Applying 3D textures (Displacement) for Rhino 6 Mac

[Chris-Mitchell]

Hi,

I’m trying to apply a granite texture to a surface in Rhino 6 for Mac. I am going to CNC the texture so it needs to be an actual 3D surface (and not just for rendering).

I am looking everywhere for the “Displacement” feature which everyone says is in the “Properties” panel, but I don’t see the feature when I load the Properties panel.

Any idea on why this is and how I can do this?

Any help will be appreciated! Thanks!

[jdhill]

If I make sure the button at the top-right has been set to “Show properties panel”, then I see the displacement tab when an object is selected:

After applying displacement here, I can use ExtractRenderMesh to get a copy of the displaced mesh.

[Chris-Mitchell]

Thanks for that. But I’m using Rhino 6 on the Mac and I don’t see it.

[jdhill]

This screenshot was from v7, but I did not post before confirming the identical behavior on my other mac with v6, so I’m not sure what problem you may be having.

Probably need to show us some of what you do see, so we can try to figure out why you’re not seeing this.

[Chris-Mitchell]

Here is what I see…

[jdhill]

This is what you should see when no object is selected, so it is showing the properties related to the current view. What do you see if you now draw a cube, and select it?

[Chris-Mitchell]

I’m such an idiot. I didn’t realize it had to be selected first.

Thanks JD!

[jdhill]

Sure thing, glad it wasn’t some other problem

[Chris-Mitchell]

Me too! Thanks again for your help!

[Chris-Mitchell]

Okay… Now I need to be able to remove text from this object. FYI - I’m making a tombstone for a haunted house and I need to be able to customize the name.

Normally I would just boolean the text from the surface. How do I go about this after I’ve created a texture like this?

[Chris-Mitchell]

Any ideas on this one, JD?

[jdhill]

If I understand correctly, then you can use ExtractRenderMesh on your text, and then use MeshBooleanDifference to cut them from your displaced mesh:

Provided that MeshBooleanDifference is not a v7 thing – I don’t happen to know.

(to clarify, on the left we have the displaced nurbs cube, and nurbs text, while on the right, the extracted render mesh of the displaced cube, with the extracted render meshes of the text boolean’d out)

[Chris-Mitchell]

Did you convert the mesh to NURB?

[jdhill]

No, I am getting the displaced render mesh from the cube, and render meshes from the text, and cutting the text out with MeshBooleanDifference – after this point, we have meshes, not nurbs, but if you are going to cut with cnc, a mesh will be what you end up using anyway.

[Chris-Mitchell]

I think I’m missing a step.

Here’s the workflow:

1. I was working with a text object and extruded it.
2. I used the command "ExtractRenderMesh on the text.
3. I tried the MeshBooleanDifference on the tombstone.

I got this…

(obviously I’m missing something)

[jdhill]

It appears you may be trying to subtract the mesh text from the nurbs tombstone, maybe this will make it more clear:

nurbs on the left, meshes on the right, no mingling together of them.

[Chris-Mitchell]

So how do I get my tombstone to be a mesh?

[jdhill]

Just use ExtractRenderMesh on it.

[Chris-Mitchell]

Okay. I did that. That was the step I was missing.

For some reason, the text still won’t remove when I use the command: MeshBooleanDifference

[jdhill]

If you upload an example 3dm I will check it.