"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Another astounding animation!

Thanks!

> On your Youtube page, you mention that this puzzle can be constructed 'from a
> single block of wood.' In POV-Ray, maybe! -- otherwise it would take
> CONSIDERABLE skill with a hand saw (???!!) Is that a challenge that real-world
> puzzle makers try to achieve when making such objects?

As clipka meanwhile also pointed out, the comment was with respect to the
individual puzzle pieces. For complex burr puzzles it is not unusual for some
pieces to be non-notchable, which means that a single puzzle piece needs to be
created by glueing multiple parts together.

> In your animations, have you ever tried making the pieces semi-transparent? It
> would be fun to see how they move past each other during disassembly (but I can
> imaging that it might be totally confusing, visually.)

Yes, I have. However, it can indeed be quite confusing. See the attached image.
The top shows Super Nova, where I used a wire frame and contrasting colours to
enable identification of the different pieces. The bottom shows Helix the Burr,
where the animation lets the X-Ray scan got from top to bottom and back. This
makes it clear what is happening at the boundary, but as you can see, overall
the result is quite confusing. But then again, it's not that surprising that 3D
information cannot be easily mapped to two dimensions.

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