[Ahhh, my chrome browser just crashed and ate my reply. If the following is not Brilliant!, well, you should've seen what I wrote before! I was laughing. I was crying. I was uplifted. I was... well, you get the picture.]
Thanks Randy. Google search being the watered-down, pat-on-the-head shadow of its former self, I think it's giving all of us the same-old same-old. (I'm starting to be curious about how to search the dark net... In fact, these days, I often try to jump to the 100th page of the search results.)
I don't think Wu's group is onto anything, really. I downloaded one of their "depthmap" results and fed it into MeshCAM. What MC saw was a typical lithophane. Similarly, I think the photomesh people are just separating a photo into a cookie-cutter outline, which they raise, and a high-pass filtered version containing the edges which they just paint on the cookie. "Bas-relief-like." I would call it.
I also saw M. Rabin's Herculean effort with his pup's model. It reminded me of this, that I learned of recently:
http://twistedsifter.com/2013/11/worlds ... g-chunhui/in terms of requiring a certain level of "commitment." :^)
Of all the software I've seen so far, I thought MeshCAM Art seemed the most promising, but I thought, if so, surely, someone's done it? [Did you do SuperFTD-Man with MC A?]
I had some correspondence with the proprietor of my3dscanner.com (now defunct) Pavel Prozor (in Czech Republic?) who said he was going into the bas-relief-from-photos business, and his results looked promising--making me think he had actually found a method, but alas, he too no longer answers the bell at my3dscanner.com.
I'd give it a try, but MC Art has that 30-day limit and how-it-goes at my house is: settle in to give it a try... [interruption]... [BOOM]... it's 31 days later...
--
David, Zane of CNC