3D Glass Etching for Glass Engraving

I am researching engraving art and I watched many videos today and subscribed to two forums.
Well , light is our medium and I love the swedish glass also.
I love glass engraving more than the copper , steel , gold engraving because it is transparent and thick glass have a very hypnotic effect.
I thinked that someone can create three dimensional etched prints on the float glass or beer glass or an vase.
This technology comes from tiffdruck rotogravure printing presses.
There are two kinds of commercial technology at newspapers , one is offset other is rotogravure.
Offset generally uses aluminum printing plates and printing ink transfered on to the printing plate with rollers.
Offset is relief printing and the paper contact area is high profiled.
Thats why it print quality only parallel to its screening.
But rotogravure have dots etched inside of copper printing plates.
There are two variables , depth of the dots and size of the dots. There are tens of times more tones possible.
How they etch the dots inside of a copper plate.
They use tiffdruck light sensitive paper.
The more paper sees the light , paper emulsion becomes harder.
The less paper sees the light , paper emulsion stays softer.
The continious degrees of hardness creates 3D effect on copper plate.
Paper glued to the copper plate and dink in to acid.
Harder gelatin becomes effected less , softer gelatin effected more.
This technology can be used to etch 3D on glass plates or art glass.

It all depends on to your creativity.



Best ,

Mustafa Umut Sarac
Istanbul

http://books.google.com/books?id=Fxho7UUsdPMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=glass+engraving&hl=en&ei=lNAqTberHNSL4AaF_qjJCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

This book have an excellent cover and picture invites the new comer.

Wow, you're definitely right! That example is amazing, although a bit "romantic" for my taste, the possibilities of photographs on glass seem intriguing.

How could one translate a negative or positive onto glass "automatically", as in autonomously, without the skill of an artist?

What can reduce/destroy glass? Does it have to be hot and with pressure, or can acid etch glass? What makes certain parts of the glass opaque? Can it be continuous tone?

UPDATE:

http://www.glassetchingsecrets.com/

This website has good basic information regarding the different etching methods. The simplest way I can imagine to make a glass etching from a photograph would be to utilize dichromated gelatin on glass. Expose under your transparency, "develop" the gelatin; this would leave gelatin in some places and expose others. Acid etch or sandblast.

Of course, without the use of screens, as you mentioned above, you can't get any continuous rendering of tones. Unless if the sandblast would "eat" through the gelatin at different rates, blasting some parts very coarse and leaving others barely scraped, and then some parts completely unscathed.