If you’ve ever wanted to merge the worlds of holiday cheer and clever geometry, [Kris Wilk]’s gingerbread house hack is your ultimate inspiration. Shared in a mesmerising video, [Wilk] showcases his 2024 entry for his neighborhood’s gingerbread house contest. Designed in FreeCAD and baked to perfection, this is no ordinary holiday treat. His pièce de résistance was a brilliant trompe l’oeil effect, visible only from one carefully calculated angle. Skip to the last twenty seconds of the video to wrap your head around how it actually looks.
[Wilk] used FreeCAD’s hidden true perspective projection function—a rarity in CAD software. This feature allowed him to calculate the perfect forced perspective, essential for crafting the optical illusion. The supporting structures were printed on a Prusa MK4, while the gingerbread itself was baked at home. Precision photography captured the final reveal, adding a professional touch to this homemade masterpiece. [Wilk]’s meticulous process highlights how accessible tools and a sprinkle of curiosity can push creative boundaries.
For those itching to experiment with optical illusions, this bakery battle is only the beginning. Why not build a similar one inside out? Or construct a gingerbread man in the same way? Fire up the oven, bend your mind, and challenge your CAD skills!
Everything about this is wonderful. Concentrated into a 2 minute video. This could easily have been a 30 minute video which I’d never had watched.
Agree!
Although the construction of this 3d ginger bread house is ingenious; why are no back pieces provided in its design?
In short, because it was challenging enough from one viewpoint! 😄
Note that the effect breaks even if you are closer/farther away on the same sightline. Getting the pieces to be exactly the right shapes AND in exactly the correct orientations relative to one another was tricky. Even the thickness of the gingerbread had to be factored in.
In theory, it’s possible to create alternate pieces to make another view from a different position, but keeping them from intruding on the original view would be difficult. Even with the existing design, it was hard to keep a couple of the the supporting posts from being visible in front of some of the pieces. A mistake like that would completely ruin the illusion.
My mom is the worlds best pastry chef.
The secret to Gingerbread houses is Gingersnap dough.
Hot out of the oven it’s plastic, so it can be laid onto most curves surfaces to take the shape.
Gingersnap Sydney Opera houses are possible. Gaudi houses!