Does anyone know of a software application that will convert a 3D stl file to a grayscale image for the purposes of 3d engraving. I know there are a lot of "heightfield from bitmap" but I essentially want to do the reverse, create a top view grayscale image of a solid with color corresponding to the objects' distance from the z plane.
it would also be neat if I could find a camera that would do this. essentially create an image with a rangefinder, closest objects being white and furthest objects fade to black.
thanks

Don't quite follow you? Why can't you just carve the .stl? or do you want to carve a negative, like a mold? Look at Vectric's Aspire. It can do both with an .stl. Here's a simulation. Both are the same .stl file.

?

You could render the .stl I suppose in any rendering package or just screen shot it. Not sure what you're needing this functionality for either. Just mill the .stl.

May be he is talking of 3D glass LASER engraving..;).. and for Laser engraving u surely need Grey scale height maps;)

yes this is for laser engraving, which the stl. does me no good.
I have looked at aspire and I plan to call them and see if they have this feature, it looks like the whole thing is based on greyscale.
thanks

Aspire will show only one side of the model in 3D grey scale as far as i know...

3dsMAX can do that.
İts a little complicated but it does it.
You have to play around with camera clipping and so...

Look her for a tutorial
http://www.evermotion.org/index.php?unfold_exclusive=108&unfold=exclusive

And also here similar thing.
http://www.david-laserscanner.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3779

Btw: search google for "Bump Map" creation

yes this is for laser engraving, which the stl. does me no good.
I have looked at aspire and I plan to call them and see if they have this feature, it looks like the whole thing is based on greyscale.
thanks


AFAIK there is no way to export a greyscale from Aspire. I believe someone asked on Vectric's forum.

http://www.vectric.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=4305

ok, bdahmet.... you posted a link that totally helped for now, much appreciated!

If I play with an stl in rhino i can get a pretty good result using showzbuffer which renders the viewport model as a height-sensitive grayscale.

then if I max out my screen resolution and export the viewport as a tiff, i can get a pretty decent grayscale with only a few pixels to fix manually.

what puzzles me about rhino is there is no reference at all or any info about the showzbuffer command or any info about how to manipulate it. also the viewport image file export seems to be limited to 72dpi.

can anyone add to this kind of cobbled up technique in Rhino????

I don't have 3dsmax so I can't try this yet, going to try Blender when I get a chance, thanks

Thanks for the help
joev