Theoretically, the steps that follow should work equally well on STLs or VRMLs you import, but I'm having trouble getting the renders to show on imported files. (Side note: I'm using a sphere I created from scratch in Rhino with the 'Solid.Sphere.' command.

I'm starting off in Rhino with this smooth, circular shape: Step 2: Applying Simple Bump Maps in Rhino.Here's more info on bump mapping, if you need it. Texture Mapping = the 3D part does not have its geometry changed by applying the imageīump Mapping = the 3D part DOES have its geometry altered by applying the image (it gets 'bumpy')Īfter this tutorial is over, you can call them whatever you want, but those are the terms we'll use here. Just to be clear, in normal texture mapping (which we've covered before), we're combining a 3D shape with a 2D image, but our result is still as perfectly smooth as the shape was, coming out of CAD:īut what we're going to do is combine that 3D shape and 2D image in such a way that the white parts of the image actually project OUT from the sphere, and the dark spots actually remain SMOOTH, so what we'll end up with is a textured model of the moon where you can actually feel the mountains and lava plains:Īnd out in the wider world, a lot of people use the terms 'texture mapping' and 'bump mapping' interchangeably, but for the purposes of this tutorial, I mean: (I'm showing Rhino in that workflow, you could probably use Photoshop or Maya or Blender or many other 'artistic' CAD packages as well. So we're going to modify our workflow to allow a computer to make all those small, complex, quasi-random texture dips and divots for us: That works great for engineering shapes, but there are a lot more textures found in nature:Ĭan you imagine trying to model any of those in CAD? Like, actually making a sketch and trying to extrude those shapes in your 3D models? That would take forever, right?īut sometimes in 3D printing you want models that have those types of textures on outside surfaces, for realism. YOU had to manually move faces, planes, features around, adding holes or fillets one by one. Readers of my previous tutorial will know, for a simple full-color workflow, you can just add one more step, inserting a program like Photoshop or Rhino which can successfully map textures onto VRML files:īut in both those workflows, any changes to your 3D shape were done in your CAD program, and by a human. For single-color, FDM prints you can just import the native files into GrabCAD Print and print them: Printing CAD shapes on 3D printers is pretty simple.

Files were then printed in full color on a Stratasys J750.

Mainly we use Rhino to do the displacement-mapping, but Photoshop could be used as well. This tutorial covers how to use 2D images to create actual 3D depth and physical textures on your CAD parts and then 3D print them.

Bump map photoshop