2.5D Benchy - The jolly color blending torture test

This is mostly intended for HueForge; but if you don't have it, you can still have fun. Let's go one step at a time...

If you don't have HueForge…

I have added 4 STLs so you can play with this "2.5D" (or flattened) Benchy, adding color changes or using different filaments for blending. Plus, there are 4 3mf files for the Prusa Mini (in PrusaSlicer), that can help you with the intended settings. You can change the settings you want, of course.

These STLs are thick enough to use quite translucent filaments (which in HueForge means a TD of 20 to 24-ish, in case you have a HueForge TD table). This means something like a "milky translucent" PLA (not transparent like Fillamentum's Crystal Clear) for the full color to rise, or something more opaque (the color will appear sooner, so you can play with that —or go full color).

You'll want to use small layers, like 0.05, for the Benchy; and a 100% infill. I put the Benchies on top of a box, and added a height range modifier and some other modifiers to the box, to have no top infill layers, gyroid infill (to look like waves) and a 0.2 fast layer height.

I want to HueForge Benchy!

Here in the images there is a whole session of transparent-background PNGs so you can HF it yourself. They're grayscale, so good ol' classic Luminance mode will work fine, and you can adjust the curves —great for practicing and getting into the basics. It's pretty simple; the only caveat is that you may want to set the minimum height relatively high (let's say, about 1mm) to have a “background” for the blending —but that's it and all.

The images were created using Arjan Van de Ven's STL2IMG applet, available at github and originally intended for CNC. Except for the ISOmetric variants, all views were cut (so they start at —almost— 0 height, the lowest non-zero value for black) and then the backgrounds removed.

Happy printing!