Is it possible to do this in V-Ray?

V-Ray V-Ray for 3ds Max General
1

I know I could model something like that, but is there a way to do it with a shader?

It would be be useful for varnished surfaces. The varnish is thinner at the edges.

Bye,
Jan

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2

not sure what the text says on the image, but you could look at Vraydistance texture to help show thinner varnish at corners perhaps?

3

A carefully built bump map would likely help (with or without the distanceTexture coming to the aid).
If you do no want to shade the geometric normals (second example), then your best bet is to turn those into shading normals (ie. varying per pixel, instead of per triangle), and the simplest way to vary them per pixel is with a bump or normal map (on the varnish, i’d wager).
If you find setting up said bump difficult, use the VRayColor2Bump texture, which will allow you to specify an height in world units (at the brightest of the bump map).
Should you use the VRayColor2Bump, remember to set the bump map influence in the shader to 100 (30 is the old 3ds Dos default…).