Animation - How to - Need pointers/ideas

[SHORT CUTS]

I will have to do some engraving animation in the near future and i need some ideas or pointers on how to do something like this. The model part itself is not a problem, where i struggle is on how to animate the whole thing so it looks like a machine is engraving something. Here is  very simple video what i am after, unfortunatly the tutorial linked to it doesnt exist anymore.

And here is a real life video which shows what i am after:

So far i tried the slice modifier in combination with boolean - doesnt work because of the infinite slice plane which makes it impossible to animate the slice plane to go around corners. A Path deform in combination with boolean is not accurate enough....

Any other ideas?

regards and a nice weekend.

SC

[NicolasC]

Hello,

What about animating a Loft object (deformation curves), used as an operand in a Boolean ?

[romullus]

If it won't be rendered in extreme close up, i would try to use floating geometry - no need to boolean, easy to animate, fast to set up.

[SHORT CUTS]

Hello,
wow that was fast, i will try it but i guess i will run into the same problems as when using a path deformation modifier. Sharp 90 degree corners are always causing problems. If nothing helps i will do it in after effects in post but i havent given up yet to find a solution in max ;) 

@romulus, unfortunatly its a close up.

[maru]

Corona Distance map plugged into displacement or bump could probably help here.

[SHORT CUTS]

Just wanted to report back that i got pretty good results using an animated displacement map. Not sure if we will use this method once we get the job but it worked very well.