TUTORIALS Turn images into models

BLENDER

Taking inspiration from images that started life outside of Blender, Michael Reed helps you turn them into shiny 3D objects.

Credit: www.blender.org

OUR EXPERT

Michael Reed tells us that outside of playing with Linux,his life is so square it’s practically a Blender default cube.

We’re going to look at a couple of ways of taking externally sourced images and turning them into 3D objects inside Blender. First, we’ll take a rough sketch as our starting point. Thanks to vector drawing application Inkscape (https://inkscape.org), we’ll convert this into a set of curves and lines before importing it into Blender. From here, we can convert this flat shape into a solid 3D object. Then, most importantly, we can make it shiny! (ooh, now I’m interested! – Ed) 

Secondly, we’ll look at working from a reference photo to draw an outline of a real-world object. From here, we can use a lathe-like technique to turn this into a solid 3D shape to which we can add some thickness so that it has solid walls. From there, it’s a cinch to add a texture to it, and give it a realistic-looking surface.

Sketch to logo

We’re going to take a sketch and turn it into a metallic 3D object in Blender. For this, we’ll assume that you’ve already got an image of a hand-drawn black and white 3D logo. Although this example starts with a sketch, there’s no reason that you couldn’t create something afresh in Inkscape, using its excellent drawing facilities. All you have to do to make this work is to generate a shape inside Inkscape, export it as an SVG file and then import it into Blender.

Inkscape is the ideal starting point for this type of work, and we’ll use it to prepare the image ready for importing into Blender, and we’ll assume you already have it installed. We’re going to take advantage of its Scan Bitmap function to convert a bitmap image into a vector image, a collection of lines and curves, rather than an image made of pixels.

Select the JPG or PNG image, ideally a line drawing, that you want to turn into a 3D object, and drag it into Inkscape. Left-click on the image to select it. Open the Trace Bitmap dialog (Path>Trace Bitmap...). In most cases, the default options are sufficient, including the default method of Brightness Cutoff. Click the Update button to get an idea of what the trace will look like. Note that you can increase the size of the preview area by maximising the Trace Bitmap dialog itself.

Remember that we don’t need an especially goodlooking image. We just need a clean path with a smooth outline to work with. When you have everything how you want it, click OK and close the Trace Bitmap dialog window. As you look at the traced version of the image in the main Inkscape viewing area, note that the original bitmap image is still present. So, drag the traced version to one side and then delete the original bitmap (leftclick to select and press Delete).