A Large Model That Makes Building Blocks More Fun | Oasis Vitality

From October 25 to 27, 2024, the China Chenghai International Toys & Gifts Fair — known as the "Play Expo" — opened at the Shantou International Convention and Exhibition Center under the theme "Toy Capital, Igniting the World." On the 25th, at the China Building Block Industry Conference held during the expo, Oasis Capital portfolio company VAST partnered with Gobricks to release Tripo-Gobricks, the world's first 3D building block generation foundation model.

Chenghai District in Shantou, Guangdong Province, is China's capital of toys and gifts. The district is home to nearly 60,000 toy production and business entities, employing over 125,000 people industry-wide. Chenghai's toy industry generates annual output approaching 50 billion RMB, accounting for 33% of global toy production capacity. More than 6 million toy products ship from here to markets worldwide every day. The district's toy creative industry is now upgrading toward high-end, intelligent, digital, and green manufacturing, with a target output of 100 billion RMB by 2030.

This year's Play Expo drew over 100,000 visitors, including more than 80,000 professional attendees. Over 14,000 buyers and exhibitors participated, covering the full R&D, production, and sales chain. The Building Block Industry Conference, a specialized gathering focused on the building block toy segment, brought together industry experts, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts to discuss the sector's current state, future trends, challenges, and opportunities.

How Tripo-Gobricks Applies to the Building Block Market

About VAST

VAST is an AI company dedicated to developing general-purpose 3D foundation models. It has already launched Tripo, a 3D large model with billions of parameters. Traditional 3D modeling spans toy manufacturing, gaming, film and television, and architecture — typically relying on skilled professionals working manually, with long production cycles and high costs. Much like the AI generation of text, images, and video that we're already familiar with, Tripo's AI large model can produce 3D content from a single image or text prompt. Since its launch in 2024, Tripo has gained broad recognition. The recent 2.0 release now leads globally across all 3D generation tasks, enabling one-click generation of highly detailed and accurate 3D models from text or images, with refined text and visual understanding that makes generated 3D content more faithful to user intent.

The AI industry is attracting investment and talent at an unprecedented pace. ChatGPT was one of the fastest applications ever to reach 100 million users. Following text and image content, 3D content is approaching its inflection point for explosive growth — and compared to other modalities, it will drive even greater transformation across industrial supply chains.

Building and Deconstructing as Ways of World-Making

The toy industry is one of the most frequent consumers of 3D content. Tripo-generated 3D models work not only in virtual environments on computers but also integrate tightly with physical industries. The Tripo-Gobricks 3D building block model, jointly launched by VAST and Gao Desi (Gobricks), will fundamentally transform building block design and production workflows.

This partnership with Gobricks is built on a shared understanding: play, building, and creation are not merely entertainment — they are essential tools for developing individual capability, social skills, and cognitive capacity. "Only in play is a person most free, most authentic, and most creative." As important tools supporting play activities, toys help construct a play world separate from reality, where people can explore different roles, situations, and possibilities. Toys are not just entertainment items for children; they are also part of symbolic expression and social interaction in adult society. Understanding individual objects starting from a physical toy is where our understanding of the world begins.

The Tripo-Gobricks 3D building block generation model combines Gobricks' extensive existing library of building block parts, achieving broader part compatibility. Users need only input a text description or provide a reference image to convert it into a buildable 3D block model.

Tripo-Gobricks results

The model is also expected to include intelligent structural optimization: automatically adjusting designs to improve stability and buildability; interactive design modification: allowing users to adjust and optimize AI-generated designs in real time; automatic assembly instruction generation: creating step-by-step assembly guides for complex designs; material and cost estimation: leveraging Gobricks' supply chain intelligence system to provide required brick counts and estimated production costs; and compatibility with existing supply chain pipelines: working with current block editing systems, "dark factories," and robotic arms. This means Tripo-Gobricks can seamlessly integrate into existing production processes, providing comprehensive support for physical building block manufacturing.

AI-Empowered Production Capacity, Driving Significant Economic Impact

The shared aspiration of Chenghai toy manufacturers is upgrading from simple processing industries toward creative industries, cultural industries, and other high-end sectors. In this transformation, Gao Desi Precision Technology has taken the industry lead. Gao Desi has essentially completed the intelligent and automated transformation of its high-precision universal building block component production line, creating a "dark factory." Currently, this production line ships 40 million high-precision universal building block components daily. The basic design of these toy parts — which allows blocks to connect more securely — has remained unchanged since its invention in the 1950s. This simple, child-friendly, easy-to-learn design is considered key to the toy's longevity.

With Tripo-Gobricks technology, ordinary consumers can easily convert text or images into building block models, customizing their own unique creations. This not only provides consumers with a more personalized experience but also enables building block toy manufacturers to further enrich their product line diversity.

For enterprise clients, Tripo-Gobricks aims to fully automate large-project delivery end-to-end. Integrating the large model into production workflows can dramatically save time, optimize resource utilization, improve human resource efficiency, enhance inventory management, optimize production planning, and strengthen supply chain management. These combined benefits allow companies to achieve higher efficiency and lower costs at every stage.

Building a Win-Win Creative Ecosystem

Tripo-Gobricks will also advance environmental protection efforts. By optimizing design workflows through large models, environmental impact during R&D can be reduced, promoting sustainable development. These multifaceted improvements not only enhance corporate competitiveness but also contribute to the sustainable development of the entire industry.

Going forward, based on the 3D building block generation model, we look forward to building a comprehensive building block content platform with partners, exploring building block sales, designer cultivation, content communities, and more within the ecosystem.

The development of the Tripo-Gobricks 3D building block generation model will not only bring significant commercial benefits to building block companies but also drive technological innovation and industrial upgrading across the entire toy industry. This partnership will advance the democratization of 3D modeling technology, enabling everyone to become the creator of their own story.