Trying to make glossy volume shapes I am trying to make a reflection on the outer rim of letters, as if they were embossed in the paper they're printed on, or written with paint/glossy ink.

Such as this:

Credit Alex Trochut

or:



Goal: (answer to @LukeD's comment): The goal is to give a volume effect to a design (previously made in Illustrator for example, or based on glyphs from a font) to "flesh it out" with its reflections.

I usually start from a .svg, which gives problematic topology when converted to mesh... So beveling doesn't work, neither does subsurf. 

Also, beveling isn't what I want, because the whole surface of the paint is round, not just the edges.

Maybe there's a way to fill a .svg path with a metaball-type mesh? Or a way to "inflate" it? (I think in 3ds Max there is a thing called "push" that is similar, but I couldn't find an equivalent for blender).
Ideally, one way to do it would be to be able to "inset" the upper faces; shrink or extrude it towards the offset "middle" of the shape as illustrator does:



Here's a .blend to experiment with:


Here is what I have tried so far:

Subdivision, then displacement modifier from the black and white flattened image (edgy reflection):



Subdivision, then displacement modifier then Corrective Smooth modifier (not too bad, but over 1M faces for just 1 letter):



Using a svg curve (inner) instead of outside path then extruding/depth (ok result, but I am trying to get this result from a svg path of the outside of the letter):



Using an offset path made in Illustrator and connecting the inside and the outside curves into one mesh, then subsurf (only possible for simple shapes):



Fluid simulation with extruded edge of the svg path as collision object and a plane beneath as second collision object (ok result, the best so far depending on resolution):



Things I haven't yet tried (still experimenting): shrinkwrap, cast modifier (would that work, if a shape other than sphere or cuboid was applied?), applying different effects to outside edges.
Here's another approach you could try:


Make sure your text object is extruded slightly, then convert it to a mesh by pressing AltC.
The mesh object will be a total mess. Use a Remesh modifier to subdivide it a bit more uniformly. You need quite a high level of subdivision here; in the image below, the middle object was subdivided with an octree depth of 6, but 7 would have been better.
Apply the Remesh modifier, enter edit mode and convert the object into a 2D shape by deleting one side of the object. Adjust the normals if you need to.
Now the slightly tedious part — you have to select all the vertices around the outside edges of the object. With vertex or edge select enabled, you can pick up multiple vertices by Alt clicking on the outer edges. Takes a while though...





Save these vertices as a vertex group. Exit edit mode and add a Cloth modifier to the object. Then go to the Physics tab, select "Pinning", and select your vertex group in the space below.
Change the Structural stiffness to something much smaller (e.g., 0.1).
Finally go to the Scene tab, make sure gravity is active, and change the direction so that it works in the direction you want the text to bulge out. Press the Play button in the timeline, and hopefully you'll see something like this: