[Nakonieczny]

hard to explain. I wish to have possibility to make a "offseted" surface/material on existing geometry. For example I've got a metal key covered by blue, but transparent lacquer, about 0.1 mm thick. I can do this by offsetting geometry, but I need to think about two sides of this lacquer, geomtery is growing about 3 times, I can make lot of mistakes.
of course key its a easy thing, but imagine some complicated things.
that can be real cool to got ability to set something like this - I think thats can be good even for glass windows - only one plane with setted thickness and thats all.

regards

Adam Nakonieczny

[Maximus3D]

You're talking about layered materials now ? if that's the case then it should be implemented in 1.0 now. but i'm not 100% sure how they work, wait a few more days and you can test them yourself hehe

/ Max

[Nakonieczny]

Not exactly. layered materials (as far as I know from lightwave and other 3d apps) are on exactly same position in space. I would like to set a _thickness_ of next layers. Their offset from native surface. You can fake it using bump maps, but its not that easy as my proposition.

i think

Adam

[Maximus3D]

Aha hehe so some sorta micropoly displacement on each of those layers (with thickness).. geez that's one massive request good luck with that one even tho i can agree it would really kick ass to have it.

/ Max

[Nakonieczny]

yes, I know and agree with you... to be honest i've got no time to wrote it a bit earlier than... few days before the DAY . But imagine possibilities - even without ability to choosing a shape of edge of material

regards

Adam

[Maximus3D]

Hehe definately it would be very cool having this, but maybe if it's even possible to do they could look at it for a future update like 1.5 or 2.0

/ Max

[Mihai]

Not exactly. layered materials (as far as I know from lightwave and other 3d apps) are on exactly same position in space. I would like to set a _thickness_ of next layers. Their offset from native surface.

I don't think you need actual offsets. The important thing is that it looks like it's supposed to look. Stuff like plastic coatings I think will be possible with the new material editor in Maxwell, that's what the layers are for, won't matter that the surfaces aren't actuall offset, the layers take care of rendering them correctly.

[Nakonieczny]

So imagine same key covered by 0.5 cm thick plastic. You cannot do this if layers simply lay on surface. I agree that in many cases you dont need this. But this _other_ cases sometimes can makes you real headache.
plus imagine that next layer can be set using bitmap or procedural texture.
In my opinion it can be real usefull.

thanks for all answers

Adam

[Mihai]

If it's that thick you need to model it anyway. Contours won't be the same. This is more a modelling question than a rendering one IMO.

[Nakonieczny]

And finally you understand what I need. I don't want to model thickness that is just an offset (by normal more or less) from existing surface. I want that it can give a real thickness with real contours. of course question is how many options can be compared with this contours - a shape, fillet, soft and hard edges... with layers and bump maps you've got fake, I want it real. and easy to do.

cheers

Adam