Hi I wasn’t able to make it work. Found the exe file. downloaded to a directory called stl2png. Moved an stl file to the directory and followed your example above. It seemed to run about 5 seconds and the prompt came back. But there wasn’t anything extra in the directory. Where would it be. What am I doing wrong? File size was about 120 meg.
Thanks
hmm I’d love to figure out more and debug… is this STL something magic or is it distributable in some form ?
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also one thing the current version 1is not good at is detecting ascii STL files … it does not support those (yet)… is your stl file a “binary STL” or an “ASCII stl” ?
It is a topo file of a valley near here. It loads into Fusion 360 okay but it would be nice to shorten up the procedure by using Carbine Create. It comes into Fusion with a size of 75 by 75 inches. That may be some of the problem. It had to be scaled down to use it. Don’t be concerned about it. I can make it work with Fusion. Just thought you might want to look at it. I just loaded it in a word program and I can read. Not sure if that answers your question about ASCII stl?
That makes it ascii.
I’ll see what it takes to add ascii support
Instead of downloading a windows executable, you can now do the conversion to depthmap in your browser:
https://fenrus75.github.io/FenrusCNCtools/javascript/stl2png.html
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Hi.
I’m fairly new to cnc work and have been looking for something like this to try out without breaking the bank on expensive software. I tried downloading the files on 3 different pc’s (all windows 10) but can only get it to work on one. Also, the browser one works fine but I cant seem to download the resulting PNG image. Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks
can you see the resulting image correctly?
You can always right-click-save-as
(which browser are you using? I mostly tested Chrome)
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I can see the image correctly but there is no option to save when I right click. I’m using Microsoft edge. I’ll download chrome and try that. Thanks
Sorted. Working perfect with chrome. Thank you
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Cool!
For any Rhino users out there the PNG heighmap is easily accomplished with 2 commands from any model (.stl or otherwise).
Open a viewport in ‘shaded view’ set the viewport you want (typically in parallel projection)
Command: ShowZbuffer
Command: ViewCaptureToClipboard
Paste to PS and save as PNG.
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This worked great. Thanks for providing.
I previously managed to create a height map using Cinema 4D, but this was super simple.
Would you consider allowing users to select the output resolution?
that request makes sense, internally I have the logic for it (the command line tool has it) but I had not done the website/javascript side for that. I’ll go figure out how to do that
would this be best done with a set of fixed resolutions (drop down box) or do you just want some box where you can type a number?
I would think data entry fields would suffice. It’s not like the resolution has to comply with some sort of industry standards. What would be super nice is if you entered the width that the height would be auto calculated based on the model’s aspect ratio. And vise versa if you entered height.
Thanks for the quick reply!
the aspect ratio already works that way 
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Yes, sort of, size the box to the desired size and set it to have the same proportion as the incoming image so that the repeat doesn’t matter.
I tried this and I cant download the image or save it ay all, I can see the full image but just cant save, and I couldn’t download the software just ran it from the browser, any thoughts
which browser did you use?