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I want to recreate the material of the icing on these donuts; transparent at thinner areas and opaque at thicker areas. I fiddled around with transmission, alpha, and volume absorption, but couldn't recreate it. Any ideas?

enter image description here

Omar Shahaltough
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    Have you done any reserch? https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/72495/create-a-gradient-effect-like-for-coffee/ https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/36183/get-object-width-in-cycles-as-value/ https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/35726/fluid-in-a-glass https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/76081/honey-shader-in-cycles https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/77215/suspended-particles-inside-a-material-procedural – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Oct 27 '22 at 21:06
  • are you using Cycles or Eevee? – moonboots Oct 27 '22 at 21:06
  • Im using cycles – Omar Shahaltough Oct 27 '22 at 22:01

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Does the transparency actually have to match the depth, or are you just going for the appearance of it? If you just want the look, you can simulate the depth (bumps and valleys) of the icing using a Noise Texture as the basis for a Bump (Normal) map, and then use that same Noise texture as the basis for the "translucency mix". That way, the simulated "low (thin) areas" have a higher degree of transparency, making the icing appear thinner in those areas, and vice-versa:

Icing

Christopher Bennett
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  • The transparancy has to match the depth, im looking for an effect similar to if not the one volume absorptions produces, problem is that node butchers my colours, and idk how to get the same effect on the donut. – Omar Shahaltough Oct 31 '22 at 08:28
  • Omar, if you use this option, you can still match the depth! Just add a displace modifier to the icing mesh, create a new texture, go to texture settings, and add a noise texture from the internet. Then, in Chris' answer's node setup, use the EXACT same noise texture as a image node instead of his Noise Texture. This way, the noise texture will match the thickness/displacement! – BlenderMaster15 Nov 01 '22 at 13:29
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In Cycles you can plug a Principled Volume into the Volume input of the Output, set its Density to the good value, also mix a Transparent node with a Glossy. You can also add a bit of fake noise on the surface with a Bump plugged into the Glossy:

enter image description here

moonboots
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I could get the effect i want via principled volume, but i was unable to output a white color via that node. Bumping up the volume bounces under 'Render Properties'> 'Light bounces' > 'Volume' fixed the color issue as far as i can tell

Omar Shahaltough
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