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TikZ: shaded cube

With just a few lines of code you can create a drawing of a cube with a 3D impression, though if it’s not really perspective or raytraced:

\begin{tikzpicture}[on grid]
  \shade[yslant=-0.5,right color=gray!10, left color=black!50]
    (0,0) rectangle +(3,3);
  \draw[yslant=-0.5] (0,0) grid (3,3);
  \shade[yslant=0.5,right color=gray!70,left color=gray!10]
    (3,-3) rectangle +(3,3);
  \draw[yslant=0.5] (3,-3) grid (6,0);
  \shade[yslant=0.5,xslant=-1,bottom color=gray!10,
    top color=black!80] (6,3) rectangle +(-3,-3);
  \draw[yslant=0.5,xslant=-1] (3,0) grid (6,3);
\end{tikzpicture}

This example uses the positioning tikz library.

Output screenshot:

By adding some slanted numbers we will get a Sudoku 3D cube:

TeX source code and pdf output are provided.

I’ve programmed it to answer a question posted on matheplanet.de. At first I wanted to use the matrix tikz library but it seemed to me that matrices of nodes cannot be slanted, at least I didn’t find a way.

10. August 2008 by stefan
Categories: Uncategorized | 5 comments