How do I import a picture of my Beagle and put it on a piece of wood?

SketchUp
1

I would like to carve something like this medallion on my CNC machine. But first I need to make the model itself. (I am assuming this is done in sketchup) But instead of the fish, I would like to put my beagle in that spot. I have attached a .jpg picture of the beagle image I would like to use in place of the fish. Is it possible to create something like this in sketchup? If so, are there any tutorials?

I have Sketchup and Sketchucam. I have been using sketchup for a while but I am fairly new to sketchucam.


Your advise on how to do this would be appreciated.
Thank you for your time.

2

Hi Bill,

This topic holds some clues.
Perhaps @jimhami42 and @catamountain would offer further insight.

3

The short answer is “Yes.” However, there are a number of caveats involved. Regardless of whether you use SketchUp or some other modeling software, you need some sort of 3D inferable data to start with. The photo of the dog, by itself, contains no inherent 3D data … while my mind’s eye can see the bas-relief image of the beagle you want, it’s doing so based on my 3D knowledge of beagle geometry (so-to-speak).

That being said, I found a number of photo → 3D model converters on-line. However, due to the lack of definitive 3D (height/elevation) data in the photo, this was about the best result I could achieve:

714Ă—514 323 KB

It’s worth noting that this cannot be carved out using SketchUcam … some other 3D CNC milling software would be needed to actually create it.

If this happens to be your own beagle, you might want to look into using a cheap dual lens 3D camera to take a reasonably close-up picture. The software available to use the two images and infer the 3D should produce a sufficiently detailed model to meet your needs. A more expensive approach would be to use a 3D scanner of some sort. You can buy your own or perhaps there’s a local shop that can scan the dog for you.

[added] You could always use the photo and manually shape a mesh into a beagle shape. If this is the route you take, then I don’t believe SketchUp is the best tool for this type of sculpting.

1 Like
4

Thank you Jim. I appreciate your candor and advice.In my research, I found PhotoVCarve that can import this file and ultimately carve it out but the software is a little pricey.So, I will continue to look at alternatives.
Thank you again for your advice.

5

This topic was automatically closed 91 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.