Tinkercad - 3D Designs with PicCollage Filter

We have mentioned this activity in the past - and I have also had some questions recently from someone asking me if we print all of our 3D Printed designs.  The short answer is no, as a result of experience we sometimes get creative ideas that look amazing but need to have the realisation from the students that they may not be able to print their designs.

An example is the design shown left, created by a Y4 student in our classroom.   The student is eight years old and has put time and detail into creating a house for a pet (the Poppy) that is shown on the turret on the right hand side.  The student has used the main Tinkercad interface (as shown in the screenshot) to create a series of regular objects and shape them into the walls, roof and parts of the building.   The student has then added windows and other features to their designs.   

While the practicality is that this design is currently too complicated or large to print on the schools printers (the printers are not allocated to the classroom they are school wide for everyone in the school and we are mindful of the use of the amount of PLA for something like this) as we have regular hobby printers, there are some additional activities that can be carried out with this.

Firstly the student is able to use the Tinkercad design and apply various filters to it to alter its appearance and design.  Obviously using their iPad and the Markup tool the student can apply filters to the design.

There are also additional tools available to the iPad which can filter out an image.  A particular favourite of the students at present has been to use PicCollage and the 'magic camera' app, which is a free addition from the main interface.  It is able it AR/VR an image in seconds either a live shot or one from the students camera roll.  What the students from our classroom have been able to do is use the Tinkercad image, screen shot it, and then bring it into the Pic Collage filter.   An example is shown left, this is the original image (design) using the 'Festive' filter from PicCollage Magic Camera.  The student has not had to do any of the alterations themselves they have use taken their design and applied the filter.  The filter is responsible for the lighting, the festive aspect of the design which presents the original concept in a different setting.

A second filter, which again is also freely available is the Sakura (Japanese Cherry Blossom) filter.  Again available on Magic Camera from the updated versions of PicCollage.   This is the same image from the original design and the same image which the festive feature has been used with.  The students enjoy comparing the difference between the two - identifying what changes have been made to one, and then the other and the contrast.   This example left while it shows the shading in this example also has additional features that can be highlighted depending on the design (trees, vegetations, flowers etc) and the students can also manipulate the filter by creating aspects of the design which specifically attract the colouring and the shapes, and experimenting with what provides that or what encourages it to AR/VR.   The class of students are seven and eight years old using the two Apps in combination and are easily able to use both create this process and output. \