# Thickness shader

**URL:** <https://forums.chaos.com/t/thickness-shader/137563>\
**Category:** Requests\
**Created:** [July 7, 2017, 9:30am UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/thickness-shader/137563 "2017-07-07T09:30:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jpjapers\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9bcb4/32.png) [@jpjapers\_1](https://forums.chaos.com/u/jpjapers_1)\
**Post date:** [July 7, 2017, 9:30am UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/thickness-shader/137563/1 "2017-07-07T09:30:08Z")

</div>

Not sure if it’s already possible or even theoretically possible but it would be quite cool to have a way of giving textures using opacity maps a degree of thickness for things like die cut sheet metal or room dividers with intricate detail. Using an alpha then applying a thickness material to simulate thickness would be great!

Thanks  
Jack

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jadefox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e8c25b/32.png) [@Jadefox](https://forums.chaos.com/u/Jadefox)\
**Post date:** [July 7, 2017, 11:24am UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/thickness-shader/137563/2 "2017-07-07T11:24:41Z")

</div>

Hi  
Not sure if this might be a solution but cant you apply a shell modifier  
Would that not give the desired results ?  
Not sure just a thought : )

Regards

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Frood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e8c25b/32.png) [@Frood](https://forums.chaos.com/u/Frood)\
**Post date:** [July 7, 2017, 12:15pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/thickness-shader/137563/3 "2017-07-07T12:15:55Z")

</div>

Duplicate:

> **[Real thickness of materials with opacity](https://forums.chaos.com/index.php/topic,15639.0.html)**
>
> So as per my new thread (Beautiful Computer Generated Images II. - Tropical Garden - Corona Common :: Gallery - Chaos Forum) where I used real thickness for banana leaves, I think implementing thickness as a feature (something like additional...

Does anyone know a renderer who has a feature like this? Shell does not the same, but you can fake a bit of depth with multiple shells/copies - and you still need the opacity map. It has to work something like using the opacity map as displacement.

Good Luck

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![maru](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/chaosprd/user_avatar/forums.chaos.com/maru/32/15975_2.png) [@maru](https://forums.chaos.com/u/maru)\
**Post date:** [July 7, 2017, 12:17pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/thickness-shader/137563/4 "2017-07-07T12:17:23Z")

</div>

I think this could be also achieved with parallax mapping (at least to some degree).