Hello, had anyone ever wondered how 805LaserSpot is able to print their 3D prints? I have been trying to figure this out but no success.
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It’s an optical illusion using shading. I love them. The engrave itself isn’t deep or 3D at all, it’s practically flat.
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Are they drawings or images edited in software program? I alternate between Photoshop and Illustrator often but cannot tell if they are filters or not.
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Step 1: get a high quality digital model of your scene.
Step 2: light your model in your favorite 3d software.
Step 3: turn off all textures and render the scene as a white model.
Step 4: export your rendered scene as a high res PNG or JPEG.
Step 5: tweak your resulting image as you would any other engraving, enhancing contrast and dynamic range to get best results with the laser.
And that’s it. For best results use sharper light sources to generate fairly severe shadows.
The general concept is called an occlusion map.
Googling “white model render” and “occlusion map” will open up a nice deep rabbit hole for you. Have fun! 
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If you want a full relief with the close parts high and more distant parts low, you have to think in those terms when creating the design. Working in an actual 3D program like Blender you could automate that so close is white and the farthest things you see are black. Photoshop (or Gimp) means you have to fake it. I had some marble railing photos taken on a cloudy day early so the light came from one side. Since the railing was symmetrical and the shadow unsharp the darkened side (away from the sun) went from light to dark nicely so mirroring and blending the image and adjusting the contrast worked nicely. Other images are more work to get that way but the principle is the same.
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Very nice!
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