Blender A New Option For Designing Laser Cutting Files - How To: Blender To Laser

I was working with Blender before Inkscape and developed a material using Blend that would take the most distant part from the camera and make that black and the closest and make that white and the rest of the distances divided by 256 for grays.

It has been a while and a few upgrades now so I have some difficulty getting it working right, but for 3d engraves of 3d models it is the key.

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Interesting, what kind of lighting setup did you use with that material?

You don’t want any lighting that is what messes up the snapshots. I do not even use the full render engine. Just the texture.

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Hey everyone. So from what I gather you want to know how to make a depth map like this…

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Yeah, that would be fantastic if you have time. :grinning:

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I was thinking to take any STL - say, this skull - and project its height above a plane, so when engraved, it would have a 3D texture.

There was an old tutorial here, but it doesn’t work with current version. At least, I can’t get it to work…

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This comes from an stl from myminifactory

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Yup, that is what is needed :star_struck:

One point of criticism I would make however is that you put the greatest black all the way to the back of the skull where most cannot be seen so the resolution of what you can see is much less where you want the greatest resolution (around the teeth as example) so the pure white is as small as possible even messing with the gradient some to get the most resolution at the front.

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okydoky, I’ll see how I can finess this to get great results and then i’ll make a video on it.

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Your eye will see variation in white better than black, so when you think it is all black the will be more resolution than you can see, while the reverse will be the case near white,

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Try depth engraving what you get.

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So I’m still working at it about 8 hours of work into this so far. I don’t think it’s a case of the file i’m making anymore but more the settings and materials I use.

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I really like that last one! I see you caught what I said of the other one.

Well, I’m happy to say that I think i’ve found a way to make consistent quality files and how to engrave them. I’ll make a video in the next few weeks and share it here once it’s up =)

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I will anxiously await this new post of yours! And while I wait I better read more about blender. The GF is a great machine but I have always felt that it becomes more powerful with a great handle in depth maps and 3D engraving.

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As Inkscape vector file would work best with really sharp edges even if you kicked out a raster to actually engrave, but while I really like it for something like that sign, it does not get you to the Blender gray elevation for squishy stuff,

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Really looking forward to seeing your workflow on these, it is something that has eluded me for some time now.

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Everyone above who was interested in Blender Depth Maps and 3D Engraving here is my new post How To Make 3D Engravings | Blender Depth Maps

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More information on how to use Blender to create non-destructive, editable box templates. Using a free addon, you can quickly create interesting boxes with fully adjustable kerf widths and material thickness. So, for instance, you could create the same box for two different thicknesses of wood. Also keep in mind, the boxes can be quite complex as well (not just a typical 6 sided box).

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