3d prints from hand drawing

[cacb]

Please allow a little showcase. I guess this has been done before, but I wanted to see if it was possible to turn a hand drawing into a reasonable 3d printed model. As an additional constraint, I wanted to do it using mostly my own tools.

I started by drawing my initials "CA" by hand using a black marker on a white piece of paper (A4), the characters were outlined as shown in the image below. Next it was scanned using a cheap flatbed scanner, giving me a BMP file. I used IrfanView to crop the drawing and decreased the color depth to 1 bit per pixel, plus I flood filled the internals of the characters to make them all black. Finally inverted the image to make the initials white on black and save to PNG.

After "a few more steps" I got this, printed with my Simple Metal

IMG_1009.jpg

To make the hand drawing into the print as shown, I used a new program I wrote to detect the profiles around the characters. It is able to properly see the difference between outer contours and inner contours (holes). The character "A" contains a hole for example. After a bit of processing (a couple of seconds) the contours are identified and the information exported as an Angelscript CSG source file. The generated code lists all the outer contours as one group that is unioned together ("plus union") and the inner contours are also unioned ("minus union"). The minus union is subtracted from the plus union and voila the result is a 2d profile that can be extruded, for example using rotation as in this case.

I have also tried this with other data, for example the classic Ford logo, and it works fine too:

Ford.png

[Mooselake]

Is it ready/available for download?

It's excellent timing. I want to turn this

MooseFlourish.jpg

into a 3D object. It's my self portrait (and forum avatar) processed through Gearotic's new flourish editor. If you unfocus your eyes and imagination it'll look a bit like a moose.

Kirk

[frankv]

Now that you've done all that hard work....

OpenSCAD can import a PNG image as a surface, which can then be manipulated. OpenSCAD treats the grey-scale (or colours) as a height map, which can in turn be mapped onto a curved surface, or whatever else e.g. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1668883

If you unfocus your eyes and imagination it'll look a bit like a moose.

I see an angry ghost, and a puppy, and a nose, and an ear, an octopus, several foetuses, some hairy breasts, and a Trump comb-over, but no moose. I guess I lack imagination.

[plexus]

If you unfocus your eyes and imagination it'll look a bit like a moose.

Kirk

I'm seeing a chicken on acid.

[cacb]

Is it ready/available for download?

It's excellent timing. I want to turn this

MooseFlourish.jpg

into a 3D object. It's my self portrait (and forum avatar) processed through Gearotic's new flourish editor. If you unfocus your eyes and imagination it'll look a bit like a moose.

Kirk

It is not ready for download yet, it is rather experimental as we speak, but I can try your image. If you have a much bigger version 1000x1000 pixels or higher it is more usable. after I get to stabilise this thing, I might offer it for download.

[cacb]

Now that you've done all that hard work....

OpenSCAD can import a PNG image as a surface, which can then be manipulated. OpenSCAD treats the grey-scale (or colours) as a height map, which can in turn be mapped onto a curved surface, or whatever else e.g. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1668883

I know, that is an entirely different process. I have that feature as well, but it is useless for what I wanted to do, and have implemented.

[cacb]

If you unfocus your eyes and imagination it'll look a bit like a moose.
Kirk

I gave it a try, and it sort of works . A few errors in the final STL because of the poor resolution in the original image. Higher resolution needed.

MooseFlourish_fix_3d.png

[Mooselake]

Each one is unique, more so since I didn't keep track of the settings. Here's a re-flourished version at 1400x1000. I don't see a moose (or a rabid cat) in this one but perhaps it'll come to me.

The zip file includes a dxf version also, maybe that'll be useful. I was surprised how small the resulting files were.

Plexus has a Gearotic license, so he can download (the license applies to all current and future updates) and can make his own acid trip chickens, or the demo version can be downloaded from gearotic.com . It now includes a new motion controller (think limited Mach3 with nth order acceleration) called auggie (which is free and unrestricted afaik, so the demo is the full version), and the vector editor (where the flourishes are) is part of auggie.

Gearotic has morphed into the author's place to add whatever he's interested in at the moment; flourishes were done so they could be added to laser engravings (Art's been tinkering with his laser) and clock faces. Last year it was Auggie, the year before it was StereoPhotometry (think 3D self portraits from a webcam and using a monitor as directional flash, including stl output) this year who knows. And all the gear types are still there, spur, cage, sprockets, pulleys (including timing belts), ratchets, clock escapements, etc. I'm a big fan, even got listed in the credits for bug reporting, biased ...

Mind if I mention your work in the Gearotic forum, where we've (by that I mean Art and a certain eclectic moose) been discussing turning flourishes into 3D models?

Kirk

Edit: I forgot to say that this one looks pretty good; too busy writing a Gearotic testimonial I guess. It is one of my favorite pieces of software.

[cacb]

Mind if I mention your work in the Gearotic forum, where we've (by that I mean Art and a certain eclectic moose) been discussing turning flourishes into 3D models?

Kirk

Of course not, be my guest

Those figures are probably the toughest thing you can offer to this algorithm, those pinpoint ends cause all kinds of trouble. I have to admit I cheated a bit on this one. Starting from a dxf is kind of defeating the purpose as the dxf is a profile in itself. But as I could not get your PNG to work out of the box, I created a new PNG in LibreCAD (yes, this is cheating) with a suitable high resolution (2240 x 1559 pixels) and with a bigger margin. Then I had to tweak it a bit more in IrfanView, essentially flood-fill the interior, use the paintbrush to cut and make the extremely pointy ends less extreme, then blur the image, downsize to 75% and save as 1bit PNG.

The PNG was then processed to give a profile slightly similar to the original DXF, but now in AngelScript source code format. This was extruded both linear and 20 degree rotated (for show).

Linear extruded:

linear.png

Rotate extruded

rot20.png

The STLs are included in the attachment with the Angelscript code that generated the rotated one (not sure if it works with the public version).

Obviously, you could have used some other tool with your dxf, but that would be less fun, and having fun matters This method is really intended for the case where only an image exists, or even when you just have a pointcloud measured in some way.