Starry Night Multi-Color Lithophane

thingiverse

This is a multi-color lithophane, showcasing innovative technique and design. You'll notice there's no example of the printed product yet - I'm still working on getting it right. But I've posted this to inspire you, and who knows, maybe someone out there has an idea that will make this technique work. I started by taking a stunning image of Starry Night and creating a color palette in my photo editor. I chose black, brown, green, three shades of yellow, and three shades of blue - all the colors needed to bring this design to life. Then, I forced the image to "round" to the nearest available color value, saving each color as a separate file. Next, I used Clonerbox's Image to 3D Converter to turn each color channel into a separate STL file. The height of each pixel corresponds to the darkness of the color - for example, the blue file has three altitudes, while the green file has only one. My goal is to refine this process once I get some test prints. If you decide to print this design, I recommend adding a 0.5 mm rectangular base to the "yellow" STL and printing all the files on top of that base. This will ensure a solid foundation for your multi-color lithophane. The underlying challenge lies in generating the STL out of pixels without creating pyramids instead of rectangles. I included a screenshot from my slicer, which I think is an artifact of starting with a flat surface mesh and deforming it upward to create the shape. Ideally, what I want to do is extrude solid rectangles upward. Note that the STL file is scaled to 1 pixel = 1 mm. To match your nozzle or its multiple, simply scale it down - for example, try 40% or 80%.