Highly Detailed Mesh Sign? Add-on?

[Chic Aeon]

These style of signs are popping up at a lot of venues and shops. They have the same "look" and it doesn't look like they were modeled by hand. Is there an add-on for Blender that does this? Or a Maya function?  Don't want to make them. Just curious. Thanks.

 

Note: They appear to be made using a graphic logo as the base -- that is the store and venues have "matching" texture logos.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Chic Aeon

[Rolig Loon]

And you're sure that they are not simply textures that use careful shading?  That one looks really neat as a 2D texture.

[Pierre Ceriano]

I'm also interested to know if there is an addon for that ; as I admit I am a lazzy guy ^^

The shortest way I found yet is to turn a nice picture or drawing to a black png vector, then transform that vector to an svg file I import to Blender and make some improvements on it, in order it gets some bump. Then I shamelessly apply the original picture on it...

Edited February 27, 2018 by Pierre Ceriano

[Bebe Bunny]

As far as I know it's possible to extrude SVG in blender, but I don't know details about how to do it.

[Chic Aeon]

43 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

And you're sure that they are not simply textures that use careful shading?  That one looks really neat as a 2D texture.

OK Demerits for thinking I wouldn't know if it was mesh or not LOL.

Here is a SIDE view. It is obviously extruded but the question is how. 

 

And yes there IS a texture on the front face :D. 

Edit: When I went to inspect them they both are 3 li and the LODs are good, but the Whimsical one appears to be sculpt?  I get no info on vertices count in the FS Object tab for it.    

The Gacha Garden one is much "finer" quality than the one made for Whimsical  -- and this of course could have been a choice, not pointing to the creator's skillset. 

 

Edited February 27, 2018 by Chic Aeon

[Rolig Loon]

4 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

OK Demerits for thinking I wouldn't know if it was mesh or not LOL.

Sorry.  I had to ask.  That's the "Is it plugged in?" question.  

[Lelani Carver]

Guessing it’s something done with a vector graphic, and either a displacement modifier or some Boolean voodoo?

in any case, both are lovely.

[animats]

Oh, that's nice. What's the land impact?

[Callum Meriman]

Inkscape does a pretty good job of converting the image into an SVG, which can be imported into Blender. Open the bitmap, click then rightclick, then choose "Trace Bitmap". Playing around with the settings as needed with a real time view until you get the desired shape.

Use 2 colour mode as mentioned above to get the area.

Edit: crude 2 minute example 0.5LI through LOD abuse of lowest LOD.

Inkscape link on the MS store: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/inkscape/9pd9bhglfc7h - Also available for Linux and Mac from https://inkscape.org/en/

Edited February 27, 2018 by Callum Meriman

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, animats said:

Oh, that's nice. What's the land impact?

I've played around with the technique a few times but only actually used it for this sign and it is 5 LI:

It's not as complex as the one in Chic's picture but probably considerably bigger and size is a crucial factor here.

I would guess that most any sign smaller than 1x1 m or so can easily be done at 1 LI. The actual lag it causes, depends a lot on the maker. Give the mesh a thorough cleaning before you upload and keep all LoD models low poly but still detailed enough to work with LoD factor 1 and you'll be fine. (Subtle hint: don't even think of making such a sign without an impostor face ). One other issue to be aware of is that you can end up with serious texture flickering at a distance and at high altitudes if you're not careful.

Edited February 27, 2018 by ChinRey

[Pierre Ceriano]

Once I created the mesh from the svg file and made some improvement, I solidify it and arrange by hand the back joining the vertices that sometimes interweave. Then I unwrape "Project from view" in front or top view, depends the orientation of the object). Then I import the original picture and fix the UV on the the outlines of it.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Pierre Ceriano

[OptimoMaximo]

Maya has two ways of doing it: the legacy import eps8 curves (generated from an image logo) and the new SVG import. I haven't tried the latter though, as i tend to use the legacy one which produces NURBS surfaces, and in Maya NURBS automatically get UVs to work with, cutting down on a stage of work. Since it's derived from the image logo, the work is done pretty easily

[Chic Aeon]

Thanks all. I am smarter now

These have EXCELLENT LODs -- all of mine -- although I will say that I have had some sent to me that crumbled at two meters and I just put up a graphic poster instead. Obviously the owners are running at LOD4 or better.

These range from 2 (Gachaland) to 11 (OMG) Gatcha Garden. The top three were likely made by the same person as the owner of the venues is the same.     Since I have lots and lots of prims to spare I have the pretty ones on the wall.