3D/Greyscale Engraving

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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

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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…

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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.

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The ZBrush GrabDoc result?

Reload the 3D asset and isolate the side…

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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…

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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 :wink:

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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! :thumbsup:

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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:

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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. :worried:

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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

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I hope it doesn’t require a 400 watt laser to do that! :scream:

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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

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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.

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It requires a 400 watt laser to do it THAT FAST. Ours will do it too, just ~10x slower (and probably ~100x cheaper)

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Wikipedia has a nice little entry on laser safety:

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Also remember that carving like that is going to generate more smoke than you can believe.

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Truth.

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For those interested in the technobabble… :wink:

https://www.rli.com/resources/articles/classification.aspx

IEC
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is a global organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies. The IEC document 60825-1 is the primary standard that outlines the safety of laser products. Classification is based on calculations and determined by the AEL as with the ANSI standard, but the IEC standard also incorporates viewing conditions:

Class 1 lasers are very low risk and “safe under reasonably foreseeable use”, including the use of optical instruments for intrabeam viewing.
Class 1M lasers have wavelengths between 302.5 nm and 4000 nm, and are safe except when used with optical aids (e.g. binoculars).
Class 2 lasers do not permit human access to exposure levels beyond the Class 2 AEL for wavelengths between 400 nm and 700 nm. Any emissions outside this wavelength region must be below the Class 1 AEL.
Class 2M lasers have wavelengths between 400 nm and 700 nm, and are potentially hazardous when viewed with an optical instrument. Any emissions outside this wavelength region must be below the Class 1M AEL.
Class 3R lasers range from 302.5 nm and 106 nm, and is potentially hazardous but the risk is lower than that of Class 3B lasers. The accessible emission limit is within 5 times the Class 2 AEL for wavelengths between 400 nm and 700 nm, and within 5 times the Class 1 AEL for wavelengths outside this region.
Class 3B lasers are normally hazardous under direct beam viewing conditions, but are normally safe when viewing diffuse reflections.
Class 4 lasers are hazardous under both intrabeam and diffuse reflection viewing conditions. They may cause also skin injuries and are potential fire hazards.

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