Ghost

The following information is a single lesson in a larger Tinkercad project. Check out this and more projects on Tinkercad.

Project Overview:

-Duplicate objects

-Use grouping strategically to create shapes not available from primitives

-Plan complicated objects

This project creates a ghost that you can print and light up from the inside.

This will create the ghost’s body and the shapes that look as if a sheet has been draped over an object.

Instructions

1. Pull a cylinder to the work plane and resize it to 35 mm wide, 30 mm deep, and 40 mm tall.
2. Drag a sphere to the work plane and resize it to 35 mm wide, 30 mm deep, and 20 mm high.
3. Place the sphere on top of the cylinder.
4. Drag three round roof shapes to the work plane and resize to be 40 mm deep, and varying heights and widths. These shapes will be the flaps of the sheets.
5. Lean the roof shapes into the cylinder so that the top disappears but the bottom sticks out without leaving space between the roof and the outside of the cylinder.
6. Duplicate these shapes and move copies all around the cylinder, taking care to make them look somewhat random. When this is grouped it looks like a ghost.

This step will use roof shapes to carve holes in the ghost body so light can shine through. The process is very similar to the how we created the face on the jack-o'-lantern.

Instructions

1. Move a green roof shape to the work plane. Resize it so that it is 4 mm tall and 5 mm wide - or whatever you would like. These are going to be the eyes.
2. Move them to the approximate area of the face and leave a small part of the object sticking out. For the other eye, duplicate the first eye and rotate 180° around the Y-axis so that it is exactly opposite. Place this eye where you want it.
3. Turn eyes into holes and group them with all of the objects.
4. Feel free to add a mouth if you like.

This step will make the ghost hollow so that light will shine through the eyes and through the walls.

Instructions

1. Drag a new cylinder to the work plane and resize it to 30 mm wide, 25 mm deep and 40 mm tall.
2. Drag a sphere to the work plane and make it 30 mm wide and 25 mm deep. Place the sphere on top of the cylinder.
3. Group these two objects.
4. On the original ghost shape, select only the cylinder body and the sphere on top.
5. Use the align function to move the hole into the ghost body. First, select the hole and ghost body. Then choose Adjust, Align. Once you see the grid, click on the ghost body again. This indicates that you want to align the second shape to this shape. In other words, the hole will now move to the ghost instead of the other way around. You will see the grid realign around the ghost. Align on the X and Y axes.
6. Now select all objects and group.

This step will make a plug for the bottom of the ghost to hold the LED and the battery. To make plug fit, it needs to be half a millimeter smaller on all sides, or 1mm total.

Instructions

1. Drag a cylinder to the work plane and resize to 10 mm high, 24 mm deep and 29 mm wide.
2. Drag another cylinder to the workplane and resize it to 2 mm high, 30 mm deep and 40 mm wide. Center the first cylinder on top of this one. This will make the plug fit inside the ghost but not slide too far.
3. Duplicate this box and slide the copy so that 3.5 mm appear between them.
4. Group these two new boxes and center them inside the plug.
5. Group the new boxes with the plug. The two arms sticking up will hold the LED and the battery stationary inside the ghost.

The roof overhangs on the ghost may or may not be able to print on your 3-D printer. If they do not print successfully, turn on supports in your 3-D printing software to create temporary supports that you can remove after printing.

Instructions

1. Drag a cylinder to the work plane and resize to 10 mm high, 24 mm deep and 29 mm wide.
2. Drag another cylinder to the workplane and resize it to 2 mm high, 30 mm deep and 40 mm wide. Center the first cylinder on top of this one. This will make the plug fit inside the ghost but not slide too far.
3. Duplicate this box and slide the copy so that 3.5 mm appear between them.
4. Group these two new boxes and center them inside the plug.
5. Group the new boxes with the plug. The two arms sticking up will hold the LED and the battery stationary inside the ghost.

In the next lesson you will learn to carve a digital pumpkin!

Next Lesson: Jack O' Lantern