Clear materials, settings to "fake" additional thickness

[mcramblet]

Here is a technical situation/question that I thought I'd see if anyone else has dealt with. We are a thermoforming company, so when we design parts, we design the "tool" of a part or container. Those CAD files are shelled to the outside of the tool, to create a "part" for visualization, to mimic the film being drawn down around the tool. Ideally, the part is shelled to the thickness of the film that will be used to form the actual parts. The problem is that there are many designs where, due to the geometry, it can't be shelled to the actual film thickness. This isn't a problem if only CAD drawings are made, as it's stated in the drawings that any film thickness shown is for representation purposes only. This does cause me some issues, as I'm the only one who does any rendering. If a product needs to be rendered to represent the way it will look, the thickness of the material plays a huge role in that. A product that will be produced with 25 mil film, but the CAD file was only able to be shelled to 10 mil, that's a problem. There are times where there is an even greater difference, where the shelled part thickness is very, very low. Since Keyshot is based on real world physics, I have a hard time trying to get the rendered parts to look real world parts, due to the difference  of the film thickness and shelled thickness. I'm wondering if anyone else has dealt with this issue and if there are settings that could be played with to help compensate. Anyone have some pointers or experience in how they deal with situations like this?

[INNEO_MWo]

If your surfaces have enough rounds (no sharp edges), KeyShot can offset the geometry using the displacement geometry shader applied on vertex color with just pure white.


Just give it a try or load up an example of your geometry (if it's not confident).


Cheers
Marco