Magic Minecraft Creeper: Filament Blending in 3 Dimensions

The only 3D Creeper that gets it's variations in color through filament blending!

While it looks like a green cube in the slicer, during printing, layers of black and white filament are applied at varying depths in the walls, resulting in various shades of greens and grays.

PROOF OF CONCEPT

I recently released a filament blending swatch on MakerWorld which uses varying heights of white an black filament behind a color to create different tints and shades. These swatches served as the basis for a few of my other models on MakerWorld. But those are 'flat' models, and since we all bought 3D printers to print in three dimensions, I wanted to explore the potential of filament blending in 3D.

In this photo you can see two example color swatches

and the various tints/shades achieved

by layering different thickness of color behind them.

So I decided I should at least try to prove that filament blending in three dimensions is potentially a new (new to me anyway) technique that could be used to change the color of a 3D model without needing to have 10+ colors of filament and multiple AMS units.

By creating three different cubes - a green cube, and black and white cubes with all six sides composed of smaller varied-height cubes - I created a model that looks like this.

By setting the slicer in a very specific manner, we can essentially change the exterior color of the cube by making the outer green color appear darker or lighter depending on the color of the filament behind it.

The different colors inside the walls of the print

are visible here

The easiest way to print this file is to print directly from the Bambu Handy app, or choose ‘Open in Bambu Studio’ and print without modification. Many slicer settings were adjusted to get this to print properly. Feel free to change whatever you want, but don't be surprised if you get unexpected results!

FAQ:

Q: Why does this take so long to print?

A: It's a FULL COLOR Model. Yes, it uses fewer filament colors than it looks like it should, but there's still a color change on nearly every layer.

Q: How did you design this model?

A: I used OpenSCAD

Q: Why aren't the colors exactly correct for a Minecraft Creeper?

A: The white and black cubes that control the color variations were created programmatically using a random number generator to adjust the height/depth of the color variation.

Q: Will you release the .scad file for this model?

A: Eventually

Q: This print isn't PERFECT!

A: That's not a question. This is a PROOF OF CONCEPT model. The idea is to demonstrate the possibility of color blending in a three-dimensional model versus just a flat print.

Q: Can this technique be used in other models?

A: I certainly hope so; it definitely seems promising.

Happy printing, and please post your makes in the comments!