I echo Mikes thoughts on CNC and laser cutters you need a good working knowledge of CAD software and that just to start. To do 3D carving or printing is a whole other level.
I have a good friend who is really good at CNC so we teamed up to CNC turn cannons and trying to do 3D carvings. He spent more time with writing G code and fussing with the machines than he spent actually making stuff. I ended up selling the CNC lathe and making casting molds for the cannons.
about carving with CNC this is a CAD file for the stern carvings at 1:48 scale first problem was the space between the scrolls averaged .015 to .007 that means you need a cutting bur the size of a pin. Anything that small would break from the pressure of the cutting action. (feed rate) and the speed of the tool. Bottom line the hobby grade tool we were using was not good enough and that was a $2,500.00 machine.
The next idea is the dots actually they were different colors. Each color was a depth set by the power of the laser beam setting. The idea here was to cut different levels. once again the beam was .012 on the big laser to big for tight areas. so we tried a 25watt laser with a .006 beam and that still burned the fine tips off the scrolls.
the carving machines usually have a library of cutting files you can purchase to create a cutting file from scratch you will spend about as much time doing that as you would carving the piece by hand.
you can watch you tube videos on guys doing all these nice carvings what they are not telling you is the time, learning the programs, fussing with the machines, making corrections all along the way. you might have 100 hours into that carving before you turn on the machine.
personally i gave up long ago on CNC and 3D printing doing it myself. i do the original design work in CAD or create the basic shape of say a figurehead then my DXF, DWG, STL files are sent to the pros who can actually create the final cutting or printing files and who have the machines that can do the work and those machines like Mike said are for from cheap.
Another idea I explored was 3D scanning and printing and cutting from the scan. OPPS! not that simple those original scans have to be reworked to make them usable as a print or cutting file, so again you still need software and know how to use it.