Engraving Text on a Shell

[mansimaraneja]

Dear Meshmixer Community,

I need help to engrave/intrude/deboss text to my shell model.

I have attached the related STL file. Please also find attached the file that needs to be engraved. This maybe appropriately resized and the level of deboss should as per the thickness of the shell. I have tried this using the stencil feature but I am not able to control the depth of the deboss with respect to thickness of the shell and so it does not show up well on 3D printing. 

I would greatly appreciate help in this regard.

Thank you in advance

Mansimar Aneja

[hfcandrew]

Stencils can be tricky, but its the right tool to use. It helps to stamp it on a very very high density mesh to get better detail. And if you need to click twice, there should be no imagery on the very centre of the stamp cursor.

I'd suggest after you stencil, select the interior of the letters then run a transform and click on the expansion square and drag in the direction you want to thicken the text depth or just slide it in a bit. And just do that until it looks right.

Otherwise you'll have to model this picture in some different software, then drop it onto your object as a meshmix part.

[Volguus]

I found two possible ways, stencil and stamp.

STENCIL

- Make sure your stamp is a square (500x500px is the reco) to maintain aspect ratio. 

- Stamp effect depends on brightness of graphic. Black= no effect, white = highest effect

- Based on above, files with transparency (PNG) won't work.

- Select the area for the stencil. Remesh it finer until the triangles approximate the pixels in your graphic

- Select a Draw brush, the stronger the brush (more pluses) the stronger the effect

- I turn off ALL refinement but you can play with settings

- Click to emboss (Raise), CTRL (CMD)+Click to deboss.  Amount of effect is per "Strength" setting

PRO: quicker, no mods to original graphic needed

CON: Your PC dies remeshing, and it's still never actually smooth (see image).  But usually good enough.

STAMP

- Vector file needed, modified so that there are NO holes (see image).

- Use preferred app to change vector to OBJ. My method is: save Illustrator as SVG, import into 123D Design (which still rocks, BTW) as Solid, send solid to MM, select front faces only, invert and delete, Convert to Stamp.

- Stamp it. Select stamped Face Group and Transform it into or out of the object surface as desired.

PRO: No Remeshing, smooth curves thanks to forming new Borders.

CON: massive pre-preperation, probable need to modify logo which most companies frown upon.

[hfcandrew]

Oh I like the stamp idea. If you use this you could also put onto little label square and make a moveable custom Meshmix part out of it. See vid and .mix attached: