Alpha channel with thickness shader?

malcolm

Is there a shader available for Maya mental ray that gives the appearance of thickness when you use a cut out alpha. For example using an alpha channel of a leaf, it makes it paper thin I'd like it to have some thickness when viewed from a side angle. Like a one or two pixel extrusion. I tried modeling the leaf, but the normals make it look shit since there are so many tris and the leaf curvs.

equil

maybe you could just use displacement mapping?

throttlekitty

Have you looked into doing displacement?
edit: slow to reply