How to Easily Create and Use Thermal Gradients With Tinkercad!

Many people are familiar with thermal gradients, whether that be through seeing them in true crime TV shows, hunting, or even building maintenance. The classic rainbow thermal scheme in specific is such an intriguing one as it's so close to our standard rainbow color palette, yet still so distinctly unique. That being said, as an artist designing with Tinkercad, I'm always looking for creative color patterns to use in my models, and thermal schemes provides me with a unique set with possibilities galore! With this tutorial, I'll show you how to create your very own thermal gradients with Tinkercad and provide tips as to how you can incorporate them into your own designs, with ideas to help you get started off!

All that being said, let's get tinkering!

You'll need:

1. A Tinkercad account, which you can make for free using an email or an Apple, Microsoft, or Facebook account
2. This tutorial, as it will provide the hex color codes necessary to create these patterns

To start off, we'll be making the classic red-to-blue rainbow thermal gradient. Most gradients made with Tinkercad consist of several box shapes, typically numbering 64 or 128, with slightly different hex color codes lined up back to back to give off the illusion of color transitioning across a single shape. While most people simply line up their boxes all in a row and color them accordingly, we're going to be dividing our gradient up into sections to make the process easier. Start by creating a new design and laying down box shapes in seven rows of eight like shown above, which will later allow us to color them by each distinct transitional point. You're also going to want to turn the color of the boxes to white, which allows us to better identify which ones we have yet to color as we go through changing the shade of each one.

For the next step, select the top row of boxes and press the 'F' key to focus in on it. You'll then select each box in the row individually and input the color codes below in order, going from left to right on the boxes and top to bottom on the list below.

1. #9a0002
2. #a70d03
3. #b41b04
4. #c12905
5. #cf3706
6. #dc4507
7. #e95308
8. #f7610a

Once you're done inputing the color codes for each box, you should have a row that looks like the one in the image above! Now for the rest of them!

To color in the rest of the rows, you're going to repeat the same process from the previous step using the color codes below, and once you're done, you should have eight fully colored in rows ready to be combined into a single gradient!

Orange to Yellow

1. #f66b0c
2. #f67f14
3. #f6941d
4. #f5a826
5. #f6bd2e
6. #f6d137
7. #f6e640
8. #f6fb49

Yellow to Green

1. #f6ff4e
2. #e4ff51
3. #d2ff54
4. #bffe57
5. #aeff5b
6. #9cff5e
7. #8aff61
8. #78ff65

Green to Light Blue

1. #70ff71
2. #61fb83
3. #52f895
4. #43f4a8
5. #35f1ba
6. #26edcd
7. #17eadf
8. #09e7f2

Light Blue to Blue

1. #07e3f9
2. #06d6f9
3. #05cafa
4. #04bdfa
5. #03b1fb
6. #02a4fb
7. #0198fc
8. #008cfd

Blue to Dark Blue

1. #0087fd
2. #0078fa
3. #0069f7
4. #005af4
5. #004bf1
6. #003cee
7. #002deb
8. #001fe9

Dark Blue to Navy Blue

1. #0117e7
2. #0113d4
3. #0110c1
4. #010daf
5. #010a9c
6. #01078a
7. #010477
8. #010165

After all your rows have been completely colored in, you're going to want to take them and line them up side by side like above.

Select all the boxes in your row and group them together. After changing the length to 20mm and rotating, you should have a block that looks like the one above! Congrats on creating your first thermal gradient pattern!

The process for creating the second thermal gradient, the sepia gradient, is going to be very similar to the first one, with the grid being the same. Make sure to save your first gradient, then lay out a grid exactly like the one in the first step, seven rows containing eight boxes each.

Like in steps two and three, you'll be copying the hex color codes below into the individual boxes in order from left to right.

Tan to Yellow

1. #fafac6
2. #faf6af
3. #fbf298
4. #fbee81
5. #fcea6a
6. #fce653
7. #fde23c
8. #fedf25

Yellow to Light Orange

1. #ffde21
2. #fed71c
3. #fdd018
4. #fdc914
5. #fcc20f
6. #fcbb0b
7. #fbb407
8. #fbad03

Light Orange to Dark Orange

1. #fca901
2. #fa9e01
3. #f89402
4. #f68a03
5. #f47f04
6. #f27505
7. #f06b06
8. #ee6107

Dark Orange to Red

1. #ef5f08
2. #ec5812
3. #e9511c
4. #e64a26
5. #e44330
6. #e13c3a
7. #de3544
8. #dc2e4f

Red to Purple

1. #e64519
2. #dc3b2b
3. #d2313d
4. #c8274f
5. #be1d61
6. #b41373
7. #aa0985
8. #a00098

Purple to Navy Blue

1. #9e019a
2. #8e0097
3. #7e0095
4. #6d0092
5. #5e0090
6. #4e008d
7. #3e008b
8. #2e0089

Navy Blue To Black

1. #290188
2. #230076
3. #1d0065
4. #170054
5. #120043
6. #0c0032
7. #060021
8. #010010

Go ahead and grab the rows and line them up side by side, exactly like previously done in step four.

Finally, complete the sepia gradient by selecting and grouping all the boxes, condensing the length to 20, and then rotating on its side to see your second and final thermal gradient of the tutorial!

Now that we've completed the two gradients, you may be wondering how we'll be using them. To implement them in our designs, we'll be using a term coined by the Tinkercad community known as inverse holing. To do this, all you have to do is take the object you'd like to gradient-ify and turn it into a hole. From there, you're going to want to take a cube and make sure it sounds the new hole object entirely, group it with the hole, and turn the resulting combination into a hole once again. To round out the process, simply shape the gradient to the dimensions of the hole object, overlap the two, and group to get your final product! This technique is not only used in gradients, but also various other designs across Tinkercad, including making two colors appear on the same object and many more applications.

Now that you know how to utilize the inverse holing technique, you can use it to implement your gradients in any of your models! For example, you can take a terrain shape and turn it into an awe-inspiring heat map! You can also partake in some wordplay by creating a literal thermal mug! Finally, I used my gradients in a model of these infrared-themed characters, which you can find here on Tinkercad! Feel free to take inspiration from any of these designs and use these new gradients to your heart's content!

If you're loving the wide variety of uniqueness offered by these thermal gradients, there's much more where they came from! Over my years of using Tinkercad, I've created a wide array of gradient boxes that I use to embellish my designs, utilizing color palettes ranging from dull to warm to even pastel ones! To create your own, you can simply input your desired hex color codes into a gradient generator, such as the one offered by PineTools, and get a range of colors you can copy and paste over into your designs! I hope you found this tutorial a great introduction into using gradients and a segue into the amazing world of thermal color palettes!