Aspire and grayscale

[mwhatch]

This may be a good question for Michael T or anyone else that has Aspire.

I seem to be losing some detail when I create a grayscal image for Designer.

Has anyone come up with the best size and depth settings in Aspire for getting the most out of a grayscale?

Are the Desigher import settings more relavent?

Thanks

[jpaluck]

Does aspire have an option for 16 bit on export? That might help you..zbrush goes all the way to I think 64 but CW only take 16 bit..other thing do you have the stl importer?..I find stl import is close to perfect as it get's...I don't have aspire but hope it helps you out

[mwhatch]

Hi John,

Yes, Aspire does export grayscale in 16 bit.
I would like to have the stl import but since I have Aspire to use with my other cnc, I want to try to use it for the CW.
By the way. You have some great looking models on the Carvemore site.
Do I detect a fancy for fly fishing?

Thanks

[mtylerfl]

Hi Morton,

Saving a greyscale from Aspire then importing that into the Designer software yields very good results if the model was created "correctly". One thing I try to do is make sure the model in Aspire is done at the highest resolution suitable for a particular model. Models that don't have a lot of fine detail, I can usually get away with just the "standard" or "very high" resolution settings.

You may recall you have 3 choices for levels of resolution when you first setup your Aspire workspace:
1) Standard
2) Very High
3) Highest

These three levels are normally sufficient, but remember that your model must fill the greatest amount of area on the workspace as possible in order to take full advantage of the total resolution. In other words, if you are making a model that measures about 6" x 6", don't make a workspace 12" x 12" because that effectively cuts your resolution down considerably. Make the workspace only as big as necessary to contain the entire model.

Now, I'm not sure if you already know about this or not, but there are two ADDITIONAL higher resolutions available in Aspire. The trick to accessing those is to hold down your 'Shift' key while clicking on 'Create New File' when first setting up your modeling workspace. When you do that, you will now have FIVE choices of resolution:

1) Standard
2) Very High
3) Highest
4) Extremely High
5) Maximum

I have rarely had to use anything higher than "Highest", but those other resolution settings are there if you need them for a particular special circumstance. (i.e., very large or very small models with finer details like jewelry items). There are other ways to achieve fantastic detail without having to use the higher resolutions...for example, you can model components separately at say, double their finished size, then copy/paste the "big" component into another instance of Aspire and resize the component down to its finished size. NOTE: Brian (from Vectric) has a PDF that describes this technique and explains 'everything' about maintaining good resolution when modeling.

Having said all that, my current standard procedure is to export my Aspire models as STL (I export at 0.0001" triangulation setting from Aspire). Then I import the model into Designer via the CarveWright STL Importer. Sometimes it's hard to discern the difference between a 'greyscale' or 'STL' import of a model, but I do notice that areas with larger smooth areas (like a smooth dome) seem to come in with less (or none) stairstepping sometimes seen on greyscale imports into Designer (from any source).

I hope that helps and that I didn't bore you with any information that you may have already known!

[mtylerfl]

...Has anyone come up with the best size and depth settings in Aspire for getting the most out of a grayscale?


Hi Morton,

I want to address this part of your question more directly.

In general, your goal is to create a relief model with the least amount of depth possible that will yield the intended detail for carving. You'll notice that most "stock" relief models are no deeper in Z than about 1/4". There is a very good reason for this.

When you enlarge any relief model, you will see that detail becomes less and less as the model is stretched bigger and bigger. The solution for restoring detail in any relief carving software (such as Designer) is to increase the Depth and Height as you enlarge the model.

Let's say you created a model at 5/8" depth and then decide to enlarge it in Designer. The details will "flatten" out when it's enlarged, so you need to input greater Depth and Height in Designer to get those details back. If you are carving on a 3/4"-thick board, you don't have much "room" to increase the depth without running out of board thickness if your original model was 5/8"-thick. However, if the model was originally only 1/4"-thick, you have a lot more flexibility for enlarging/increasing depth before running out of board thickness!

James Booth (from Vector Art 3D) asks all his artists to try to create models at between 1/4" to 1/2"-thick at the most for use by the general public. Again, the reason is that we do not know whether the end-user will need to enlarge the model or not, so by keeping the model at as low of a depth as possible, this gives the end-user more wiggle-room to enlarge and manually increase the depth of a model in a project, if necessary.

Exceptions are when you are creating models intended for slicing. An example of this is my "Schnoz Box" project. The nose was about 3" tall (deep) and was exported as an STL, then sliced in sections for carving on the CarveWright machine. If I needed to make a larger nose, I could change the size during the STL import, and just create more slices to achieve the intended final "depth". No loss in resolution or detail when doing a project like that.

I highly recommend considering the purchase of the CarveWright STL Importer. Especially if you plan on doing a lot of modeling in other programs (such as Aspire, ArtCAM, Moi, 3DS Max or whatever). That will give you a "complete" and easy method of converting your models into the CarveWright PTN format.

[mwhatch]

Thanks, that gives me a lot of good information. Lots of tweaking options.