So here I am trying to turn a png file into a 3D image so I can try and get my mpcnc to do a 3D carve of a friends face.
I have seen there is a vector program but it’s quite expensive and I have only just now attempted the ai pifhud Colab deal.
Is there any free way of doing this or is it just very complicated.
Is this a thing that maybe someone on here could use their software to make it into a file estl cam will take. I don’t know if that would be illegal or against the rules. I would be willing to PayPal and sorry Ryan if this is against the rules you can delete it.
I have seen some of the 3D terrain stuff and it is so wild and cool. Perhaps I need to read more but I don’t want to get stuck on some program I won’t continue to use.
Hey, are you looking to do a fully 3D carve (mini effigy?), or would a lithophane carve work for you? Andrew did lithophane carving(s) recently Stl to svg/dxf help (using free lithophane software).
Thanks so much for the link I will do some reading and testing.
I feel like I tend to fumble around with the terminology of things.
A friend had passed away and I wanted to try and do a 3D carve of a fun old pic of him for his wife.
Nice work @azab2c - it pays to remember that a lithophane won’t work as a solid carve - it’s not a true three dimensional image, rather like a photo negative designed to block light in the thicker bits.
Here’s a quick illustration - notice the specs are very thick (dark) but the nose is actually reversed to make it thinner - the resultant carve would be “interesting” if it was solid.
Thank you so much for taking the time to help explain and show the steps.
This is very helpful for me I am going to do some tinkering tomorrow and see what I can come up with !!
Just the best kind of ppl in this community.
I am hoping that I can eventually find a simple project (like this) to learn just enough. I don’t need to be able to render a donut with sprinkles, just convert an image to 3d!
Converting a picture like the picture above is hard for computers to do. It looks like there is a correlation between light and height. But the cigarette is super bright, the hair is darker (and not deeper). There are creases in the shirt that are peaks, not valleys. A computer has to have deep understanding of the light direction, the reflectivity of common objects, identification of objects in the scene…
In the days of midjourney, it mak be possible to make a carving from a png like this. But it won’t be mathematically calculated. It would be artificially redrawn.
The lithoplane is an exception to that. It isn’t a 3D representation of the subject. It is a 3D replication of the image. It will produce a 3D object that will generate the 2D image.
BTW, that picture is really stunning and I’m sorry for the loss of your friend.
Actually, Blender is amazingly powerful and can be veeery handy for many kinds of projects. One thing I’ve been playing with is to slice up 3d models in layers and export the layers as plottable lines for landscapes and objects. Super neat, and super flexible thanks to the deep deep versitality of Blender. But please don’t ask my wife about what I think about it, she will only report cursing and yelling
