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Making a building from a photograph


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I have a photo of a buiding that I would like to make a model of. I have used GIMP to produce a line drawing of it, and now I would like to print it out at 1/76 of the original, so that I can stick it to some card etc.

 

The problem I have is I am not sure how to descibe the process so I can search for how to do it using GIMP.

 

The building has a door, which I believe scales to 26mm in 1/76th scale, so I need to know how to print the door at that size so the rest of the building will follow.

 

Thanks

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This sounds ready made for a silhouette cutter, provided the building is not too large. I would import the photo into the silhouette software which is calibrated in mm or inches on the cutter, you can then resize to your door dimension. Also rather than printing on paper and sticking to card I print to 220 gsm card from the silhouette software. You can get the silhouette to cut to an outline of your photo quite easily. Mine is the cheaper portrait cutter.

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Hi,

When you open a photo in Gimp a small cell at the lower l/h corner of your screen will tell you what measurement form it is in , usually this will open in Pixels.If you L. click on it a range of options including mm will show up, select mm and then from the tool bar select the " Measure Tool "Icon ( a pair of compasses) . Using that you can measure what size the door or indeed any part of the photo is. 

Lets say for arguments sake it measures at 22mm high,if you now go into the 'Image' field at the top of screen then select 'Scale Image' you will get a display showing current size of the full image and it's resolution. Again alongside the dimensions is a click box that will enable you to select various ways of adjusting the size. If you select  % you will then be able to increase the size of the whole image by 118% , which in this case will resize the  the whole Image taking the door from 22 to 26mm .

 

Gimp is very good for doing this sort  of work but it needs a lot of trial and error to find out All it's capabilities.

 This building was developed from a single photo of what is the far end of the building as shown by resizing, cutting,pasting and correcting perspective distortion and then several layers all slightly different were cut out on the Silhouette Cameo.

It is still, sadly . not finished ( my fault )

 

Hope I  make some degree of sense, if not PM me if I can help.

 

Regards

Kevan

post-19569-0-39259500-1524441640.jpg

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Hi,

When you open a photo in Gimp a small cell at the lower l/h corner of your screen will tell you what measurement form it is in , usually this will open in Pixels.If you L. click on it a range of options including mm will show up, select mm and then from the tool bar select the " Measure Tool "Icon ( a pair of compasses) . Using that you can measure what size the door or indeed any part of the photo is. 

Lets say for arguments sake it measures at 22mm high,if you now go into the 'Image' field at the top of screen then select 'Scale Image' you will get a display showing current size of the full image and it's resolution. Again alongside the dimensions is a click box that will enable you to select various ways of adjusting the size. If you select  % you will then be able to increase the size of the whole image by 118% , which in this case will resize the  the whole Image taking the door from 22 to 26mm .

 

Gimp is very good for doing this sort  of work but it needs a lot of trial and error to find out All it's capabilities.

 This building was developed from a single photo of what is the far end of the building as shown by resizing, cutting,pasting and correcting perspective distortion and then several layers all slightly different were cut out on the Silhouette Cameo.

It is still, sadly . not finished ( my fault )

 

Hope I  make some degree of sense, if not PM me if I can help.

 

Regards

Kevan

Thanks Kevan, this is what I was really hoping for. David's answer did work, but I like GIMP, steep learning curve, as you say, but I prefer to be able to produce the whole thing in one programme. Besides, I like GIMP, I started using it when I was learning how to use Linux, but haven't put the time in to increase my knowledge since then.

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I have a photo of a buiding that I would like to make a model of. I have used GIMP to produce a line drawing of it, and now I would like to print it out at 1/76 of the original, so that I can stick it to some card etc.

 

The problem I have is I am not sure how to descibe the process so I can search for how to do it using GIMP.

 

The building has a door, which I believe scales to 26mm in 1/76th scale, so I need to know how to print the door at that size so the rest of the building will follow.

 

Thanks

Hi Tony

I've made a number of buildings this way, normally with Paint Shop rather than GIMP (though I have used that)  and the PC is a far better draughtsman than me. I've found the easiest way is to add a ruler to the drawing, print it out, then adjust the print size appropriately.

 

If you know the width of the door you can use that as a baseline and use its known length to calculate a suitable length (e.g 10cms) to use as a rule. Then when you print it out you can compare that with a physical ruler and rescale the print size appropriately- just make sure you use a print setp option that defines the image size rather than one based on the paper size. I find it a lot easier to have a pocket calculator handy while doing this.

 

Alternatively, just treat the door width as a tad less than 2 inches and adjust the print size till it is.

 

Most printers can handle thin card so you may find printing directly onto card saves a step  in the cutting process. It is though cheaper to do the trial and error stage with paper. 

Edited by Pacific231G
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If you're going to trace over a photograph to create a line drawing you might want to consider adding Inkscape to your toolkit.

 

Like The GIMP it's also free and multi-platform (I have the Windows version, but there are OSX and Linux versions too). Inkscape is to vector (line drawings) what GIMP is to raster (e.g. photographs) images. Inkscape has options to allow you to import a photograph to trace over it.

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The other thing to try Tony is printing onto A4 sized self adhesive label paper, then you can stick it to what ever thickness card you want.

I have been using it for about 6 years now  with no signs of anything lifting, the only drawback being you only get one shot at getting it down flat so you need to leave a bit of border for trimming if necessary.

Saves an awful lot of messy gluing but you can also just print out additional layers to build up stepped wall sections or replacement bits if you stuff something up!

Kev

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