Triplets

These are 3-dimensional objects, made from wood. Douglas R. Hofstadter's book 'Gödel, Escher, Bach (an Eternal Golden Braid) features the letters G, E and B. The shadows of the 3-dimensional objects form these letters. The models he used are about 6" high. The models I make are less than 1" on the side.

Since not all combinations of letters are possible, I made a program that calculates the model after sawing three letters from a cube. The program generates all possible locations and orientations of the letters on the cube. A 3-D model can be generated. Both POV-ray and VRML 1.0 ouput are possible.

The 32-bit Windows 95/Windows NT program can be downloaded here.
The DOS version is here.
A few more fonts can be found here.
For an example (the letters F, A and T, approx. 27 kB), click here.
For a model of the cover of the book Gödel, Escher, Bach (approx 83 kB), click here.
For a screenshot of the GEB cover, click here.

Here's what I have to say in the documentation:

!!!Triplet is still in test!!!

Triplet is a program that generates 3D models that cast three
shadows in three directions. That's no surprise, but these
shadows form letters. These models can be generated for POV-Ray
and for VRML.

Options and arguments:

-F=<fontfile> Uses a different font file
-H            noCheck. Don't check if the shadows are correct
-L            nocLean. Don't take out floating pieces of wood
-O=<outpdir>  Put the output in the named directory
-P            POV-Ray output
-S            Cast VRML shadows
-V            VRML 1.0 output
-W            Make walls to cast the shadows on
-X=<prefix>   Prefix the models with (max 4) other letters than CUBE
-3            Optimize the model, so that the number of objects is smaller.

Also, you can (must) specify the triplets on the command line. If more
than one triplet is specified, the models will be stacked.

I.e.:

TRIPLET -v -w -s bge beg

generates the cover of the book Gödel, Escher, Bach.
 
 

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