Displacement on a cylinder or creating a texture roller

Question

I am a blender beginner and was wondering how to create a so called 3D printable (the mesh needs to be highres) texture roller as this one: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3029293

I first tried creating a basic cylinder combined with a sub-surface- and a displacement-modifier, what for some reason did not work for me.. Even when creating a seam and uv-unwrapping I still had no luck...

Secondly i tried to follow this tutorial World map as displacement map on a sphere distorted but while I managed to get the bump mapping working, displacment mapping in a similiar way (using the same overall structure) did not work correctly -> Regarding this approach, i am wondering how to "bake/apply" the mods before exporting the mesh to be printed.

Lastly - and for me actually most interesting - I thought to create a 2D drawing (either manual or via .svg import) to project it on a cylinder, but did not even finde a way to do this

As non of the afformentioned approaches worked at all and me getting depressed after working on this for a while, I decided to post here.

If anyone could help me or at least pinpoint me in the right direction I would be really great full!

Cheers JI

Answer 1

1.Add a cylinder, adjust its scale in edit mode and cut the faces to squares with Ctrl+R, mark a seam and unwrap it.

2. Add a subdivision surface modifier with 3-5 viewport value and apply it.

3. Browse in your texture in the "Texture" properties tab.

4. Add a displace modifier, select your texture, set the coordinates to UV, set the Midlevel 0 or 1 to preserve the original geometry and set the strenght to a low value then apply the modifier.