Engraving a text string in Blender Internal Render I am trying to engrave a plaque (metal, stone) with some text.  The person who redirected me here had this example (with author's permission) 

My current workflow is slow.  I prepare a picture of the text (in Gimp), use it as a bump map node in the "final" material (to influence the metal or stone texture).

I'm looking for a shortcut: can I use a Blender text (possibly on a separate layer, not rendered as such) to achieve the same?

I can create the engraving - the key is being able to change the text over, without altering the geometry using a boolean operation, or without re-creating the maps (bump or displacement).
Create your lingot first. Add a text object and give it some thickness extruding it in the properties geometry tab.




Place the text where you need it and convert it to a mesh: Alt C and select Mesh from Curve/Meta/Surf/Text



Select the Lingot,  add a Boolean Modifier and select the Text as object and use difference as operation.


You can now move the text to another layer that is not part of your rendered layers.



If you have different text objects you can change them by selecting them in boolean modifier.