 | |
| Formerly | BrickBay |
|---|---|
| Company type | Private |
| Industry | E-commerce, internet forum |
| Founded | 19 June 2000 |
| Founder | Dan Jezek |
| Fate | Acquired by The Lego Group |
| Headquarters | , United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Products | Lego parts |
Number of employees | < 30 |
| Parent | The Lego Group |
| Website | www |
BrickLink is the largest online marketplace for reselling Lego products. Its website also offers resources for Lego fans, including an extensive catalog of products and parts and community forums. [1]
BrickLink was founded by Dan Jezek, who had made it after other online sellers were impressed by the website he made for his own Lego store. Originally named BrickBay, the site started operation on June 19, 2000. After online retailer eBay challenged the use of "Bay" in the name, it was renamed BrickLink in 2002. [2]
In 2010, Jezek died suddenly, [3] and his mother Eliska Jezkova succeeded him as CEO. In 2013, the site was acquired by Nexon founder and CEO Jung-Ju "Jay" Kim, who transferred its assets into BrickLink Limited, a Hong Kong-based company. [4] Kim, a Lego fan himself, created some of the most important features of the current BrickLink website, including the BrickLink AFOL Designer Program (now the BrickLink Designer Program) which sold top-rated fan designs as packaged, unofficial sets, and the BrickLink Studio digital design software.
On November 26, 2019, The Lego Group acquired BrickLink Ltd. for an undisclosed amount. [5] [6] [7]
Studio (initially Stud.io) is a freeware computer program for creating virtual 3D models with Lego bricks. It was released on BrickLink as an open beta on December 13, 2016. [8] The next major update to the program, version 2.0, was released in open beta on July 18, 2018. Multiple features were added to the program, including a photorealistic rendering option, BrickLink integration for ordering parts to recreate the model physically and an instruction manual generator.
Initially, Studio for their own parts library silently used LDraw Parts Library, developed by LDraw.org Community under Creative Commons Attribution license. After LDraw.org's admin contacted with the Studio developers the info about use of LDraw has been publicly added to the website and into software. [9] [10]
The https://Stud.io has been historically bad with attribution of their sources. LDraw had to contact them directly to get them to acknowledge use in their about page and most average users still don't know that the Stud.io's library is back by LDraw
— Orion Pobursky, The LDraw.org Admin, https://twitter.com/billtfish/status/1636435679076057089
In 2021, it was revealed that the Eyesight, a render engine of the BrickLink Studio, is built from the Cycles render sources developed by Blender Foundation (at the time, Cycles' source has been already under Apache License, allowing it to be included into proprietary software, while Blender's source stays under GPL), but in same time BrickLink Studio proprietary binary included some GPL-licensed source from Blender too, at least parts of bf_blenlib source files, [11] that is visibe in Studio binary file via hex editor.
Error! Could not get the Windows Directory - Defaulting to Blender installation Dir! , Error! Could not get the Windows Directory - Defaulting to first valid drive! Path might be invalid! and BLI_dynstr_append text too long or format error. Later, the source of Eyesight was released on BrickLink site, as well as the modified sources of POV-Ray, FFmpeg and other sotware libs used in Studio. [10] [12] [13]
In January 2022, The Lego Group announced that BrickLink Studio would replace the Lego Digital Designer (LDD) software as the official virtual Lego building software going forward. [14]
Part Designer is a freeware computer program for creating virtual 3D models of the Lego bricks and custom bricks as parts to be used in the Studio software. It is supporting various file formats, including LDraw File Format, STL and other.
In 2018, to celebrate 60 years since the modern Lego interlocking brick design was created and patented, BrickLink teamed up with The Lego Group to create the AFOL Designer Program. It allowed users to upload their own Lego set designs into a competition. The winning designs had the opportunity to be crowdfunded and, if successful, sold on the BrickLink marketplace. [15] It has similarities with Lego Ideas where the designs that get more than 10.000 likes get accepted to finals and the winning one becomes an official Lego set.
Lego is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously coloured interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) that accompany an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts. Its pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways to construct objects, including vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Assembled Lego models can be taken apart, and their pieces can be reused to create new constructions.
Lego Mindstorms is a discontinued line of educational kits for building programmable robots based on Lego bricks. It was introduced on 1 September 1998 and discontinued on 31 December 2022.
LDraw is a system of freeware tools and a 3D graphics file format standard for modeling Lego creations.
Lego Technic is a line of Lego interconnecting plastic rods and parts. The purpose of this series is to create advanced models of working vehicles and machines, compared to the simpler brick-building properties of normal Lego.
Lego began in 1934 in the carpentry workshop of Ole Kirk Christianen, a Danish furniture maker. During the Great Depression, he began to make miniature versions of his products, which inspired him to produce toys. In 1934 the company was named "LEGO", a contraction from the Danish phrase "leg Godt", meaning "play well".
Lego Creator is a Lego theme for generic models. Creator sets have few specialized bricks to create buildings, creatures, vehicles, and robots. Some sets featured instructions for three different possible builds from the bricks included and most sets in recent years have used the 3-in-1 label. Creator is also a parent theme to Lego Icons, a Lego subtheme for adolescents and adults featuring advanced building techniques and large piece counts, mostly known for Modular Buildings and detailed vehicles. Creator also has had several other subthemes such as X-Pods and mosaics.
Lego Znap was a Lego theme that was launched in 1998. It was similar to K'nex and could be used to construct a variety of structures. It moved away from the traditional system of Lego construction and did not gain popularity. The product line was discontinued in 1999.
LDD may refer to:
Nexon Co., Ltd. is a South Korean video game developer and publisher. It develops and publishes titles including MapleStory, Crazyracing Kartrider, Sudden Attack, Dungeon & Fighter, and Blue Archive. Headquartered in Japan, the company has offices in South Korea, the United States, Taiwan and Thailand.
Lego Design byME was a service connected with the construction toy Lego. Using this service, people could design their own Lego models using Lego Digital Designer, then upload them to the Lego website, design their own box design, and order them for actual delivery. The brand also covered a small selection of products that have been designed by Lego fans, and which were available to purchase as a set.
Lego Digital Designer is a discontinued CAD software made by Qube Software and the Lego Group. It allows people to design a virtual model using a selection of virtual Lego bricks. These models could be saved locally as uploaded to the Lego website for sharing and ordering as a physical product. It is available for macOS and Windows, but only as a 32-bit application, which means that it no longer runs on newer versions of macOS. The program allows users to build models using virtual Lego bricks, in a computer-aided design like manner. Until 16 January 2012, these could be uploaded, along with instructions and a box design, to the Lego Design byME website, from where the models could be ordered for delivery as a real, packaged set. Users can also take screenshots of their models and store the models on their computer in an .LXF file. On 9 November 2011, Lego declared that the Design byME service was going to end on 16 January 2012, due to its failure to meet quality expectations and for being too complex. In its absence, custom brick orders have had to be made via the Pick a Brick service. The closing of Design byME has not affected the ability of users to print custom instructions for their models.
Lego Education, formerly known as Lego Dacta, is a specialized Lego theme created for educational purposes in schools. This theme, introduced in 1999, includes a variety of sets that cater to different educational needs.[2] These sets often focus on Duplo and Technic themes and typically contain a larger quantity of blocks. By incorporating these sets into the classroom, educators can provide students with hands-on learning experiences that enhance their understanding of various subjects, from basic building concepts to advanced engineering principles.[1]
Lego Minifigures are a 2010 Lego theme based on a set of collectible Lego minifigures. Each figure is an original character with new clothing and facial designs, and many contain previously unseen accessories. Each series usually contains 16 different minifigures; however, some series contain as few as 9 minifigures, while others contain up to 22. Since 2021, the number of different minifigures for a series is set to 12. In 2023, the Disney 100-anniversary series came out, bringing the total number of figures to 18, although it was once again reduced to 12 with the second Marvel series. This series also introduced paper boxes, instead of the plastic bags, making it no longer possible to feel up the pieces for each figure.
Lego Ninjago is a Lego theme that was created in 2011 and a flagship brand of The Lego Group. It is the first theme to be based on ninjas since the discontinuation of the Lego Ninja theme in 2000. It was produced to coincide with the animated television series Ninjago, which was superseded in 2023 by a new series titled Ninjago: Dragons Rising.
Mixels is an American animated television series that aired on Cartoon Network and was co-produced by The Lego Group and Cartoon Network Studios. The series first aired on February 12, 2014, with a new episode of Teen Titans Go!. The series revolves around the Mixels, small creatures that can mix and combine with one another. The Mixels are opposed by the evil Nixels, small, discolored and evil creatures led by King Nixel.
Natron is a free and open-source node-based compositing application. It has been influenced by digital compositing software such as Avid Media Illusion, Apple Shake, Blackmagic Fusion, Autodesk Flame and Nuke, from which its user interface and many of its concepts are derived.
Lego Brick Sketches is a Lego theme that recreates iconic characters as stylised portraits. It was first introduced in June 2020. Following the launch of Lego DOTS, a theme mainly targeted towards children, the Lego Brick Sketches theme is the first bas-relief portraits concept to be launched by the Lego Group.
LeoCAD is a free and open-source 3D CAD program for creating virtual Lego models by using parts from LDraw library. It was developed by Leonardo Zide in 1997.
Lego FORMA was the first and only crowdfunded Lego theme. The theme's builds were inspired by fish, consisting of a base "Koi" set and several separate "skin" sets to customize the build. It was licensed and crowdfunded via Indiegogo, and managed by the LEGO Group. FORMA was considered to be a development upon the ideas of the 2011 Lego Muji theme, which combined paper and LEGO bricks. The theme was introduced on 1 January 2019 and was discontinued by the end of December the same year.
Lego fandom is the fan community that exists around the Lego toys.
The Stud.io has been historically bad with attribution of their sources. LDraw had to contact them directly to get them to acknowledge use in their about page and most average users still don't know that the Stud.io's library is back by LDraw
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)BrickLink uses: Vignette renders created using LDraw, MLCad, L3PAdd-on and Pov-Ray
This software uses code of FFmpeg licensed under the LGPLv2.1 and its source can be downloaded here.
