HueForge: Making Color Lithophanes Easier
If you've been looking for a way to create color lithophanes, then you'll be excited to hear about HueForge. This new software turns 3D printers into color lithophane makers, and the results are stunning.
If you're not familiar with lithophanes, they're 3D printed black and white photos that come to life when you shine light through them. The effect is magical and helps to show off your best snaps in a completely new way. However, the process of creating them is difficult, resulting in low-resolution prints with poor color control. HueForge changes all of this by enabling the creation of solid, colorful lithophanes.
HueForge is the creation of Steve Lavedas at Horn & Rhode Art. Rather than being a new slicer or design program, it's a tool that helps calculate where to introduce color swaps based on filament transparency. You don't need to be a professional artist to achieve some impressive results with HueForge, but a keen eye for color and patience are definitely going to help.
Lavedas says that the technique used to create color lithophanes is called "filament painting." This involves stacking ultra-thin translucent layers of filament to create new colors. Currently, only Windows 10/11 is supported, but Mac and Linux versions are in the works.
To use HueForge, you'll need an image, a black and white version of the image, and a PNG file format. You can then select the colors you want to use from the Filament Library and adjust color sliders to your liking. After saving the project, an STL file is automatically generated, which you can then process using your slicer of choice.
HueForge Community Filament
Polymaker, a filament manufacturer, has partnered with HueForge and is offering a filament coupon to early adopters of the software. Before you dive in and start using your favorite filament in HueForge, you'll need to run tests to determine its transparency levels.
There's already a significant amount of filament contributed to HueForge, and the community is already sharing their creations on the HueForge Instagram page. If you're a filament manufacturer, HueForge is also open to you – so if you've got a great transparent or opaque filament, why not upload it to the system?
Visit HueForge.io to learn more about the software. If you're ready to start printing, we've also got a selection of the best 3D printers on the market right now, as well as all the files you could need to print your own lithophanes on Printables.com.
