Totoro and Snorlax Ocarinas

TL;DR: I printed and painted a Totoro Ocarina for my girlfriend’s birthday. There are 4 finger holes and is actually tuned to play notes correctly. After that, I created a positive model of the cavity so I can use a Boolean subtract to make ocarinas out of custom models :D.

I came across this amazing model on Thingiverse (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1798728) while looking for inspiration of things to make for my girlfriend’s birthday. She loves Studio Ghibli films, and this is a cool application of 3d printing I had not really seen nor tried before.

In 2016, Autodesk research developed a software package called “PrinTone” which analyzes any arbitrary 3D model to add a cavity and holes so you can play tuned notes. Unfortunately, they have yet to release the software, so I couldn’t use it to transform any custom model into an ocarina. Luckily, the only customization I wanted to make was the addition of a birthday message through an extruded text cut.

The poor settings on my initial print attempt led to some underextrusion on some of the walls, and some small gaps in the head, which is no good for a wind instrument. I also tried printing a larger version at 1.5x scale, but the holes became too big for my fingers. I’m very happy with how the present came out after painting J.

After I finished this part, I still wanted a way to design and print custom ocarinas. Inspired by physical molding techniques, I was able to use CAD tools to create a digital model of the cavity, finger holes, and mouthpiece. I am now able to subtract this new “core” model from any custom model, as long as it has a similar-ish shape. The very first custom ocarina model I created was Snorlax. I admit… it looks kinda disturbing since the air inlet is basically his butthole, but I still think it’s a neat idea. Unfortunately I probably need to bring the cavity closer to the surface since this ocarina is broken as a PokéFlute.