[lisa]

Gotcha!

Your machine is a router then, right, not a mill?

I think you can get a pretty realistic result even from something like BMP2CNC if you use AC3D to generate a heightmap as input instead of using a photo. You can do this by creating a model in AC3D, then exporting it to POVRay. In POVRay, you need to apply a "slope" material, and make the color a function of the height.

i.e. Like so:

// this texture colors pixels based on height, so that an arbitrary 3D object can be converted to a simple heightfield
#declare texturebyheight = 
texture 
{
    pigment {                                      
            slope { 
               <0,1,0>,                            // set axis we're interested in
               0.0, 1.0                            // use the full range of slope, we're really only interested in altitude   
               altitude <0.0, 1.0, 0.0>,           // set axis we're interested in
               0.0,                                // lowest altitude, adjust based on size of model
               0.2                                 // highest altitude, adjust based on size of model                                                                                    
             }                      
            pigment_map {
               [0.0 color rgb < 0.0 0.0 0.0>]      // make low areas black
               [1.0 color rgb < 1.0 1.0 1.0>]      // make high areas white
            }   
   }
   finish {
      ambient 1.0                                  // self illuminating
      diffuse 0.0                                  // ignore diffuse lighting, there is none
      specular 0.0                                 // ignore specular lighting, there is none
   }
};

A heightmap will look much more 3D than converting a photo.

I looked at that VCarve site you mentioned. It seems the VCarve guys have another piece of software called VCut that's meant for importing 3D models, and it supports several file formats that AC3D can write to. Perhaps write them and see what they think?