xsi smoothing groups?

[StefanA]

unfortantly no... not on separate polygons but on a object (so all polys in the object will recive the same values). You can find this under Geometry Approximation - Poly Mesh. But you can't make unique settings to single polygons.

best regards

.stefan andersson

[JDex]

I was thinking that it would be really cool if Geometry Aproximation could be a cluster property override... wonder if that could be written as a plug-in, or if it would cause problems with texturing and/or deformations.

[tachy0n]

Originally posted by unlikelyhero
hi. my question, does xsi have an equivalent to max's smoothing group modifier? I'd like to change the lighting over the surface of some polys.

You can get the same effect in XSI, but not the same way as in MAX. Think of it this way...in XSI, whenever you make an edge hard, you are essentially dividing the mesh into 2 smoothing groups along that edge. So there is no need to have multiple facet-groups just to control how shading is interpolated over the mesh.

Here's what you do: First apply a geom approx property to your mesh and in the ppg under 'Polygon Mesh' turn off automatic. this will make the whole mesh smooth, as if it were all in one smoothing group. Then just select the edges which define the boundaries of your different smoothing and mark them as hard. This will 'break' the shading along that edge.

[ggg]

Hi Stefan
Originally posted by StefanA
unfortantly no... not on separate polygons but on a object (so all polys in the object will recive the same values). You can find this under Geometry Approximation - Poly Mesh. But you can't make unique settings to single polygons.


you can change make unique settings to single polygons normals using the user normal property introduced in ver 3 but not really exposed yet :(

there is not yet an interface to do something like what I "think" smooth groups is but perhaps one could be written by modifying the cool user normal editing tool on netview that Alain Laferriere wrote for us, that allows vertice and poly selected normals to be adjusted.

it has lots of options like to turn on auto to have user normals not just override the automatic disconuity setting. "B" to interactivley move nornals. pretty cool tool. Now if we could just have user normal property be stored as an action to blend or included in shapes to blend that would be cool.

request: user normal blending in mixer as a storable action like shape or make an option to store with shape

i think the normal properties will be more exposed with tools in the next version with tools. thought it would have been in 3.5

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