I am learning how to do 3D carves of landscapes. Anyone have good techniques for increasing the depth of multiple lakes (2-5 mm) that are at different elevations, so you can fill them with colored epoxy resin. Oceans and single lakes are easy. Touch terrain can easily create a drop of any single elevation like the ocean (0m or a lake at 1900 m) using the manual overide “leq”. However, this drop also drops all other elevations at the same elevation of the lake. This destroys the overall model. Any thoughts or links to tutorials would be appreciated. Thanks
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You could try contacting the team that supports Touch Terrain.
Here is what I do:
After I download, size, and position the 3D model from Touch Terrain on one level, I create a second level that I arbitrarily call “water trace.” On this level, I either manually trace the water’s edge (not often, this takes a lot of time) or I treat the model as a bitmap and use the bitmap trace to create and then clean up a trace of the shoreline. I fiddle with the number of colors (shades of grey) until I get a pretty good trace of that shoreline.
Now, I return to the 3D level and generate my 3D carving toolpaths of the entire model (including the water). I make note of the max depth of the 3D carve depth. I then create a pocket toolpath for that shoreline tracing, and set the depth of cut 1/16 inch DEEPER than the 3D max carve depth.
I cut the pocket for water first, fill with epoxy, and let it cure. THEN I do my 3D carve and that brings the terrain right down to the water level but does not carve the epoxy. Sometimes, I will use that shoreline trace as an exclusion area of the 3D carve if I want the shoreline itself to “stand proud” of the 3D carve by itself.
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Thanks for this reply. I will try it out. Sorry for the delay in responding. Life took a few detours lately. I have not been able to do much with my Journeyman lately.
When you say… " I treat the model as a bitmap and use the bitmap trace to create and then clean up a trace of the shoreline. I fiddle with the number of colors (shades of grey) until I get a pretty good trace of that shoreline." … What software do you use to do this?
After thinking a bit… I think I understand. I will give it a try. Thanks
Vectric Vcarve Pro has been adequate for me so far, but there are lots of bitmap tracing tools available.
Thanks. I have been using Aspire. However, I find that it only breaks the grey scale into 16 shades.
This does not provide enough resolution to define some of the lakes I am trying to carve out. I tried photoshop but could not figure it out. I am not a PS wizard. For example, It is easy to get the resolution for Lake Tahoe. I was able to define Fallen Leaf Lake too. However, nearby Upper and lower Echo Lake are difficult to define. Washoe lake on the N shore area is extremely difficult due the lack of terrain gradient in the area. I appreciate your responses. I will keep at it. Thanks
Most of the online terrain mapping tools (like touch terrain or Terrain2STL) allow you to “exaggerate” the surrounding terrain, which should leave you with a clearly defined shade of grey representing the water.
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I will give that a try. Also Aspire will do the same. I don’t know if doing it in Aspire will stretch the shading resolution or not.
Also, you mentioned “I make note of the max depth of the 3D carve depth. I then create a pocket toolpath for that shoreline tracing, and set the depth of cut 1/16 inch DEEPER than the 3D max carve depth”… I don’t think I need a pocked that deep. I may just set the zero at the the lake level after the 3D carve. Then do the pocket of the lake at about 1 mm or so. I may have misunderstood your meaning.
You can certainly do it that way - I don’t, because I prefer to have the epoxy lake in place before doing the 3D carve…that way, the 3D carve will clean up any spilled/dripped/smeared epoxy…even using a syringe to fill small areas, I always manage to get some epoxy where I don’t want it. If the 3D carve is already done, I’ve just goofed my project.
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