The words behind the work, explained.
Short, exact definitions of the terms you meet when you turn images into relief, with links to go deeper.
- 3D Sliced engraving
- 3D Sliced is a LightBurn image mode for galvo lasers that engraves a grayscale depth map as a stack of passes. On each pass a threshold moves through the gray range, so darker areas are engraved more times and end up deeper, producing a physical relief.
- 3MF file
- 3MF (3D Manufacturing Format) is a file format for 3D printing that stores meshes in defined units together with colors, materials, multiple objects, their positions on the build plate and, often, print settings. It is a zip archive of XML files maintained by the 3MF Consortium.
- Bas-relief
- Bas-relief, or low relief, is a sculpture that projects only slightly from a flat background, compressing a subject's depth while keeping its outline and detail. Coins, medals, plaques and most CNC and laser relief carvings are bas-reliefs.
- Depth map
- A depth map is a grayscale image in which each pixel's brightness represents distance or height instead of color: in the convention used for fabrication, white is highest or nearest and black is lowest or farthest. Laser software, CNC CAM and slicers read it to produce physical relief.
- Filament painting
- Filament painting is a 3D printing technique that reproduces an image as a thin relief printed in several filament colors stacked from dark to light. Each point's height, set by the image's brightness, decides how many layers of each partly translucent color show through.
- Kerf
- Kerf is the width of material removed by a cutting process, such as a laser beam, saw blade or router bit. Because the cut follows the center of the design line, parts come out smaller and holes larger by the kerf width unless the path is offset.
- Lithophane
- A lithophane is a thin panel of translucent material whose thickness varies with an image: thick areas block light and appear dark, thin areas let light through and appear bright. The picture is only fully visible when the panel is lit from behind.
- STL file
- STL is a 3D file format that describes a surface as a list of triangles, each with three corner points and a normal. It stores no units, colors or materials, which makes it simple and almost universally supported by slicers and CAM software.
- Transmission distance (TD)
- Transmission distance, or TD, is the thickness of a filament at which it effectively hides the color printed beneath it. Filaments with a low TD, like black, become opaque in a few layers; filaments with a high TD, like many yellows and whites, stay translucent for longer.