavin before firing at its moon.)

And it wouldn't have even worked as well as it did if the First Order fleet
hadn't been lined up like billiard balls.

~~~
gaius
When the Millennium Falcon arrived at Alderaan it was established that ships
in hyperspace do not interact with physical matter

~~~
krapp
Han also mentions "passing through a star" as a danger of hyperspace travel,
he doesn't specify that danger as not applying within hyperspace itself. It's
not like they put a lot of thought into the way hyperspace actually worked in
the OT.

Also I'm not aware of anything in established canon that says the transition
is instantaneous. It's not impossible that there might be a window when
entering or exiting hyperspace during which the mass shadow of the craft
(possibly increased exponentially by being accelerated to near light-speed) or
the ship itself can interact with normal matter.

~~~
Jaruzel
The effects in all the movies back this up. Ships entering or exiting
hyperspace don't just pop in and out (from a third person viewpoint) but
actually shoot off or slam in very very quickly. Which infers there's ramp up
and down sub-light speeds at each end of the hyperspace journey.

likewise, in the cockpit of the Falcon, you see the star trails extend as she
makes the makes the jump to lightspeed, before the hyperspace tunnel effect
kicks in.

As I'm typing this, I'm now actually wondering how 'lightspeed == hyperspace'
in the SW universe?

~~~
glaurung_
Complete speculation here, but this is my guess: Once accelerated to/past
light speed it is possible to "make the jump to hyperspace" which is like
going through some sort of wormhole. This allows a ship to travel from point
to point without traversing the space between. Maybe something like taking a
straight line instead of following the curvature of space time (yes I know, a
bunch of dead physicists just rolled over). This is how, if you don't think
too hard, it makes sense that Han says he "made the Kessel run in 12 (13)
parsecs," using a measure of distance, rather than speed/time to make his
claim. Presumably all long distance space travel is done at roughly the speed
of light, so what makes a difference is not how fast you go, but how much of a
short cut you manage to make through hyperspace. Feel free to rip this to
shreds:)

