Make a little light
in the pumpkin patch.
Grow a gourd, carve it by hand, or turn a photo into a stencil. Every pumpkin has its own uneven, rounded lobes, skin, and stem.
Carve precisely
Fine blade traces narrow cuts; Straight cut previews a line before release. Both remember their own width, from 0.5 to 3 mm where supported, in 0.1 mm steps. Use Gouge for wider cuts and Restore to repair rind. Rind that becomes disconnected is removed with the cut; Undo restores it. Cutout lets you place and drag corners before committing the cut. Click the first corner, press Enter, or choose Cut. Backspace removes a point; Escape cancels the outline.
Choose a stencil
Browse 100 designs in Stencils, from classic faces to animals and Halloween motifs. Scroll through the collection, or use the panel search to narrow it. A stencil replaces the carving as one undoable step.
Use a photo
Import a photo in Stencils. Drag its preview to crop, then tune the threshold and cleanup. Pale areas stay; dark areas are cut. Place on pumpkin gives you a live preview on the surface before you click. Photos are processed locally and are never uploaded.
The Great Pumpkin
Every so often a giant pumpkin rises over the far woods and keeps climbing until it leaves the sky. It comes on its own about half a minute after the patch grows, then every couple of minutes after that. Press L to call it up now.
Brightness
The patch is lit for a dark room. The sun icon above Settings cycles three stops — night, brighter, brightest — raising the moonlight and the tea light together so the carving reads outdoors or on a bright screen. Tapping back to night restores whatever you had set.
Explore
Two fingers tapped once on the pumpkin undoes the last cut. Right-drag turns the pumpkin. Shift-drag pans the view. Scroll or pinch to zoom. Two fingers turn and zoom on touchscreens; Pan is also available in Carve.
Tools
- K
- Fine blade
- T
- Straight cut
- G
- Gouge
- C
- Cutout
- S
- Stamp
- E
- Restore
- P
- Pan
- A
- Auto-play
While you carve
- [ ]
- Narrower or wider
- R
- Rotate the stamp
- Enter
- Finish a cutout
- Backspace
- Remove the last corner
- Esc
- Cancel the outline
Undo
- ⌘ Z
- Undo the last cut
- ⇧ ⌘ Z
- Redo
- Two-finger tap
- Undo, on a touchscreen
The patch
- F
- Back to the front view
- L
- Summon the Great Pumpkin
Print it and carve a real pumpkin
Print stencil turns whatever you have carved into a flat sheet you can wrap around a real pumpkin. Where the stencil fits a letter page it prints at actual size, with a 100 mm bar to check your printer did not resize it; print at 100% rather than fit to page. Poke through the outlines with a pin, then cut the black areas away.
Capture the pumpkin
Capture opens one panel for three things: a still, a video clip, or a GIF. Stills come out at 4K by default, in landscape, portrait, square, or the exact 1200×630 a social card wants, as PNG, JPEG, or WebP, and Copy puts one straight on the clipboard. Video saves as MP4, or WebM in Firefox. GIF holds 256 colors, so keep those clips short. Everything renders off screen at the size you picked, so the view never jumps while it works.
Let it run
Auto-play moves around the pumpkin the way someone holding a camera would — turning one way and then the other, pushing in, craning the eye line, setting it off to one side, pausing — and, every few minutes, grows a new one and cuts a face into it while you watch — one of the 100 stencils, or a face grown on the spot from parts that never meet in the collection — and changes the light behind a short fade. Start it in the Night tab or press A. Set the interval from one to fifteen minutes, or turn off new pumpkins to keep your own carving on screen while the patch and the light change around it. It can also start by itself after three minutes of quiet. Any click, tap, or key stops it and puts your pumpkin, your carving and your tool back.
Share a pumpkin
Share link copies a URL that rebuilds this pumpkin, its patch, its light and its carving in someone else’s browser. Nothing is uploaded — the whole pumpkin travels inside the link. Photo stencils are the one thing a link cannot carry; capture an image for those.
Will my carving be saved?
Capture downloads an image, and Share link keeps the carving in the URL. Otherwise the carving and imported photo stay in this session; save or copy a link before closing or reloading. New pumpkin keeps the carving. Growing a new patch changes the surroundings.
Frequently asked questions
What is Great Pumpkin?
Great Pumpkin is a free browser tool for carving a 3D jack-o'-lantern. It grows a procedural pumpkin in a moonlit patch, gives you six carving tools, 100 built-in stencils and a photo-to-stencil converter, and lights the finished carving from inside with an adjustable tea light. No signup, no install, no upload.
Is Great Pumpkin free?
Yes. Great Pumpkin is completely free with no account, no watermark, no feature gates and no hidden limits. Every pumpkin, stencil and photo stays on your device.
How do I carve a pumpkin?
Open the page and drag across the pumpkin with the Fine blade. Switch tools in Settings: Straight cut for lines, Gouge for wide cuts, Cutout for point-by-point shapes, Stamp for triangles, circles, stars and hearts, and Restore to repair rind. Ctrl or Command Z undoes any cut. Capture saves the lit result as a 4K image, a video, or a GIF, Print stencil prints the carving as a sheet for a real pumpkin, and Share link copies a URL that rebuilds the whole pumpkin.
Can I save a 4K image, video or GIF?
Yes. Capture opens one panel with Still, Video and GIF tabs. Stills default to 4K and also come in portrait, square and the exact 1200×630 size a social card wants, as PNG, JPEG or WebP, with a Copy button for the clipboard. Video saves as MP4, or WebM in Firefox. GIF is 256-color and uncompressed between frames, so it suits clips of a few seconds. Every format renders off screen at the size you chose, so the pumpkin on screen never resizes while it works.
Does Great Pumpkin collect my data?
No. Great Pumpkin runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript and WebGL. Photos you import are processed locally and never leave your device. There are no servers, no uploads and no tracking beyond anonymous page analytics.
Can I turn a photo into a pumpkin stencil?
Yes. Import a JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF or BMP in the Stencils tab and Great Pumpkin converts it to a two-tone stencil. Threshold, contrast and exposure control which areas are cut, Remove specks and Smooth edges clean up the result, and Bridge floating pieces keeps islands attached so they survive the cut.
What do I need to run Great Pumpkin?
Great Pumpkin needs a modern browser with WebGL 2 and JavaScript enabled. It runs on Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari, on desktop and on phones and tablets, where two fingers turn and zoom the pumpkin. Everything runs in the page; the 3D library and the typeface are the only things fetched, and they come from a public CDN.
How does Great Pumpkin compare to a pumpkin carving simulator?
Great Pumpkin generates the whole scene in code rather than loading a fixed model. Every pumpkin is a new seed with its own lobes, skin and stem, the patch around it is generated too, and the carving is lit from inside by a tea light you control. Scream Saver on the arcade is the quicker face-carving toy; Great Pumpkin is the one for precise cuts and photo stencils.
Does Great Pumpkin have a screen saver or auto-play mode?
Yes. Auto-play moves a camera around the pumpkin — turning either way, pushing in, craning, reframing, pausing — and changes everything on a timer you set, from one to fifteen minutes: a new pumpkin, a face cut into it in front of you rather than appearing already carved, and new moonlight, each behind a short fade. The patch around it stays where it is. Half the faces come from the 100 built-in stencils and half are grown on the spot, so the same one never comes round twice. Start it from the Night tab in Settings or press A, and let it run full screen for a party or a shop window. It can also start itself after three minutes of quiet. Any click, tap or key stops it and restores the pumpkin and carving you had.
Can I print a pumpkin carving stencil?
Yes. Print stencil turns whatever you have carved into a flat sheet for a real pumpkin. Where it fits a letter page it prints at actual size and includes a 100 mm reference bar so you can confirm your printer did not resize it. Wrap the sheet around the pumpkin, poke through the outlines with a pin, then cut the black areas away. It works for the built-in stencils, freehand cuts and photo stencils alike.
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Credits
Geometry, soil, leaves, clouds, stars, and textures are generated in code. Animal and fantasy stencils include adapted artwork from Game-icons.net by Lorc, Delapouite, Caro Asercion, Cathelineau, and Skoll, licensed under CC BY 3.0. The artwork has been simplified and given support bridges for carving; the panda, lion, and crescent composition were drawn for this app. Carving audio uses edited excerpts of a real pumpkin recording by dansotak (CC0), embedded in this file. Typography uses Bitter by Sol Matas (SIL Open Font License). Three.js r180 is included under the MIT license. This single HTML file runs in a browser with WebGL 2.