I’m trying to apply a black-and-white line drawing as a texture using the Displace Modifier in Blender. This works well for creating an engraving effect, but the displacement only gives me very vertical walls.
I’ve tried blurring the linedrawing, which softens the bottom edge a little, but I’m really looking for an angle of 45 degrees from the top of the lines down to the bottom—similar to a chip-carved effect.
I’m wondering:
Is the Displace Modifier the right tool to achieve this angled result?
Or is there another method in Blender that would optimize my workflow?
Previously, I’ve done this by manually sculpting the mesh and adjusting the vertices, but I’d like to see if there’s a more efficient way to accomplish this.
For reference:
Here’s an example of a line drawing I could be using.
This is an example of an ancient brooch that shows the chip-carved look I’m aiming for.
There should be plenty of different methods… It all boils down to the one you’re more confortable with.
I would start by drawing curves to follow the creases, convert them to mesh and then connect them using mesh edit tools.
But I’m sure other people would have other solutions.
Thank you Secrop for the input. As I dont know any other methods right now then displace modifier, to archive this goal, would you mind give me some examples for methods I could look into, so as to find one that I could be comfortable with?
“I would start by drawing curves to follow the creases” That is actually a really interesting way of looking at it. By drawing the lines as vector graphic I might be able to build the mesh up from the curves converted to verticies. Might even be faster then my current method of verticies modelling. Never thought of it that way, thank you.
Thank you, I will look into this. Though I think I have been experimenting a bit with this method I think, but it dont seems to will yield a clean enough result and the time spend making the “map” will be almost equivalent to just modelling it from scratch, I think.
I did a small test and it was quite fast to produce a good result.
Of course, making the curves requires a bit of work, specially for keeping the curves with correct amount of points… Thought that’s not that complicated.
I only used the F2 addon to speed up the mesh creation.
Using a curve ( BezierCircle) with square profile ( BezierProfile)… adapting the radius of control points. But you have to convert to mesh ( BezierCircle.001 ) before “carving” with a boolean modifier from the “base” (Cube) :
Had to open your file to completely understand what you where describing but that is very, very clever. This question has opened up for so many different workflows, I really appreciate all these solutions people are coming up with.
Yes… the curve is something like the space where the knife carves.
Here’s another one"
You may also not use the radius of controll points but use the 3D option of the curve and then “lift” some control points in Z direction. This might give you also some tilt for the carving… but also tougher to handle (?).
Just had a test with what you showed here, using the example pattern in my original post, and your technique will easily give me the angled walls. But just converting the line drawing as is to curves and giving them the square profile will give me a result where angled walls follows the linjes and not the space between the lines.
This is an interesting realization for me. I need to think a bit more about how this will effect my workflow moving forward. Right now I think that if I am using your technique I will need to make a drawing/map with lines that follows the space between the pattern to get the angled walls that I want. The negative space will then be the actual motif.
Didn’t see you answer here, it covers pretty much my own comment further down. Thanks for clarifying and for giving me more advice. I will look into all of this.
That would most likely be the easiest way but not the most time efficient. What was it a friend of mine said? 3D modelling is more complex but faster, where as wax carving is more time consuming but way less complex. Pick your poison.
Been doing 3D modelling since 2010, started with sketchup back when it was free, moved to artcam and now using blender.
Been making my jewelry exclusively in blender since 2015 and have been teaching in blender since 2023, a course where I over two weekends teach students how to make a 3D model in blender and then sandcast a 3D print of their own designs.
I know exactly the love-hate relationship you are talking about and the last 3 years I have been out sourcing more and more of my castings to other people so I can focus on the stuff that actually brings me more joy.
Creating basic object shapes is easier than you might think.
However, blender’s functions do not create slopes.
I wonder if it can be done manually or with geometry nodes.
Yea getting straight lines is pretty straight forwad getting the program to undersrand it has to move inward towards an infinite thin ridge and either close that properly or push down towards it is more challenging.
Maybe a drawn map of the space inbetween where we want the cut to be, and use that as bassis for a pinch operation in sculpt mode. Will try and look into that
