I feel like an idiot.

[brdad]

Nope, I meant thickness of the board. Think about it. If the board is .75" thick, you have 255 levels of gray to work with. So it's .75 / 255.

If the board is 1" thick, you still have 255 shades of gray so it's 1 / 255.

Works every time for me. Now when you say "resized" do you mean like stretching the pattern on the board? Like if you drop it on the board and it's 2" wide by 2" tall and you drag it bigger or smaller? This is changing the "height" of the pattern?

I just tried using my pattern I linked to in my earlier post on a 3 inch thick board with no difference in my numbers over a 1 inch board.

And by resized, yes, I mean stretching or shrinking the pattern, see my example below.

If the height was a factor of the board thickness, I would think adjusting the height one one pattern would affect the height of other patterns. You can have two or more patterns on one project and have one at a shallow height where 100 shades of gray would make .05 inch and another that the 100 shades would make .25 difference. And I would also think if it was a factor or board thickness, white would always carve to the bottom of the board while black would be the top, which is not always the case, unless the board thickness and pattern thickness are equal.

In my example, pattern default depth is .75, settings in designer for both original and resized patterns are .8 depth, 100% height.

[Amonaug]

Nope, I meant thickness of the board. Think about it. If the board is .75" thick, you have 255 levels of gray to work with. So it's .75 / 255.

If the board is 1" thick, you still have 255 shades of gray so it's 1 / 255.

Works every time for me. Now when you say "resized" do you mean like stretching the pattern on the board? Like if you drop it on the board and it's 2" wide by 2" tall and you drag it bigger or smaller? This is changing the "height" of the pattern?

Yes scaling a pattern horrizontially/vertically also scales it's height. If you want to see it in action create a pattern with boxes of several shades of grey. At it's default size you get the results you would expect. Now add the same pattern again to the board but scale it and compare the same shades of grey, they will be at different heights/depths.

[cholme@mac.com]

This is exactly what I was hoping to learn. I will play with grayscale to see what happens.

Ok, another dilemma... how do you create a more 3d image... what I mean is that is seems like no matter how thick the board is, the pattern is the same depth. When I adjust the "depth" in the CW Designer, it just changes how deep the pattern lies in relation in the top of the board. In other words, the pattern doesn't change.

Does that make any sense?

[ChrisAlb]

There seems to be some confusion here. Height is NOT dependent on the board's thickness and I'm not saying it is.

My formula is to calculate the "Change of Depth Per Shade of Gray" that's all.

As far as Black being bottom or top, that can switch depending on whether your graphic is a negative or not before importing it, or if you invert a pattern on the board. It has nothing to do with how my formula works for determining change of depth per shade.

Thanks Kevin!! I wasn't aware that Designer changed the heights according to pattern size. Learn something new everyday....

[cholme@mac.com]

So, is there some way to define how deep the pattern is actually cut... without scaling the whole image? (black at 1/8" deep and the white at 1" or something like that)

Sorry to be so thick about this, perhaps part of the problem in me learning this software is that running Leopard on a Mac seems to create a display problem.

[Jeff_Birt]

The 'Depth' setting controls how far down into the board the pattern is carved, or another way to think of it is you are setting the bottom position of the pattern. The 'Height' setting controls how far towards the top of the board the pattern goes. It's kind of like a vertical scaling function (or volume knob if you will).

These two setting can be complicated somewhat if the particular pattern you are using does not make use of the entire 1-255 gray scale range (0 is transparent). So if your pattern runs from say, 10-200, your exact carved depth/height may vary a bit from the numbers entered. The display in Designer dose a great job of showing you the actual carving though.

Contrary to what was stated earlier, scaling a pattern in the X/Y axis had no effect on its depth/height settings. However if you enlarge pattern in X/Y it will LOOK flatter as you have changed the aspect ratio (of base to height). You can confirm this by using your mouse to reed out various spots on a pattern before and after scaling.

[cholme@mac.com]

Ok feel free to ridicule me... I totally missed the "height" box... and was using the "depth".

[Amonaug]

The 'Depth' setting controls how far down into the board the pattern is carved, or another way to think of it is you are setting the bottom position of the pattern. The 'Height' setting controls how far towards the top of the board the pattern goes. It's kind of like a vertical scaling function (or volume knob if you will).

These two setting can be complicated somewhat if the particular pattern you are using does not make use of the entire 1-255 gray scale range (0 is transparent). So if your pattern runs from say, 10-200, your exact carved depth/height may vary a bit from the numbers entered. The display in Designer dose a great job of showing you the actual carving though.

Contrary to what was stated earlier, scaling a pattern in the X/Y axis had no effect on its depth/height settings. However if you enlarge pattern in X/Y it will LOOK flatter as you have changed the aspect ratio (of base to height). You can confirm this by using your mouse to reed out various spots on a pattern before and after scaling.

I stand corrected.

Hmmmm, it seems I did comparisons some time ago and the height changed with scale but now it doesn't. There must have been another factor affecting it in my tests before (perhaps the pattern wasn't imported at 128 dpi?) *shrug*

I do know if you have a pattern of sqaures ranging from 0 - 255 greyscale and import it with a default depth of .25, 0 is at the surface and 255 is at .25" depth. Now put the pattern at .5 depth and 0 is no longer at the surface (it's more like .02") but 255 IS at .5"

[Jeff_Birt]

I do know if you have a pattern of sqaures ranging from 0 - 255 greyscale and import it with a default depth of .25, 0 is at the surface and 255 is at .25" depth. Now put the pattern at .5 depth and 0 is no longer at the surface (it's more like .02") but 255 IS at .5"

It never lets you raise a pattern above the surface, so if your 'Height' setting would cause the pattern to be above the surface Designer properly scales it to come even with the surface for you. This does have some advantages, you can set 'Height' to 999 to always keep the patterns top at the board surface.

[brdad]

Contrary to what was stated earlier, scaling a pattern in the X/Y axis had no effect on its depth/height settings. However if you enlarge pattern in X/Y it will LOOK flatter as you have changed the aspect ratio (of base to height). You can confirm this by using your mouse to reed out various spots on a pattern before and after scaling.

What I have found is if you enlarge the X/Y , it increases the pattern height as well UNTIL the highest point hits the top of the board, then the height of the pattern stays the same and then the base/height ratio changes.

When I reduce the size, the patten height drops as the X/Y is scaled smaller.

Below is the mpc I created the results of post #11 with...

Perhaps there is a difference in software versions?