I expect it’ll be a while in coming because @rachael is rewriting the entire raster engraving process. What we have now is fine but not fantastic and was built quickly to get something running. Rachael’s code will dramatically increase the flexibility of our engraving system, so you can make better tradeoffs between speed and quality (right now you get neither). That’s also going to be what enables 3D engraving.
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Even if it were say multiple passes. Would be awesome. Thanks for update. Thanks for spending Saturday night answering forums. … thank your family as well.
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I would but they’re asleep. 
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Yay @rachael!
No longer in the shadows, we know who you are - you can run but you can’t hide!
Seriously, we know who to thank for one of the most awesome aspects of this machine. Your efforts are appreciated, and we are glad that you now have the time you need to develop this important feature!
Must have been rough on you to focus as June approached like an oncoming train!
To know who’s task is what in this journey is a remarkable perspective for a customer to enjoy. It gives us a more personal connection.
Breaks the company down by individual focus and makes the team feel more like friends instead of a vendor.
The team is all hands on deck while Dan rides in the crow’s nest with his binoculars, charts and crystal ball.
Moral is high having just weathered a huge storm, and mutiny in the peanut gallery has been quelled.
As has been the case for eight months, we gathered on the shoreline continue to scan the horizon in hopes for any sign of the impending arrival.
Aye - Fair winds and following seas.
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I had to write a job position offer for a new director of music for the parish. I read every single job posting on the Glowforge site and then read the bios of all the team. Very inspiring stuff. Individual skills, experience, vision and collaboration. It got me over the hump of trying to figure out if I am ready to start the hire process. I am looking forward to seeing who responds to my posting.
Back to the thread. I am doubly confident we will have super duper awesome software and hardware capabilities in the Glowforge.
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Among its litany of impressive features, creating a depth displacement map known as an alpha in ZBrush is a one-click process as shown around the 3-minute mark:
Exploring the workflow, one procedure could involve a high-res 3D scan
The quick’n’dirty way would be to immediately bring this mesh into ZBrush, and hit the Alpha > GrabDoc button, and export it as a 16-bit PSD or TIFF.
For assets that have been developed into a full-fledged sculpt there are further benefits…
The model can be now be positioned into whatever angle you’d want to capture in the alpha.
Unless @dan an indicates otherwise, we’ll go on the presumption that the Glowforge 3D engraves at 256 steps. Because of how prominent the shoulder is, only a small handful of those 256 grayscale “crayons” will be used for the face area.
Here, the face is isolated by using ZBrush’s TrimCurve.
The ZBrush GrabDoc result?
Reload the 3D asset and isolate the side…
Voila! Ready to start churning out a vault full of Glowforge Poker chips…
Just to demonstrate this working on “CAD” objects, something previously created in Rhino is exported as STL and brought into ZBrush…
Easy. Peasy.
I hope @dan will put into the request hopper when it comes to working with alpha displacement maps… an ability to specify that the last couple levels of black be translated by the Glowforge as a cut-through region with everything above it earmarked for engraving. This could result in the Glowforge making some interesting organic filigree with minimal effort and setup.
Toss over a beta unit and I’ll be happy to perform test-engraves on the high-rez originals (1297x1048, 16-bit) of the above alphas 
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I like the structure of the listings;
- Why we need you
- What you’ll be doing
- skills you will need
- Would be nice if
Yes, the ream’s qualifications are impressive. Another confidence builder from my perspective.
Hard to fail with talent like that.
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Excellent.
Thank you for that descriptive post and the link! 
Ah this is pretty great stuff. Thanks for posting this.
A good way to start working with these images is to do single items or objects at a time. Then if you put them into photoshop (or gimp) as separate layers and change their blend mode to “lighten” it will cause the brightest part of each to move to the front like so:
This way you can use all of these individual pieces to create some full mosaics.
You can already see how its beginning to feel a bit more 3d now that they are all in the same plain…
Now if you wanted to put some text on top of that, if it wasnt lighter than the color beneath it you might need to use the “screen” blend mode which will give you this result (im using 50% grey text here):
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I’m not sure why, but these pictures are freaking me out. 
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I see what you did there…
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Stumbled across this 3D engraving clip today – an interesting view of what may be in store for us:
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3d engraving is one of the features im most looking forward to. It seems the resolution on his laser was pretty low, and looks like he needs a bit of calibration, but it does give the general idea.
Theres a ton of good examples out there with high quality laser engraving. Kern Labs has a pretty good example video:
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Wow! That’s some of the best examples of 3D engraving I have seen! I’m really looking forward to this feature and have several ideas in mind to make use of it.
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Me too! Age & work have taken nearly all the fun out of hand carving.
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Whoa. That is awesome
I hope it doesn’t require a 400 watt laser to do that! 
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I wonder what class laser that is? There appears to be no enclosure whatsoever. (Seems to have a pass thru, pass over, pass under, passaround…)
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The data sheet for the machine says it’s class 4
I believe anything over a certain wattage (something like 5mw) that is not totally enclosed is a classIV, but my understanding has some holes in it.