Prusa Research just released one of the most interesting 3D print utilities: ColorMix Shading.
Color has been a topic for the past few months after the unexpected development of the “full spectrum” concept. The idea is to place differently coloured materials beside each other to fool the eye into seeing other colours that were not actually printed. In other words, you can use cyan, magenta, yellow, and black filaments to produce a wide range of colours.
But while the hardware can now do that, the software is lagging behind. Several major manufacturers have now incorporated full spectrum-like functionality into their slicers and other utilities. Prusa Research has previously launched ColorMix for this purpose.
But this is just opening the door to a new world of desktop FFF colour 3D printing. There are many possibilities, and Prusa Research just lit up a new one with their latest utility, ColorMix Shading.
What does it do? It can automatically generate colour shading on a 3D model.
The idea is to use two different but related colours and plaster them on a 3D model’s surface according to a lighting scenario.
Prusa Research provided an online web app, ColorMix Shading, where you can do this. You drop in a 3D model and then specify two colours. Then you position the light source at anywhere in 3D space around the model. The app then figures out which of the two colours should be applied to each surface.
For example, if you position the light to the left side, then everything on the right side would be a different colour. Of course, you get more interesting results by placing the light source at peculiar angles.
You can even add a second light, but then things get more complicated.
Once you have developed the perfect colour shading, you can then launch the resulting colour-shaded 3D model in EasyPrint or PrusaSlicer. And of course, you can just download the 3MF file for use with any other slicing tool.
Great work, Prusa folks!
Via GitHub and Prusa Research
