How do Refined Normals work?

[JTalbotski]

I think the term is (or is supposed to be) "refind normals". I don't think the normals have become very refined.:)


If you were thinking of trying the bias normals, I believe they are the standard way A:M uses normals if you have v10 or up, so you won't actually have to turn them on. There aren't any icons in the toolbar by default for the 2 types of normals. But if you go to the customize pulldown and click on the commands tab, then click on the tools categorie, you will see 2 icons with pink lines coming from green dots. They are the bias normal and perpendicular normal icons which you can drag to your toolbar. They don't make a great difference between each other but bias normals does help in certain instances.

Porcelain is still a material that you can find on the CD. You can now drag it to a model or a group. I usually set the strength of porcelain to zero in the materials list.

Jim

[Wegg]

OOooo. . . doh

Don't I feel like a goober.

Thanks.

[pdaley]

If you use porcelain you will probably end up using 'refind normals' also. I've had spots, especially around 5 pointers, where porcelain looks bad, but after refinding my normals, it's ok again.

[Wegg]

Well as long as all the normals are facing out. . . I think its ok. AM seems to have a hard time pointing 5 pointers in the right direction.

[pdaley]

Not actually that simple. There is a fair amount of normal flipping with the use of porcelain. Without it, 5 pointers turn black. However, even after you do that, you may still need to refind normals to get things to smooth out.

This was a few revisions ago when I had this prob, so I don't actually now if it's better now.

[Wegg]

Yea your right. . . re-finding all the normals helps out your 5s a lot. . . even if you do have them pointing in the right direction.

Thanks for the tip!

[John Keates]

I find that the best thing is to refind normals - then flip any rogues, then if things look odd you can make them right by just adding some geometry.

Sometimes if you have a load of 5p patches and hooks then re-finding normals will skrew things up.

[JTalbotski]

Bill Y. at Anzovin told me that if you have 5 point patch problems with porcelain, you should flip the wrong-facing normals, save the model/project, close the project then open it again and the offending patches will be fixed. It seems to work whenever I've tried it.

[John Keates]

Yes, that works also but more recently I have found that just adding a CP then doing rmb to cancell will do the job. Saves a bit of time but since we are all used to saving all the time anyway there isn't much in it.

[Bugle]

Hm, I had an ugly patch, tried refind normals and all 5 pointers went fugly. Go figure... ;/

[Wegg]

Make sure the normals are all pointing out on everything. And when you have holes at the ends of things. . . like say you did a long tentical or something and left a tiny hole at the end. . . the finding patches sometimes messes up. Closing up the hole sometimes helped me.

[John Keates]

Yep, closing holes helps. But remember that find normals needent be the last step and it often screws things up. Just use it to get the normals roughly in shape. Half-built models tend to confuse the normal finding so it is best to have a nice, well rounded model before you worry about porcilain. It is good to get the model smooth-ish without it anyway.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.