The letter outline relief was then modified by adding beveled letters.

Then I nudged the QUEENS relief vertically until I was happy and merged highest with the background relief.

For the upper crown I took my design cues from the lower lettering and the ‘qQ’ oval. It would look best arched upwards in the middle. To do this I first created a flat relief and then drew an oval vector around it. I would use this vector to modify the crown outline relief in an arc. I nudged it up a tad in the front view to make it look good in relation to the rest of the sign.

Then I modified the crown outline relief by adding the crown. relief

I checked everything with a render and by looking at the front views and then MERGED it highest with the background relief. The pub sign was looking pretty fine! Not much further to go.

The last step was the PLATE lettering and outline Once again to make things easier to adjust as needed I would build it as a separate relief, starting with the lettering outline, then modifying the outline with the letter shapes and lastly with the top decorations – all at 0.15″ tall.

Then I merged highest with the background reliefs one last time.

With that the sign was ready for tool pathing and routing.

 With the background of the sign done it was time to start in on the scroll and lettering. While I could have made the scroll all curved the reality was there would only be 0.15″ between the layers on the folds… not much room for anything fancy. Dave was more than capable of doing fancy blends with paint to make the sign more dimensional. The scroll pieces would all be built as separate elements one layer at a time and then merged highest with the background at the end. I started by selecting the lowest elements of the scroll and made them 0.8″ tall.

Then I worked my way forward keeping in mind what folded over what. There were four layers over all.

In these front views we can see the layers of the scroll stacked up.

Then, when I was satisfied how everything lined up it was time to merge the layers to the sign. First, after opening the merge menu, I selected the background relief.

 Now it was time to move on to the eatery lettering. This needed some special attention to make it work. I kept Dave’s original rendered view handy for reference and noted that the end bits of the lettering on each side tucked under the scroll. But the scroll ends were lower than the shield in the center of the sign. This meant the Eatery lettering had to bend upwards. EnRoute is capable of just such a feat by using a special procedure.

To accomplish this task I drew an oval around the work eatery. We would use this to modify the relief later.

First I created a flat relief that was 0.45″ tall. This number was a bit of an educated guess on my part as to the height but it worked out in the end.

Once I had the flat relief I then modified he relief by selecting both it and the oval vector I had created previously. A 12 degree slope on the curve also proved to be the magic number in clearing the center shield and sloping down enough on the edges to tuck under the scroll folds. It took me three tries to figure this out. Once I had the lettering background right I added the lettering to this relief.by raising it 0.15″ (not shown)

Then, after checking everything in a couple of different views I could merge highest to the background relief.

The sign relief was coming along nicely and showed some great looking dimension.

this fancy shape was then merged highest with the base relief. The two steps for this proceedure are shown below.

And here’s the file rendered as it now looks.

So far things have been pretty easy and straight forward but as we get into the file it gets a little more complex. Stay tuned for more next time.

-dan