How to Design and Laser Cut a Custom House Plaque From Google Maps Images

[@wulfwire]

Amazing job! Definitely going to be trying something like this out when I get a laser.

[@GreylightMay]

Thanks, Cass! This was a fun project, and it was really touching to see how much it was appreciated as well. Being able to make and give one-of-a-kind gifts is one of the best parts of having a laser cutter!

[@ruftime]

Happy New Year May! Cool project and as always, impressive DIY tutorial video composition.

[@GreylightMay]

Happy New Year, Canyon Racer! Thanks for such a nice comment!!

[@Nerdy_Nomi]

That came out so great 😍 Enjoyed the video a bunch!

[@GreylightMay]

Thank you, Naomi, I'm so glad you like it!

[@ronm6585]

Thank you. It looks great! 👍🏻

[@GreylightMay]

Thanks, Ron, I'm glad you like it!

[@ktrazz]

Great video as always! Happy New Year!

[@GreylightMay]

Hi Randolph! Thank you, and Happy New Year!! I'm getting ready to unbox my first FDM printer, so getting ready to go up the learning curve on that. I have a project in mind that will use both laser cutting and 3D printing, and I thought FDM would work better than resin printing. I hope it works out!!

[@fabalassgifts5531]

How do you turn your original photo’s of the house into the perspective view you showed on your workplace to work from?

[@GreylightMay]

Fabalass, if you can get a clear photo of the house, without trees, it will always have perspective because that is what an eye or camera lens sees. The problem in this picture is the trees obscuring the roofline. I had to use the bits I could see and my knowledge of how the roofline would angle in with perspective to draw in the missing parts. This is really the 'art' part of the project, and it doesn't need to be perfect to look good. Without the problem of the trees, you could just trace a front photo of any house and the perspective view would be built in.

[@Monztuh]

Hm is there a more efficient way to do this? Instead of drawing everything could it be converted into a Line drawing ?

[@GreylightMay]

Monztuh, welcome! That is a very good question, as I would like to find a faster way as well. Converting to a line drawing in Photoshop would still produce an image that could only be raster engraved. The only way to get vectors which can be cut, or engraved, depending on the settings, is to draw it with the vector tools. You can run an image trace and the outlines in that are vectors, so it would generate lines around the "lines" in the line drawing. That would be okay for engraving, but the cut lines for the different layers will always need to be drawn manually. Image trace would definitely speed up the rest of the drawing, though, the only issue then becomes the trees and bushes. If you could get a really clean photo and you don't want to recreate what is behind the foliage like I did, you could raster/scan engrave everything and only draw the cutlines OR you could simplify the image, make it black and white, run an image trace and use the outlines for vector engraving, and draw the cutlines. This is a really good question! I could run some experiments to see what various filters like the line drawing in Photoshop would do with the houses I've already done and compare. Might be worth showing the results in another video!

[@jillcareri1025]

this is what im curious about as well.... @@GreylightMay

[@GreylightMay]

Jill, the long reply above is still true. There are easier ways to process a photo for raster engraving but if you want cut lines you must do a vector drawing. Image tracing will produce a vector drawing but that only works on simple black and white images, like Clipart. You could do a combination of raster and vector, but the cutlines for each layer must be drawn manually. That is somewhat simpler than what I did here, but the look of the final product would be different, not as clean, but paintable and could be quite nice.

[@bsow2012]

So are you talented at drawing and are literally drawing all those parts of the house, or is there a way to trace it?

[@GreylightMay]

I wish there were a way to trace it. I am quite experienced using Photoshop to make a strong black and white image and then image tracing in Illustrator but these color images are too complex and too subtle for that to work. At the least, you need to manually draw the cut lines for each layer. I was asked this question enough to actually demonstrate the outputs from image trace in a Reddit post. I will see if I can find that thread and post it here! Found it: www.reddit.com/r/lasercutting/s/e8r4iBYzF4 Hopefully the KZbin police won't remove it!!

[@bsow2012]

@@GreylightMay thank you! I’m new to this, just got my laser two weeks ago and was spending hours online trying to figure out how to trace such complex images. Everytime I tried it the traces were a jumbled up mess. This actually helps me a lot. I guess if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. Thank you for your help!

[@GreylightMay]

Yes! Image trace is an amazing tool for clean black and white images like clip art and illustrations. I'm getting ready to post a video where I use it on very elaborate lighthouse pictures I get from Dalle 3, and it works perfectly. If the source is grayscale, or color that you make grayscale by desaturation, then you have to fiddle with it to make it as black and white as possible before running image trace, and often with disappointing results. An important distinction to learn is vector engraving vs raster engraving. Raster is like a printer head moving back and forth, bursting laser at different powers instead of ink. Laser cutters can do this with grayscale and it looks pretty decent, but it doesn't give you clean lines for painting and can't be used to cut out layers. For that you need vector graphics that can drive the laser head, and if you learn some basic drawing techniques it will open up a whole new world of capabilities. I would recommend my Ten Tips for Designing Multilayer Mandalas as a good place to start. I will post the link here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aqLFpIdnZd9rfK8