Escher sphere construction kit

M.C. Escher created a myriad of amazing planar tessellations, yet only a few three-dimensional ones such as his wooden fish ball and dodecahedral flower. We have developed an interactive program to design and manufacture “Escher Spheres” sets of tiles that can be assembled into spherical balls. The user chooses from a set of predefined symmetry groups and then deforms the boundaries of the basic domain tile; all corresponding points based on the chosen symmetry class move concurrently, instantly showing the overall result. The interior of the tile can be embellished with a bas-relief. Finally the tile is radially extruded and output as a solid model suitable for free-form fabrication.