Color Drop Plugin: Same Image, Less Height
Shorter Print Time. Same stunning result.
Requires HueForge 0.9.3 or Later
What is Color Drop
When the same filament color appears twice in your layer stack — and blends in the same direction each time — Color Drop can nest the pieces. The upper section drops into the lower one, cutting print height dramatically.
No More Color Rings
It also removes those unwanted rings of color that show up on lower layers from filaments higher in the stack — nesting eliminates the extra height that causes them.
Thinner Models, Faster Prints
Color swapping is much faster than printing extra layers. A model that took 4 hours might take 2.
Color Drop exports separate STL files — load them into your slicer as a multi-part model, already nested and ready to print. Just assign filaments to each part.
Best of all, it keeps the texture that makes HueForge prints so cool while taking advantage of multi-color capabilities in modern printers.
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Real Print Time Savings
Color Drop doesn't just save height — it saves time and filament. Less height means fewer layers to print, and color swaps are far faster than printing solid layers.
| Without | With Color Drop | Savings | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Color Pop | 2:58 / 0.73g waste | 1:51 / 0.72g waste | 37% faster |
| FlatForge | 7:21 / 4.32g waste | 3:51 / 2.13g waste | 48% faster |
Fewer swaps, less waste, shorter prints — and the image looks the same.
Click the image to see it full size
What Models Benefit
Great Candidates
- Color Pop & Color Aware modes — these naturally create sections that blend in the same direction with repeating colors, making them ideal for nesting.
- Any model with repeated colors blending in the same direction — for example, black appears twice, and both times lighter colors blend away from it in the same direction.
- FlatForge or FlatFill images that were too thick before — Color Drop can bring a model that was impractically tall back into a reasonable print height.
The key requirement: the repeated color must have the same blending direction in each occurrence.
Works With Your Other Plugins
Color Drop is fully compatible with both FlatForge and HugeForge. The plugins chain together seamlessly — HueForge handles the ordering for you.
Won't Help
- Models where every color appears only once in the stack — no shared colors means nothing to nest.
- Repeated colors where blending goes in opposite directions — if one section blends dark-to-light and the other goes light-to-dark through the same color, they can't nest.
Changes the Game for Color Match
The traditional approach: Color Match keeps models thin.
The Color Drop approach: Blend everything in one direction — either dark to light or light to dark throughout the Mesh Core — to maximize nesting sites.
The trade-off: This often results in a much higher required Blend Depth and pits/islands around the shared colors. But if built correctly, these are resolved when each section gets dropped to the base color.
The result: The model is thicker before Color Drop but shorter after. Experienced users — this is a strategic shift. Design your Color Match stacks with nesting in mind.
How It Works
See a fully blended 3D preview before you export — no guessing what the final print will look like. This is a live preview with accurate color blending, not a slicer view.
Easy to Use
Open the Color Drop plugin from the Plugins menu. Click Auto-Suggest and HueForge finds the best nesting points automatically.
Want more control? Use the Customize panel to manually choose which nesting points to enable.
Simple to Print
Color Drop creates a set of STL files — one per color for each piece. Load them into your slicer as a multi-part model, assign filaments by the color names in the file names, and slice.
Print and you are Done!
How It Works (Technical) →[ Elfsight Pricing Table Widget — replace this placeholder with your embed code ]