Offset modifier
Sometimes, for reasons of ease-of-modeling and/or to preserve editability of geometry, I need to offset a surface (mesh).
Right now, there are two ways to do this. Using displacement, which is at best a crude approximation... and using the Solidify modifier with some trickery with materials and using GN to extract only the offset surface.
(A demonstration of how displacement is not offset.)
It would be convenient if Solidify had an option to only output the offset surface, similar to how it already has an option to only output the rim. (Possibly the 'fill rim' and 'rim only' options should be replaced with a trinary 'offset', 'rim', 'all'.)
2 Comments
By "offset" what exactly do You mean?
Whats difference between displacement or GN's displace geometry?
Displace just moves vertices according to their normals. Solidify in Simple does the same thing. Both are wrong and useless for anything that needs to be accurate because they don't produce constant offset.
Try this experiment:
They are very different. Complex mode is correct , Simple mode isn't. In particular, the offset faces are not parallel to the original faces, and don't meet at a right angle. Displace has the same problems that Solidify's Simple mode has. Displace is not Offset.
I added a screen shot of the above to the original description.