3D-printed Game of Life

The sculptures

Sizes are each sculpture's default, with cells large enough that the thinnest joint is at least 1 mm. Pick one to see it turn, then change its size, its generations or its surface before you download it.

• Time sculptures Glider 44 × 44 × 124 mm · 14 cm³ 48 generations · one piece As plain cubes: 49 pieces
• Time sculptures Pentadecathlon 46 × 29 × 116 mm · 33 cm³ 45 generations · one piece As plain cubes: 39 pieces
• Time sculptures Gosper glider gun 103 × 75 × 123 mm · 75 cm³ 60 generations · one piece As plain cubes: 210 pieces
• Time sculptures R-pentomino 81 × 41 × 143 mm · 42 cm³ 80 generations · one piece As plain cubes: 103 pieces
• Time sculptures Diehard 26 × 32 × 165 mm · 11 cm³ 130 generations · one piece As plain cubes: 89 pieces
• Collisions Gliders that vanish 71 × 76 × 125 mm · 21 cm³ 72 generations · one piece As plain cubes: 141 pieces
• Collisions Gliders that flare 57 × 48 × 150 mm · 18 cm³ 84 generations · one piece As plain cubes: 101 pieces
• Chaos cone Chaos cone 123 × 109 × 111 mm · 291 cm³ 48 generations · one piece As plain cubes: 466 pieces
• Skylines Soup skyline 98 × 105 × 31 mm · 86 cm³ 200 generations counted As plain cubes: 3 pieces
• Skylines R-pentomino skyline 111 × 88 × 24 mm · 54 cm³ 150 generations counted As plain cubes: one piece too
• Vases and lampshades Ring vase 73 × 73 × 115 mm · 99 cm³ 64 generations · one piece A lace wall on a solid floor
• Vases and lampshades Soup lampshade 101 × 101 × 170 mm · 275 cm³ generation 12 · 1 mm walls Put a light inside
• Zoetrope Pulsar zoetrope 136 × 136 × 8 mm · 58 cm³ 12 frames · axle hole Animates under a strobe
• Torus Soup torus 91 × 91 × 32 mm · 92 cm³ generation 10 · one piece Prints with supports
• Jewellery Glider keychain 30 × 25 × 9 mm · 2 cm³ phase 1 · one piece Prints flat on the bed

How a time sculpture works

Put generation 0 of a 2D pattern on the print bed, generation 1 on top of it, and so on, one layer per generation. A cell that lives on stacks into a column, a pattern that moves leans, and an oscillator repeats its shape every period. 2D mode's Time stack view shows the same thing as the pattern runs.

It holds together because of the rules. In Conway's Life a live cell either survived, and sits on itself one layer down, or was born beside three live cells of the generation before. Follow any cell downward and you reach the first generation, which the base plate joins.

What plain cubes lack is thickness. A newborn cell touches its parents only along an edge or at a corner: a line or a point, which no printer can make, so a cube export of the same staircase falls into 49 pieces. Fused rounds the cubes and fills every such joint; Blobs melts the cells into one smooth surface. A joint between two cells that meet only at a corner ends up 0.63 of a cell across in Fused and 0.80 in Blobs.

Pockets sealed inside a model are filled in, so no powder or resin is trapped in a print.

Printing one

• Size. The cell size scales everything. The defaults keep the thinnest joint at 1 mm or more; below that the viewer marks the model fragile.
• Filament (FDM). A time sculpture stands on its base plate and grows upward, and a newborn cell steps out by one cell per layer, a 45° staircase. Check your slicer's overhang preview and add supports where it asks for them. The torus has a round underside: print it with supports.
• Colour. With 4 colour bands the colour changes with height, so a printer with one nozzle can print it: pause and swap filament at the heights the viewer lists. Most slicers can insert a colour change at a layer.
• Nylon powder (SLS, MJF). The powder holds up every overhang, so nothing needs supports.
• Resin. Needs supports.
• No printer? Upload the STL to an online print service, pick a material and see the price before you order. Material, in cm³ in the viewer, is what most services charge for.

From the app

Every sculpture here runs Conway's Game of Life (B3/S23). The glider, pentadecathlon, Gosper gun, R-pentomino and diehard are presets in the app's 2D mode: open one there and its Time stack view grows the same sculpture as it runs. The app's own 3D print (.stl) export, in the Capture menu, is a member feature: it writes a 3D world as plain cubes, with an optional base plate. It does not make time sculptures or these surfaces yet.

Open 2D mode →Open 3D mode →