Portal Illusion - Floating Book

prusaprinters

The Portal games are a mind-bending masterpiece, so I created a mind-bending illusion (not a masterpiece) for your bookshelf. Looks better IRL than in the video.What you'll need:A small mirror (6"x8", 150mm x 200mm shown)A piece of letter paper from your printer, but if you don't have that, then some moon dust compressed into a solid 6x8 (150x200) tile (no thicker than 1/16" (1.5mm) so the portal stays as snug against the mirror as possible).Orange and blue filament (black/dark gray optional). Print Instructions:(The .3mf file has everything oriented correctly.)Portal:Color (CC3D color change silk gold/shiny red shown): Any orange and blue should work, depending on how particular you are. The rings of black are just a color change for a few layers in the middle of the print, and you can experiment with how wide and spread out they look. I haven't found a good light/dark blue color change filament so if anyone has any recommendations, please let me know.Layer height (.2mm shown): Can vary for as much or as little detail as you want, you can also scale the portal in the z direction to change how 3-dimensional it ends up looking.Supports: NoPerimeters/infill: Doesn't matterScalable: As big as you want, you won't fall through. No smaller, since you can't scale the book (the letters are tiny already)Tips: I put my build plate in the freezer to remove this print because the part is thin and has super-thin edges, but needs to remain absolutely flat and intact so it's flush with the mirror. The portal object in the .3mf has a cut object incase you want the book inset so more mirror space is available for the reflection, but this doesn't allow you to move the portal around the book like in the video. Delete it before printing or your portal will have a slot in it.Book:General: There is a short version of the book cover and pages, that is what's shown in the video, and fits fairly well within the portal opening, but does look disproportionate when combined with the reflection. This doesn't matter much though, because that side is foreshortened from the intended perspective anyway. There is also a regular book cover and pages, if you plan on scaling up the portal.The letter holders are the only parts that are different between the book with ‘APERTURE’ as the primary text and the one with ‘HANDBOOK’, the book cover and pages are the same for each.Use .4 nozzle for the letters, so 2 perimeters fit.Color (Justmaker PLA Pro matte navy blue shown): any color will work, but matte is preferable for that real book appearance. Any light color for the pages. Make sure you have contrast between the letters and the letter holder so they stand out against their background. Layer height (.3mm shown): any, really… both book and pages look good with visible layers since it looks like individual seams and pages because of their print direction.Supports:Letters: Tree/organicBook/pages/letter holder: NonePerimeters/infill: Letters:  2/100Rest: 2/10Tips: The letters are as small as I could make them so the whole thing still fits on a typical 3d printer, but the book can be scaled up as long as you scale up the rest of the portal well. The letters are very fragile, but this isn't a concern once they're nestled within their holder. I recommend printing them upright so the compression force from their holder remains perpendicular to the layers. Use tweezers to put them into place, there are small indentations for the top and bottom of the letters to sit in, and this will help you get their spacing and angle right. The letters in the reversed holder have the same orientation for both versions, but the reversed holder lets you read them from the back side, making ‘handbook’ look normal and ‘aperture’ reversed.Assembly:Cut an oval hole in the middle of the piece of paper, sized half-way between the outer border of the portal and inner. You don't have to be precise, as this edge gets concealed by the portal, anyway.Assemble the book, be careful with the letters and make sure you use the indents in the holder as a guide. The text holder and book pages slot into the cover pretty easily.Use some double-sided tape to affix the book in the center of the mirror, slightly towards the back, with the spine and letters facing you.The rest is self-explanatory, put the paper down and then the portal. How I made this:The portal is just a lithophane (generated by ItsLitho) of a portal PNGThe letters are a 3D ambigram, there are many helpful tutorials online.Modeled in Fusion 360 (except the portal)I'll be honest, I discovered that moving the portal and paper around amplifies the illusion completely by accident, I'm not that smart. Thanks for reading and enjoy!