Vectric Customer

I recently downloaded paint.net, a free open-source program that reportedly does many of the functions of Photoshop (I lost my old version when my last computer died). So far I've had good results with Paint, mostly touching up pictures for PhotoVCarve, though I've barely scratched the surface of the program. Just passing this along if anyone wants to try it. You certainly can't beat the price!

I downloaded Paint.NET & had a go at it.
I used "Edge Detect" function to come to this.

where is the edge detect option? and what does it look like?.

regards

Brian

I've just finished reading through this topic and I'd like to thank TReischl for starting this thread and everyone for all the great input.

I've been messing around trying to learn how to do some 2.5d carving and this helps a lot. I am trying to learn Blender and have been going through all the tutorials, it's a very powerful app, but maybe over kill for 2.5d stuff.

Today I was messing around with a gray scale object and found a app on my computer called 3D Builder by Microsoft. I'm guessing it was installed when I upgraded my computer to Win10. I googled it and found it's a free app from Microsoft you can download it at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/a ... zdncrfj3t6 . It two will allow you to extrude gray scale images. I'm playing around with one of TReischi's gray scale images since his are much better quality to see what 3D Builder will do. So far I'm impressed with what it will do and how easy it is to use. There a YouTube videos of course, some better than others.

If you don't have PVC (like me) and want something free to try your hand at creating your own 2.5d objects, check out 3D Builder.

The work you did is impressive, very nice!

I have only recently started using VCarve, I also purchased the PhotoCarve, have only barely started it up once. However, I have been using CorelDraw for almost 20 years.

I was curious if you had tried the Contour tool in CorelDraw, there is a "contour to center" option which may give you a nice effect. I am (hopefully) attaching a screenshot of a vector design, along with the contour result. As shown, it is completely vector you can break apart the "islands of color" and delete any darker areas you want lighter. This image took all of 6 seconds to generate after loading the vector art. Once you are happy with the shading the design could be exported as a bitmap.

I hope this is useful, if you see some reason it wouldn't work as well, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I have always preferred to work in vectors, so this is just my take on it.
Have a great day!

Here is a closeup of the center

Does anyone know if you get a discount on photo v-carve if you already have v-carve pro? Or if maybe there's a gadget for v-carve pro that does this? Right now I'm using a fusion add in and so far I'm not very happy with the results.

Dan

Hello Dan,

You may want to repost as a New Topic. This thread is really, REALLY old and most people ignore it these days. It was written before Vectric introduced Aspire, so it is only good for those that want to fiddle with 3D but don't have a real need for it.

Oh ok sorry about that.

Thanks,
Dan

I use Photo V Carve with great success to carve lithophanes. I'm no expert in any of this, but aren't lithophanes essentially a 3d model convertered from a photograph by the software, and if so, would it be possible to use that existing principle without having to convert to shades of gray first?

wcw7398 wrote:I use Photo V Carve with great success to carve lithophanes. I'm no expert in any of this, but aren't lithophanes essentially a 3d model convertered from a photograph by the software, and if so, would it be possible to use that existing principle without having to convert to shades of gray first?

The point of this thread is dealing with black and white clipart.

Sorry to have offended your sense of appropriateness. I've re-read the title of the thread several times and I see no mention of only black and white clip open for discussion.

I won't trouble you further.

wcw7398 wrote:Sorry to have offended your sense of appropriateness. I've re-read the title of the thread several times and I see no mention of only black and white clip open for discussion.

I won't trouble you further.

You have not offended me in the least. My answer was in response to your questioning why we were working with gray scale bitmaps when photos are already gray scale. It just seemed to me that you had missed the point of the discussion?

I was not asking why do it in black & white. I was asking, if in fact PVC already already does does this with color photos. Does PVC in perform a function of this type in order to do what it does? I'm no tech wizard and I'm trying to learn something here.

Is the creation of a lithophane by PVC a model of some sort?

Very nice work. What type of wood did you use?