Distortion printing

[#1]

Hello!

I'm banging my head against the wall, I can not figure out how to fix my problem.

I got a small business/hobby printing and vacuumforming the print around objects.

There is software for my problem, but it is way to expensive. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulT0LqQ9KHE)

I have printed numerous patterns to check how much my images distorts, and its from 0 - 300%.

That meaning someplaces, a 1x1cm square will be 1x3cm when formed.

Anybody got a bright idea how to fix this problem ?

I'l add two images as examples.

Straight mesh --> Formed

[#2]

Hello!

I'm banging my head against the wall, I can not figure out how to fix my problem.

I got a small business/hobby printing and vacuumforming the print around objects.

There is software for my problem, but it is way to expensive. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulT0LqQ9KHE)

I have printed numerous patterns to check how much my images distorts, and its from 0 - 300%.

That meaning someplaces, a 1x1cm square will be 1x3cm when formed.

Anybody got a bright idea how to fix this problem ?

I'l add two images as examples.

Straight mesh --> Formed

[#3]

I suppose one could use a Displacement Map to counteract the effect but I suspect that would work in the opposite direction of what you want to achieve, as it might be used to preview the distortion but not effectively enable to work in the distorted state. 

[#4]

I've found someone with the same problem as me, he also printed a grid. But the thread ends without an happy ending. Any creative solutions here? 🙂 

[#5]

Photoshop most likely is not the application to use for you products you seem to want some 3D application.  You may want to look at Adobe Dimension to see if it can built or import the 3D models you seem to need. Adobe Dimension 

[#6]

I don't have any solutions at this time, but have started to work on the problem using methods described in this paper:

https://igl.ethz.ch/projects/thermoforming/computational-thermoforming-2016.pdf  I spoke to one of the authors at NYU and wrote some code in Mathematica.  The idea is to print the grid, thermoform, scan the formed object from above, and compute the anti-distortion.  That is then used to distort the original graphic.  Even using commercial software, it is an iterative process, and usually takes a few tries before the distortion is exact.