3 dimensional mosaics

hi all of you

i am working on something which looks like this:

http://3dprintboard.com/attachment.p...tid=4843&stc=1

it is for now called 3 dimensional mosaic.

what you see is a sunset in zurich which was recorded with an iphone placed into an 3d printed block.

i took stills from the recording, in this example just a few (about 20), and mapped them in freeform (zcorp program) to create the block and then printed it.

so far so good.

this process of mapping pictures one by one, layer for layer takes some time. here there were only 20 layers of each 2mm making an 40mm deep block. each of these layers has an minimal distance from the next so that the printer (a zcorporation spectrum z510) prints the object with colors all the way trough instead of just surfaces. the layers hold together anyway because of the just very small distance between the "stills"

now i am planning to something like this:

http://3dprintboard.com/attachment.p...tid=4845&stc=1

this is a screenshot of a block in blender. it shows a walk through my appartment put into a block.

well and now my question which i have to you guys since i am new to these programs:

i want to be able to print big versions of these blocks. the printer is able to print 0.1mm layers and has a building height of around 25cm so i could stack up to 2500 layers (pictures) on top of each other. the problem is that this takes me a very long time to do in freeform if i have to map every single layer.

so i was trying to program something which does this automatically. the above screenshot is from blender where i have a program which stacks and maps the block automatically from the stills. but afterwards i am stuck.

how can i export this so that i can print it? .ply files do not work, they always are 2kb, so i guess they miss the color. i tried to make obj and import into meshlab to convert them somehow but that did not work till now. the maps are upside down or suddenly all of the different pictures are the same.

i also tried rhinoceros but have the same problems. the problem lies (i guess) in the fact that they are mapped, so if it would be possible to change them into colors i guess it would work.

what do you think? what way would be best to reach what i want? which programs should i use? i am not sure if i can fix this problems i have with meshlab. give me any suggestions.

this is my first post here on this forum and i would be insanely happy if someone could help me with this. it is great fun to think around the possibilities of 3d printing and what is possible to achive with it.

(i can describe the problems in meshlab more precisely )

cheers and thanks for any help

malaparte