10. 3D Clipart and Texturing - TCAPS...

ArtCAM Pro 5.5 10. 3D Clipart and Texturing

Issue ArtCAM-P 5.5 99

10. 3D Clipart and Texturing

Overview Using 3D Clipart and texturing the relief are two very powerful modelling techniques which

can be used together or individually to produce very detailed reliefs.

Lady Example • Select File �� Close any files you may be working on.

• Click the Load Relief button on the Relief toolbar and select Pend_frm.rlf from the Examples/Overview directory.

Since there is no open model, ArtCAM

opens this Relief as a model and does not

ask whether to Replace or Paste.

• Select the 2D View.

ArtCAM has automatically generated a grayscale

representation of the relief. The bar above the Colour

Palette can be dragged down if it takes up too much room

on the screen.

• Click the Load Relief button on the Relief toolbar.

• Open the file Lady.rlf from the Examples/Overview directory.

10. 3D Clipart and Texturing ArtCAM Pro 5.5

100 Issue ArtCAM-P 5.5

Because there is already a relief open, the Load

Relief dialog box appears:

• Ensure that the Pasting option is selected and click OK.

The 3D Clipart dialog box and a vector outline of the clipart appears in the 2D View.

At the moment the

imported relief, shown

as a vector, is too large,

but it can be

transformed, sized and

positioned, using the

form.

• Resize the relief so that it will fit inside the centre of the pendant, using the corner sizing handles (remember to press and hold Shift while re-sizing in order to maintain the relief’s proportions), or use the Scale page of the 3D Clipart dialog box.

Now we can move the vector (and associated relief) to the centre of the pendant.

• Move the cursor over the line so that the Move Cursor appears.

• Press the Left mouse button and move the mouse to ‘drag’ the relief.

• Release the button when you have moved the vector to the desired place.



Now you have positioned the clipart you need to adjust its

height and decide how you will combine it with the current

relief.

Look at the top of the Assistant Page – Project Information.

This tells us that the current relief maximum height is

0.659mm.

• Click the Size page on the 3D Clipart dialog box.

This tells us that the clipart has a maximum height of around 2.5mm after scaling.

Although the height has been automatically scaled in proportion to its altered size, it is still

nearly 4 times as high as the pendant base.

• Drag the Scale Z slider bar to bring down the maximum height of the relief to about 0.5mm. Click Apply.

• Click the Mode page on the 3D Clipart dialog box.

We want to Add the clipart relief onto the pendant base which is the default setting.

• Check that the Add mode is selected (this is also indicated at the bottom of the Summary on the left of the dialog box).

• Click the Paste button and then Close button.



• Generate a Greyscale

The basic relief has been generated. The greyscale is

used to help generate a texture.

ArtCAM allows a 3D texture to be applied across any part of a relief. The textured area is

determined by the areas of Primary colour in a 2D View. This can be done in two ways:

1. Texture with a Pattern - ArtCAM has a number of automatically generated

patterns that you can apply to your reliefs. The Texture with a Pattern option

provides a number of mathematically generated shapes. This makes them fast, high

quality and allows the shape parameters to be easily altered.

2. Texture with a Relief - user defined patterns which you can apply to your reliefs.

Using the From Relief option on the Texture Relief dialog box gives the ability to

create your own textures using any previously generated relief.

The principles involved are very similar for both operations.

In the following example, the pendant that you produced in the clipart section will be textured

using a pre-defined pattern.

• Open the file fin_pend.rlf if the pendant is not already open

• Select red as the Primary colour in the Colour Palette.

• Select the Flood Fill button on the Bitmap toolbar and flood the area around the lady’s head.



N.B. Because the area around the Lady’s head is one height, it will be one shade of grey, and

therefore can be flood filled as one area of bitmap.

• Select the Texture Relief button on the Relief Editing toolbar.

The Texture Relief dialog appears:

This dialog box allows you to adjust the parameters of

several pre-set texture shapes including Sphere, Ellipse,

Cone, Pyramid and Weave.

There are different Sizing Parameters depending on the

option chosen.

• Select the Pyramid Shape, set the Size to 0.5, the Truncation to 50% the Z Height to 0.1, select Blend Edges and Click Add.



Paste Relief Along Vector This button on the Relief Toolbar allows several copies of the 3D Clipart to be

pasted along a selected vector.

Example • Open a new model 100 by 100mm using the New Model button on the

File Toolbar.

• Draw a Vector using the Create Polyline button.

This will be the curve that the 3D clipart is pasted along.

• Select the Paste Relief Along Vector button on the Relief Toolbar to open the Crest01.rlf file from the Examples\Crest directory.

The clipart relief appears in the 3D View, the vector

outline appears in the 2D View, and the 3D Clipart dialog

box appears. Use the 3D Clipart dialog box to reduce the

size of the crest to around 15mm.

The Paste Along a Curve page appears in the Assistant:

First select the vector that you are going to paste the clipart

along.

The Spacing setting in the Assistant page allows you to

define the space between adjacent copies of the clipart.

100% means they will be next to each other, less than 100

means they will overlap, and greater than 100 means there

will be a gap.

• Leave Spacing set to 100%.

Next we need to define the sizes of the clipart at the start and end of the curve. By making

the sizes different, ArtCAM will scale the clipart automatically from one size to the other.



• At the moment the Clipart is too big, so enter a Start Size of 1% and a Final Size of 5%.

• Set this option to Adjust using Scaling.

• Click the Paste button.

ArtCAM calculates the different sizes needed and pastes the clipart. The Relief looks like

this. Black vectors in the 2D View show where the clipart has been pasted:

N.B. There is no preview for this function, so if the result is not what was expected, the

Undo button should be used.



Motif Example • Use the File menu to Close any projects that you are working on.

• Open a New Model and, set the Height to 25mm and the Width to 50mm.

• Open the relief file Leaves.rlf from the Examples/Clipart directory.

The Load Relief dialog box appears:

• Select Pasting and click OK.

• Select the Rotate page on the 3D Clipart dialog.

• Set the Rotate by angle field to -40 and Click Apply and then Paste.

The red vector rotates to reflect the change.



A copy of the clipart relief has now been Added to your current relief in the location and

orientation specified. In addition to the red clipart vector, there is now a black vector that

indicates where the relief was pasted. This black vector is no longer associated with the

pasted relief, however the red vector is still attached to a floating clipart relief. In this way

you can paste as many copies of the clipart relief into your current relief as you need.

• Click on the Rotate page and select the Horizontal button.

• Select the Move page and set the Move X origin by field to 25.

• Click Apply and then Paste.

• Generate a Grayscale from Relief.

• Delete both vector shapes.

• Open the relief Flower.rlf from the Examples/Clipart directory.

• Select Pasting and select OK.

• Select the Scale page on the 3D Clipart dialog.

• Set New scale % field to 60%. Click Apply.

• In the 2D View, select and drag the vector outline of the flower between the leaves.



Before you paste this clipart flower, you can make the flower stand proud of the underlying

leaves by using the vector outline to form a base onto which you can paste the flower clipart.

• Without closing the 3D Clipart dialog, click the Add Colour button on the Bitmap Toolbar.

• Select Green and click OK.

• With the flower vector selected, use the Flood Fill Vectors button on the Vector toolbar to fill the shape with green.

If you look at the Tree Control or the Assistant

Page at the left of the screen, you will see that the

Maximum Z Height of the Relief is 0.500mm.

• Set the green shape to be a flat plane with a Start Height of 0.5mm

• Click the Merge Highest button on the Relief toolbar.

A flat plane in the shape of the flower has now been brought up through the original relief,

and we can paste the clipart flower on top.



• Click Paste and then Close on the 3D Clipart dialog box.

• Smooth the Relief with 1 smoothing pass.

The motif relief can be saved. For this example, it is already stored as Motif.rlf.

• Close the model.



Exercise • Load the relief Plate.rlf from the Examples/Clipart directory

• Paste the relief Motif.rlf from the Examples/Clipart directory three times onto the plate to generate the following effect.

10. 3D Clipart and Texturing - TCAPS...

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