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Turn your kid's drawing into a 3D model (and maybe a 3D print)
Photograph a child's drawing, turn it into a 3D model in the browser, and print or display it. Tips for keeping the charm of the original.
3 min read
Quick answer
How can you turn a child's drawing into a 3D model?
Photograph the drawing straight on in daylight, crop it to the main character or object, and upload it to a sketch-to-3D tool with a short description. Check the colour image it produces, then generate the 3D model and export it. To print it, convert the OBJ to STL in a slicer and check that it is watertight.
The charm is in the wonky bits
A child's drawing of a dragon has five legs, a smile, and wings that come out of its head. That's the point. The risk with any AI tool is that it "corrects" the drawing into a generic dragon. Most of the work below is about keeping the drawing's personality while still getting a solid model.
Step 1: Photograph it well
- Straight down, phone parallel to the paper, so nothing is skewed.
- Daylight, no flash, and no shadow from your hand or phone.
- Fill the frame with the drawing, then crop to the character or object you want.
- Bump the contrast a little in your phone's photo editor if the lines are faint crayon.
Step 2: Pick one thing
Kids' drawings are often scenes: a house, a sun, the family, a cat. A generator makes one object per run, so pick the star. Crop so it fills most of the image, with a bit of white around it. If the cat is the star, crop out the house.
Step 3: Describe it in the child's terms
Most sketch-to-3D tools take a short description with the image. This is your chance to protect the charm:
- Say what it is: "a friendly dragon with five legs and wings on its head".
- Name the style: "keep it like a child's crayon drawing, chunky, simple, bright colours".
- Avoid words like "realistic" or "detailed", which push the result towards a generic version.
Step 4: Check the image before the 3D
In Vi3W, the drawing becomes a full-colour image first, and you can look at it before making the 3D model. This is where you catch "it fixed the legs". If the image lost what made the drawing special, adjust the description (say "five legs" explicitly) and try again. This step costs less than a 3D generation, so it's the right place to iterate.
Then generate the 3D model. Spin it round with your kid. The back is the AI's guess, which can be a fun conversation: "what does the dragon look like from behind?" If they have an answer, draw it and use that.
Step 5: Display it, or print it
On screen: export GLB and open it in any 3D viewer; how to view 3D models on a phone shows the easy routes. iPhones can show it in AR on the kitchen table after a GLB-to-USDZ conversion.
As a 3D print: Vi3W exports OBJ, GLB and FBX, not STL, but that's not a problem:
- Export OBJ.
- Open it in your slicer (PrusaSlicer, Bambu Studio and Cura all open OBJ) or convert it to STL. See convert OBJ to STL.
- Check it is watertight and has a flat base so it stands up.
- Scale it to a sensible size; 8–10 cm tall is a good first print.
A single-colour print loses the colours, which is an excuse for the next craft session: painting it. For a colour print, see the AI 3D printing guide.
A few honest expectations
- Thin parts get thicker. Stick legs and whiskers may come out chunkier. For a print, that's helpful.
- Faces can drift. If the expression matters, say so in the description.
- It's one solid piece. Moving wings or a separate hat are beyond this.
- Free plan: Vi3W's free plan includes 100 XP, about three models, so choose the drawing you love most first.
Got a fridge full of art? Turn the favourite into a 3D model in Vi3W. Three clicks, and it's standing on the table.
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