CGTalk - Munged up normals! *pulls out hair*

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Halogen

04-20-2003, 02:55 PM

Hello yet again, with another question. Im modelling something and i come to extrude, and extrude to find the normals in the stupidest direction so my extrusion doesnt work... i try using align normals but it doesnt work. Tried the other normal tools (rotate etc) but they dont work either. Is there an easier way to fix these normals other than deleting the polys and reconstructing them?

Oh yea and one question about car modelling. When you model it piece by piece, im not entirely sure how to get the pieces to match up.

I just copy the points at and end of an object and then paste those into an empty polygon object, them move them slightly over. Either that or simply match up the points to the adjacent piece.

Well i understand it, but am unsure on how to do it. This is what i do, select the points, ctrl + c, ctrl + v (pastes a duplicate of the object), inverse the selection and delete so i have a row of polys left. Move these over and extrude from there. What am i supposed to do if this is not how you do it (dont think so)?

Thats all for now, hope i am clear in my queries...

~Halo

:hmm:

Per-Anders

04-20-2003, 07:15 PM

select the polys who's normals are facing the wrong way and select Structure->Reverse Normals.

chi

04-20-2003, 07:17 PM

um for the extrude....try to pull out the extrude the tiniest teeniest bit...so it doesnt even really look like you made an extrude...then pull the selection out with you move tool...

to create better continuity in your car...select the points you want to copy...rightclik and look for the command...split....this will create a new poly object with the selected points...now you simply select these points clone them and create your new polys

Halogen

04-21-2003, 02:55 AM

Thanks guys

mdme_sadie: The normal isnt facing inwards, its like skewed horizontally, but thanks for the help anyway.

chi : Thanks about those tips. Appreciate the shorter method of creating continuity, makes it alot easier and thanks for the extrude tip.

:thumbsup:

I love it how everyone in this forum is helpful, the best community i think :)

~Halo

astrofish

04-21-2003, 07:35 PM

Hi Halogen,
Regarding your 'wonky' normals. Is it possible that you've managed to distort the coordinate axes - does 'Reset System' help?

Cheers - Steve

Zoogie

04-21-2003, 09:22 PM

Halogen,
Here is what I normally do. (only works if the general extrude direction is along one of the axis.)

Extrusion always happens along the normal. So what you are getting is bexause the parent polys are not flat,

extrude by a small amount

select the points that belong tothe extruded polys .
Use edit surface/ set value to set the value of the points in one axis, say set the value of the points to 20 in the x-axis , all the points line up along the x., giving you a flat face. Now extrude again, or if you only need one extrude, simply move the points or polys some more.
that is the technique I used for step 2 of the mini tut here
http://www.zoogievision.com/dispenser.html

Hope this helps

JIII

04-22-2003, 04:24 AM

if you have weird facing normals you may need to smooth the way in which your ploys are facing. to do this simply select the polys in question and use set value from the structure manager. Get the avarage value from coordinate manager and enter this into set value. this will smooth the surface making it flat. then you can extrude to your hearts content.

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