Drawing 3D dice

Question

I want to create 3D dice in LaTeX. I am familiar with the excellent package "customdice", but it unfortunately only produces 2D images.

I am also inspired by the answer from hpekristiansen to this question. It creates beautiful dice, but I am uanble to change from colored circles to the familiar circle symbols for the numbers 1 to 6.

One idea I had was to try to put the images from customdice on each of the surfaces, but I am unable to make it work. I believe the package customdice doesn't agree well to the packages required in the question linked above.

Could anyone help me create "normal" dice faces on the surfaces on the answer linked above?

Answer 1

You can draw the dice faces yourself on the 3d canvasses as small circles with radius 1/6, using the following coordinates:

( 0.5, 0.5) top left
(-0.5, 0.5) top right
( 0.5, 0.0) middle left
( 0.0, 0.0) center
(-0.5, 0.0) middle right
( 0.5,-0.5) bottom left
(-0.5,-0.5) bottom right

Then you can do some arithmetic to find out which numbers need which dots.

The code below steps the numbers from 1-6 repeatedly using a counter, of course you can just use regular numbers as argument to \dicenum.

\documentclass[tikz, border=1cm]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz-3dplot}
\begin{document}
\newcommand{\dicenum}[1]{%
\pgfmathparse{#1==2 || #1==4 || #1==5 || #1==6}\ifnum\pgfmathresult>0\relax%
\fill[black] (0.5,0.5) circle[radius=1/6];    % top left
\fill[black] (-0.5,-0.5) circle[radius=1/6];\fi % bottom right
\pgfmathparse{#1==3 || #1==4 || #1==5 || #1==6}\ifnum\pgfmathresult>0\relax%
\fill[black] (-0.5,0.5) circle[radius=1/6];    % top right
\fill[black] (0.5,-0.5) circle[radius=1/6];\fi % bottom left
\pgfmathparse{#1==1 || #1==3 || #1==5}\ifnum\pgfmathresult>0\relax%
\fill[black] (0,0) circle[radius=1/6]; \fi % center
\ifnum#1=6\relax%
\fill[black] (0.5,0) circle[radius=1/6];     % middle left
\fill[black] (-0.5,0) circle[radius=1/6];\fi % middle right
}
\newcounter{currnum}
\setcounter{currnum}{1}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\newcommand{\dice}[5]{
\tdplotsetmaincoords{#3}{#4}
\begin{scope}[shift={(#1,#2)}, tdplot_main_coords, rounded corners=#5, fill=brown!50!white]
\begin{scope}[canvas is xy plane at z=-1]
\filldraw (-1,-1) rectangle (1,1);
\end{scope}
\begin{scope}[canvas is xz plane at y=-1]
\filldraw (-1,-1) rectangle (1,1);
\end{scope}
\begin{scope}[canvas is yz plane at x=-1]
\filldraw (-1,-1) rectangle (1,1);
\end{scope}
\begin{scope}[canvas is xy plane at z=1]
\filldraw (-1,-1) rectangle (1,1);
\dicenum{\value{currnum}}
\stepcounter{currnum}
\ifnum\value{currnum}>6\relax\setcounter{currnum}{1}\fi
\end{scope}
\begin{scope}[canvas is xz plane at y=1]
\filldraw (-1,-1) rectangle (1,1);
\dicenum{\value{currnum}}
\stepcounter{currnum}
\ifnum\value{currnum}>6\relax\setcounter{currnum}{1}\fi
\end{scope}
\begin{scope}[canvas is yz plane at x=1]
\filldraw (-1,-1) rectangle (1,1);
\dicenum{\value{currnum}}
\stepcounter{currnum}
\ifnum\value{currnum}>6\relax\setcounter{currnum}{1}\fi
\end{scope}
\end{scope}
}
\dice{0}{0}{70}{110}{0.3cm};
\dice{2}{2}{70}{110}{0.5cm};
\dice{5}{3}{40}{130}{0.3cm};
\dice{5}{-1}{40}{160}{0.6cm};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Result: