How do I emboss detail from texture to model?

[Anonymous]

OK, this might sound weird, but I'm trying to take my 3d model with textures, and 3d print it as a statue.  But without the color (texture) of course the model is indistinguishable.

Is there a way to make the texture alter the mesh so that details like eyes, fingernails etc., are mesh geometry?  I'm assuming I will need to convert the texture to some kind of grayscale mask, and then do something like a heightmap, but I'm at a loss.

Anyone know how to get detail in geometry from the textures?

[10DSpace · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous 

You can use the Displace modifier to have a texture map accomplish what you want, but note the following:

1. The quality of the displacement will depend on the mesh density.  You will need a lot of polygons to get fine details to look halfway decent. 

2. You will need to tweak your color texture map in Photoshop to control the raised areas vs recessed areas by making a greyscale version where the white areas are raised and the black areas are recessed with shades of grey being intermediate.  

3.  While the above is achievable in Max and photoshop, for a true quality result  a sculpting application like Zbrush or mudbox would be better in my opinion.  But of course if you don't have a sculpting app and don't want to learn one, then you will benefit from the exercise in Max and may get to where you want.

See below for a (really) crude example of a sphere (set to 128 segemnts) being displaced by a color map with the displacement modifier.  I made no attempt to make a greyscale map with proper gradients of white to grey to black just to give you a quick idea.   (Max will use the value information from a color map to create the height map, but as you can see the result is not really what you want, For example, the eyes would need to have peak whiteness in the center in the height map). 

Anyway hopefully this gets you started.

[Anonymous]

@10DSpace Thanks for the reply.  I had looked at Displace, and hoped there was a better solution, but I figured that would be it.  I'm hoping that if I take the texture, and basically Find Edges, or do those tutorials that convert a texture into a line drawing, I can get the details I want carved in.  We're talking things like the "S" on Superman's chest and things like that, so a light engraving would do it.  I'll give it a shot and see how it works.  I don't know if it will take into account the UVW Mapping though, to make sure the S ends up on the chest and not across the back of the head.

[10DSpace]

@Anonymous 

"I don't know if it will take into account the UVW Mapping though, to make sure the S ends up on the chest and not across the back of the head."

Check the "Use Existing Mapping" option in the Mapping group of the  Displace Modifier.

[magnuswootton]

Im working on this right now!

if you use a shadow correction filter, you can remove all the shadows from the texture, I think its called "Albedo" then the idea is you get the difference of this and the texture with the lighting and u use this to depress the basic model which has all the base form in it.    its best to do it with ambient occlusion and what would be ideal is if u repeated back the brightnesses of the lit texture with the shadows from the ambient occlusion,   I think if you bake an ambient occlusion map prior to adding the displacement you can use this to further cancel out needless shadows that are already in the base form.    then what uve got is the look of the texture, but now its 3d.