Now, let's build a basic puzzle piece that can be used to turn the sun into a puzzle.
Let's get started with the basic shape of a puzzle piece:
The sun will disappear, but that's simply because it's on another layer, the one with the orange dot in it. Organizing objects in different layers in Blender is a great way to ensure that things don't quickly get out of hand and to ensure that there is no need to hide or unhide individual objects. In addition, multiple layers can be viewed at once if desired, so you can work on related objects. For now, we'll use this empty layer to start building our puzzle object:
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:The Grid subdivisions won't be visible until you check its geometry by toggling Edit Mode quickly. For later steps, though, this piece needs to be positioned in the back-right quadrant of the 3D grid that we're working on. In other words, one corner of this grid needs to be sitting on the origin.
-0.4
units. Be sure to type the amount to extrude on the keyboard, remembering to hit the - key when you do.1.5
. Again, be sure to type the scale factor in.1.5
as well:This creates the basic, but flat, shape of an interlocking puzzle piece. Because both the tab and hole are made with complementary actions, they will mate perfectly.
Now to make the puzzle piece the appropriate size for the sculpted part:
Changing the Pivot Center allows control of the point that the scale and rotation actions occur around. In this case, because the puzzle shape has been moved so that its corner is at the origin, the scale operation will keep that corner where it is as the rest of the piece grows. Notice how this works in the very next step.
Adjusting the view and switching to Wireframe view (Z) can help with this step. The puzzle piece should completely cover a quarter of the sun model with the tab and blank completely inside the face without getting too close to the edge so that it can be a solid connection. If the rays of the sun reach too far to make this possible, the puzzle piece may have to be edited in Edit Mode to extend the edges along the X and Y axes until it fits.
It is important to apply the scale operation because the modifiers we'll be using work on the object before scaling, and this project requires some precise control on the final model.
Let's get started with the shaping of the piece into an object:
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.The Offset property tells the Solidify modifier where the newly solid shape should be created relative to the original flat shape. An offset of 0
creates a solid shape with the original shape in the exact middle. An offset of -1
makes the original shape the top of the solid shape, relative to the normal of the flat shape. An offset of 1
makes the original flat shape the bottom of the solidified shape.
If the view is adjusted to look up from below, it can be seen that the puzzle shape, now a puzzle blank, doesn't extend to the bottom of the model. This is perfect because 3D prints need a flat bottom, and the puzzle blank will define a perfectly flat bottom, essentially cutting the bottom flat. This is nothing to worry about.
When trying to make two objects that will interact with each other, such as the pieces of a puzzle, having pieces that are mathematically perfectly aligned is actually a bad thing. Edges in the design software that overlap perfectly will be too tight when made real to be able to slide past each other. So, the puzzle piece needs to be shrunk, just a little bit, to make it a suitable puzzle piece. Here's how you do it:
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.0.2
.Besides the model getting darker in the 3D View, there's no real indication of what the Solidify modifier did. Why did the model get darker? It is because its outside shell's normals are now pointing in the wrong direction as the Flip Normals option was checked. That's just a fancy way of saying that mathematically, the shape is now inside out, but that's okay because the inside-out shape is eventually going to be thrown away, with the inner shell being kept.
In Wireframe view (Z), on zooming in a bit on the edge of the piece, it can be seen that inside the puzzle piece is what looks like another, slightly smaller puzzle piece.
The next step is to get rid of the old, inside-out shell and keep just the slightly smaller puzzle piece.
There are now two puzzle shapes, one slightly smaller than the other. This can be confirmed by looking at the outliner, like this: