Thursday, February 20, 2014

Triforce

Triforce, a model created using Bird Tetrahedrons, designed by Tomoko Fuse

In a previous entry in my origami series, I showed one way to chain together multiple shapes by using multi-purpose units.  Here I show another method, called "growing polyhedrons" in Tomoko Fuse's Unit Origami.  In this method, I make multiple of the same polyhedron.  Then I make connectors between the polyhedrons which fit in pockets in the surfaces of the polyhedrons.

The polyhedra used here are called "bird tetrahedrons", but it's an inaccurate name since they're not actually tetrahedrons!  They each have six faces, each being a 45-45-90 triangle.  I selected the colors to reference a certain video game.  I suppose the Triforce doesn't normally have a bunch of green triangles behind it, but those triangles need to be there to make it stand up right.  Green seemed like the right color for it.

Can you connect other polyhedrons using the same method?  I can and have!  I've found that even when the connector I want is not described by Tomoko Fuse, it is easy enough to design new connectors by myself.

2 comments:

miller said...

Is it not possible to do it with equilateral triangles as faces? That's how I would have envisioned the Triforce.

miller said...

Well no, not really. How would it work? The silhouette from the front needs to be a triangle. So either you make the triangle silhouette with an equilateral triangle, or with three equilateral triangles. The former leads to a flat model, and the latter leads to a too pointy model.