A Reddit user Wyatt showcased what might be one of the most unusual art projects seen in quite a while – an ancient Greek amphora recreated in real gingerbread based on a 3D model made in Blender.

The artists started by scanning a real-life Greek vase from the Met using the photogrammetry tool Polycam and then imported the 3D model into Blender. The model turned out to be "too messy and non-uniform," with a small base that wouldn't support the planned gingerbread construction, so the creators used it as a reference and adjusted the prop to make it more stable. They then added a Screw modifier to turn the profile into an amphora and solidified the resulting geometry.

The next steps involved creating a plane, adding an Array modifier with a fixed count and a constant Z offset, and setting it to create 50 evenly spaced slicing planes at 1 cm intervals. After that, the creators solidified and Boolean-unioned the planes to create 50 rings that would later serve as paper stencils for the flat gingerbread details. The artists cut each gingerbread ring by hand and used royal icing to imitate mortar.

wyattroy shared that the Blender part of the workflow was "pretty seamless," while the baking part was "chaos," which took 90% of the time: "50 rings that make a 2-foot amphora was like 20 pounds of flour, sugar and ginger. Also, every ring came out of the oven slightly wonkier than the slice it came from, so the stack needed to be leveled layer by layer."

The project was created for a gingerbread contest, and the video below captures the entire journey behind the scenes – from the initial planning and Blender work to baking, assembling, and finally transporting the finished piece to the contest.

Have a look at more of the cool projects, where real-life and 3D art intricately intertwine – a stop-motion-like animation of cardboard vases created by Jacques Monneraud and DOT4 Studio in Blender, alongside its behind-the-scenes, and a Blender-made recreation of the 3D printing process by MohamedFayed_CG:

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