Engraving/Laser/Etching Effect

[tdsilk]

Hello,

I have AE CC18 and I want to do a simple engraving effect. For example, I have an image of the back of a watch that I want to create an engraving/laser effect that follows a simple piece of text (i.e. Your Engraving Goes Here). I currently have a sparkle effect that could be used to follow the text pattern from start to finish.

If anyone has an easy way to do this I would really appreciate it?

Thanks Much.

[Andrew Yoole · Accepted solution]

There are a million possibilities for doing this.  But in very broad and basic terms;

Either in Photoshop or After Effects, create your text as a seperate layer on top of your watch image.  Use Layer Styles like Emboss and Inner Shadow, or other effects, to make it look carved out of the watch.

In After Effects, you need to make the text "write on". There are a number of ways to do this.  If you Google "After Effects text write on" you'll find plenty of tutorials.  Personally, I would use the Paint tool and hand draw Paint strokes over a duplicate of the text layer, adjust the timing of the Paint strokes to taste, set the Paint effect to "On Transparent", then use the Paint text layer as a Track Matte for the original text layer.  The end result should be your text layer writing on as the Paint strokes reveal it.

Create a laser beam by adding a solid, drawing a mask path where you want the beam to be, and applying the Stroke effect. Set to "On Transparent".  Add the Glow effect, and set the blending mode of the layer to Add.  Animate the mask path to match the text writing on.

If you get fancy you can add some particle effects to look like metal dust flying off the face as it is etched, and smoke to imply the heat of the laser.  You could add a small animated spot of glow at the laser contact point.

[tdsilk]

Thanks. I will give it a try.