3D model or wire mesh from a photo

[80grit]

I am interested in trying to create 3D models from photos. At this time, I'm not expecting to end up with a 360 model from a picture. I'd just like to end up with something like a clip art relief.

A google search yields many options. It would take while to go through them all to see which one could give me a good result at a reasonable price. I was hoping to tap into the shopbot knowledge base to see if anyone has tried any applications and could offer some advice.

FYL: I have Aspire.

[willnewton]

I use Rhino3d to make mine for my 3d printer. You will have to do experimenting, based on your machine and software tweaks. Basically you can follow the advice for making lithophanes from photos.

I have not used Aspire to make one, but might try after finding this tutorial. The video and PDF at the bottom of that page will walk you through it better than anyone can.


http://www.vectric.com/cool-stuff/case-studies/pvc/2010/3d-lithophane.html

[myxpykalix]

A couple of years ago there was some program in the alpha stage that the demo video showed a guy taking a photo of teapot, and an outside faucet and other objects and by drawing around the object, pushing, and pulling the shapes it created a 360 degree 3D copy of the object from the photo.
I've never seen anymore about it. Does anyone know what i'm talking about? Do you know the link to the video or the product? Has that ever come to market?

[Burkhardt]

Windows 3d-Builder creates a pretty good height map from images, exports as .stl and it comes free with Windows10. That said, few photos are suitable to be converted directly into a relief. I found you usually can recognize the image but it just looks weird. I guess that would require to take the picture with special lighting or do other processing.

[Bobtail Farms]

If you are not working from an existing photo, you may look into stereolithography (I believe that gives us the "stl" file format its name). Art Fenerty has a module within "Gearotic" entitled stereophotometry which can take "photos" of objects (because it relies on varying the lighting of your computer screen to illuminate the object, the size and proximity of the object to your computer is limited) and render an stl which I've imported into my CAM software (VCP) and cut on my homemade machine using Mach3.

If you are working with an existing photo the following may be of interest (look for Michael's step-by-step instructions): http://forum.vectric.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=26185&p=187553&hilit=photo+santa#p187553

Hope that is of interest.