Smoothing groups

[knj]

Hi guys

i need a sugestion, is this a right way to smooth geo with bevels (chamfers) ?
flat surface at hard and bevels and soft ? (two smooght groups ?) the resoult looks good but i just want to make sure, maybe there is a better way  ?

and of course uv's are cut where two smooth groups are connected to remove the seam

[Froyok]

Yeah, you should smooth your normals.

Edited July 6, 2013 by Froyok

[knj]

u mean like this ? but this is my point, even the first smoothing is not perfect after baking it looks ok - but the editing vertex nrmals in maya is pain in the ass, so i need to check some of dat scripts

[-HP-]

Do some google for custom normals and mig Normal Tools!

[Pomperi]

Whenever I do bevels for my lowpolys I use the regular bevels in maya that creates triangles in the corners. 

 

 

This way each face has its own vertex corners, so that the bevel face will average between the flat surfaces. To set up the smoothing properly in this case, just smooth all the normals of the mesh. If you toggle the vertex normal display (Display>Polygons>Vertex Normal) you should get a result like this:

 

 

You can see that all the smoothed faces have averaged vertex normals, which makes the whole thing look smudgy. The best approach imo to set up the vertex normals properly is to base them on the face normals of the big flat surfaces. The way I do this is by selecting all the faces i want to base my smoothing on.

 

 

I then run a script that I posted here on mapcore () and it sets all the vert normals.

 

 

This will give you a correct smoothing, which works well with baking as well as for objects where you can't bake down individual normal maps for supporting the smoothing.

 

 

You should definitely check out the migNormalTools as HP pointed out. It has some really neat features, as well as a good interface for toggeling and controling the visibility of your normals

[knj]

great guys, and yes i need to check some of those scripts !

[Froyok]

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1867170

 

[knj]

thank you, he's also here