CGTalk - Mixed Up Normals

shushens

11-18-2008, 01:08 PM

First of all, I am only a beginner in Modo, so forgive me if my question is too lame.

I have made some shape by editing polygons on a sphere. I want it replicated on the sphere surface, so I cut out a piece of the pie and try to duplicate. As I want the same effect in both the hemispheres, I duplicated one hemisphere and scale it to -100% to invert it. But as soon as I do, the inverted piece shows messed up polygon normals. Some are this way, some are that. Why is it happening? How do I reset all normals without manually selecting and flipping all polygons facing the wrong way?

Also, being an XSI user, I am used to the duplicate/clone-with-options. I do not see a similar feature here in Modo. How do I achieve the same effect? So far all I can do is to make one duplicate or one clone (instance).

Please help!

MikeS369

11-19-2008, 05:37 AM

Can you put up a screenshot? I'm not sure what you are trying to do. You might also want to look into the Radial Array tool. Your tool options should show up on the left hand side of your interface unless you changed it.

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a179/MikeS369/modo_tool_options.jpg

shushens

11-19-2008, 10:56 PM

http://xs433.xs.to/xs433/08473/new_picture937.jpg

This is the problem. I have made the upper half, duplicated it, and scaled across Y to a -100%. That caused a 180% rotation, but also flipped normals. I want to sweep this piece to make the whole sphere and merge the pieces along the borders. I can choose the polygons whose normals and wrong and flip them, and then select every 2 border edge and right click and choose join. But that takes a lot of time altogether.

Is there no smart way for the whole thing? In XSI, I just have to select the pieces and choose merge and borders would just get glued together to give me a new mesh. What happens in Modo?

kevmo

11-19-2008, 11:08 PM

goto the polygon mode tab (the vertical that starts with "Basic" , under "Commands" choose "Align" and that should fix it.
Also available in the Geometry/Polygon menu...

shushens

11-20-2008, 12:34 AM

Okay, I selected all polygons in the top piece and the bottom (they are different pieces of geometry in one mesh) and chose align. It only gave me a message "no polygons flipped". Probably because they are separate pieces of geometry?

And any suggestions about the merging pieces thing?

Thank you for replying :)

kevmo

11-20-2008, 12:52 AM

try it without selecting anything,
if that doesn't work or makes it worse, undo and cut the offending mesh to a new mesh layer and apply the align command (again no need to select polygons) - then cut/paste it back to the original layer if needed.

Another thing you could do:

in the render tree select base material, go to the properties tab, at the very bottom, activate double sided.

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