Editing Normals in MAX
Community Forums/Developer Stations/Editing Normals in MAX
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| I've created a model in max, textured and animated it. This works all fine so far, the only problem is, I can't seem to edit the normals (which, to my knowledge, calculate which side of a face is visible and how the lights/shadows are cast). There is an edit normals modifier in max, but when previewing it with the B3dPipeline, I don't see any changes. Does anyone know how to do this? Thanks in advance. |
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| in edit mesh, or edit poly modifiers, you have some buttons for normals. Yep, you have also the normals modifier, but I used to use first mentioned. You can surely use a recalc normals in blitz, is typical in most engines. |
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| Thanks for your reply! The problem is, neither the edit mesh or the poly modifier lets you edit the normals directly (they have flip, and unify, and Edit Normals doesn't seem to change anything when I use the model in Blitz. Recalculating doesn't seem to do much, either. I'd much rather do that by hand in max, anyway. |
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| flip reverse the "visible side" of a triangle so they should have a large impact on the resulting model. Don't know how max and the pipeline works but some 3D apps don't have backface culling on by standard so you can't see which side is actually really visible until you activate it |
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| sorry, I'm tired now, bad grammar I have a gmax here...is the same for basic stuff you can convert to edit mesh (select, rightlick on viewort) , go to face mode, right clik again in viewport, in floating menu, lcik on edit normal mode, so you paint on the mesh and you go inverting faces...paint in the holes, and u'll restore em back. if u refered to an smoothng value, edit mesh, and at the end, smoothing groups...u cango selecting faces and clicking in one of those numbers, to set an smoothing group, or..quicker, just select all faces in objects, and bellow all the numbered buttons (possible smooth groups) u'll see autosmooth button, with a field besides, delete that number, and put yours, usually for objects like 45 to 60. AND, hit enter... please. and then, hit in the button ("autosmooth") It will set how hard the edges are, and which are hard, based only in how angled are faces between em... I use this mainly... engines use to have a way to get back autosmooth value. usually if u remember the value u did set, even if lost, by code u should be able to re set it with same number. but I don't know in blitz. |
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| B3d Pipeline doesn't support the Edit Normals modifier yet. -Pudding |
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| But if you collapse the mesh then it should be fine, no? |
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| Thanks for the replies! Beaker - It seems that collapsing the mesh nullifies the changes made in the normals editor. Anyway, I think applying more smoothing groups is the solution I was looking for, seems to fix some of the problems I've had - I only had one group for the whole model applied. Also, I think the fact that I'm kinda new to modeling also has something to do with it... I've uploaded a screenshot of my model, maybe you can spot some errors. (I marked some of the strange looking parts with arrows. I think I can make some of them go away with smoothing groups, though.)  |
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| cute model Smoothing groups, autosmooth ...is almost the same at the end. You have however a very high value of autosmmoth, probably, and surely too near walls of faces producing the black thing. A lower value will remove that but you'll have to edit the model so to avoid creases, as a lower value makes all less smooth. Or maybe you just did smoothinggroups, I dunno. remember, smoothing depends on the angle threshold that faces form between them. Too sharp angle and it'd be hard to avoid a crease there withwhatever the value. Indeed, is a good way when actually want a crease, but again, can produce darkening-black areas if walls of faces become too near, or if smoothing a s huge value like 80 of autosmooth. 60 tends to avoid this totally, but is a bit hard for human skin parts. cute model :) |
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| Thanks! I applied the smoothing groups by hand now, seems to give the best results. I'm really happy with it now. Thanks for your help! :) |
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| :) |
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