If you’ve visited many Welsh towns you may have noticed that they often have a stone circle. While Wales has many neolithic sites, mostly these Gorsedd Stone Circles are actually reminders of Welsh National Eisteddfods the towns have hosted. Gorsedd stones are used in ceremonies at the Eisteddfod, often at the central ‘altar stone’, but since around 2004 they have, in fact, been fibreglass ‘stones’ to reduce cost and environmental concerns. So any stone ones you see should be earlier, including this one in Llanelli, which was built for the 1962 Eisteddfod that ran there in the grounds of Parc Howard. And when I went to visit I decided it would be quite exciting to make a 3D scan to create my own 3D printable Gorsedd Altar Stone.
Quick summary of this 3D creation
Overview: A 3D scan of a Welsh National Eisteddfod Gorsedd Circle Altar Stone.
Location: Parc Howard, Llanelli, south Wales [map].
Date/era: Modern, 1962.
Software used: Luma Labs AI, Nomad Sculpt, Blender.
Intended use: 3D printing.
Download: Thingiverse page.
This 3D printable altar actually started out as an attempt to create a NERF (a neural radiance field – see Wikipedia), for playing with creating video from digital 3D models. The video for that I created using an Insta360 VR camera with 4K video, taken with three laps around the altar to get views from different heights. I them reframed the 360-degree video to always point at the altar and saved a wide angle 4K video for use in LumaLabsAI. But when done I noticed that LumaLabsAI had actually created a pretty good base mesh. So I then edited it in NomadSculpt before decimating and finishing off in Blender. And after 3D printing it, and adding some paint and fake grass, I ended up with the mini model shown in the photo below.
I hope you enjoy building your own gorsedd stone circle altar stone and maybe it’ll even inspire you to hold your own mini Eisteddfod 🙂
