One of my very best friend did this and wrote about it. It's simply crazy well done. He's the owner of a 3D company producing commercials and short-movies so he's obviously skilled when it comes to 3D modelling but still... He did that replica and "reverse engineered" the various original colors (include the ones from the box) based only on... pictures!
He modelled the various parts, got them 3D printed, "post processed" manually all the parts by sanding them and adding details too small to "3D print", send the parts to a professional painter using a "paint cabin", assembled everything and then even got a replica of the box made!
Here's the story (it's a bit long but fascinating -- if you just want to see the pictures scroll to the end):
http://i.materialise.com/blog/entry/cre ... technology
(btw I'm not affiliated in any way with iMaterialise)
And here's his blog (be warned: some "pictures" are actually pictures into which rendered robots have been added but they're close to photo-realistic so it's not always easy to know which ones are real and which aren't):
http://freetimetoys.blogspot.be/
Hope some of you enjoy
