Gray scale through Inkscape

Trying to cut out a pinewood derby car (friend is trying to impress other fathers) but can’t get the whole gray scale thing to work out. I’ve traced the image in Inkscape and applied the gray scale to it. However, when I import the svg into Easel i just receive a sold black object. I’m aware of the whole percentage relationship to the depth of cut but I’m just seeing a solid black object with no scaling. Tricks I’m missing?

Can you post the SVG in question?

I thought they were attached to the original post.
All I appear to be getting is:


Now, I apparently don’t know how to upload files either???

This is what I’m looking at:

Looks like you’re trying to us a gradient fill, Easel can not handle it as far as I know

Yeah, Easel can’t do gradient fills.

In Illustrator there is an option to “Expand” the attributes of an object. So, in this case, you create your shape, apply the gradient, then go to Object --> Expand and in the box that pops up you can specify all kinds of things, chief among them being how many steps to expand the gradient fill into. Then you continue to ungroup your object and you end up with a ton of little shapes, each with a slightly lighter fill, describing your gradient. Now Easel can handle your file.

If you don’t have Illustrator, post your .svg file here and I’ll convert it for you.

Weirdly enough, typing in the address for the images you tried to post worked, so I was able to get to your svg after all. I expanded the gradient for you, try this in Easel, it should work but it’s pretty complex now so it may bog down.

Wow.Awfully nice of you to do that for me. I’ll give it a spin and see how it goes.

Thanks for the help!

@Mike Well, you were correct…the complexity of the file locked Easel right up. Is there another program that you would recommend or use for such a project? I’ve see other people post their success stories with this but don’t see how they do it if Easel can’t. Or, is my project just too intricate?

Well, there are a few options here.
When I opened your .svg file and expanded the gradient, there was an option to specify how many “steps” between colors it would create. I put in 255 as the number, so it sliced the gradient up into 255 little slivers. This makes a very bulky file for Easel to try to open. I can do it again with fewer steps between the colors, and depending on the thickness of your material you may not even notice a difference.

I’m assuming you’re starting from a 1" (25.4mm) blank block, but I don’t know how thick you want the “front” of the car to be. If I reduce it to 25% thickness (6.35mm), I can make it work with bigger, fewer steps (which would need to be sanded down after the fact) and have less than a quarter the complexity.

Try this one, it’s much less complex and should still cut just fine:

This one loaded up perfectly and looks exactly like what i’m looking to do. I can’t thank you enough!

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Hi Mike, I saw what you did for Cory, that is so nice of you! I was just wondering if there is any way to do the same thing that you did on illustrator on Inkscape? If not I have a svg file below of what I am trying to do.HeadphoneStand