Hi everybody,
I have a scene with a lot randomly reversed face normals… (they turn out black of course)
I could manually select them all and then revert them one by one, but I am thinking how to make it easier and faster.
Isn’t there any kind of selection “using constraints”, that only selects faces whose normals do NOT point towards the camera?
Or is there a MEL script maybe?
Thanks for help!
Hi Haggi,
many thanks, but “Conform” doesn’t work in this case. Maybe it works good for more similar faces…
I have here some imported stuff with bad topology. Just one example attached here.
I can easily see the black faces, but it’s hard to select them all.
Hi
what I notice Is , conform don’t work when vertex are not merged and instead geos are combined and have their shell separated.
So may be you should separate your geo to isolate those inward normal ones and then reverse/conform those problematic ones
Just get over it and select and reverse those normals manually. I do this all the time, when prepping other people’s crappy models from Sketchup and AutoCAD for use in Maya. Sometimes it can take a few minutes, sure, but if Maya could automatically know which normals were offending, it would take an act of god or magic. If “Set to Face” doesn’t work, you’re just gonna have to do it manually. Sometimes it’s a real pain in the ass, sometimes you can push Ctrl-E to select an entire bad area (if it’s UV-mapped already).
Consider: if you’d just done it manually, you’d have already been finished by now. WIthin five or ten minutes of the time you went to post about it. Not that asking is a bad thing, but for something so simple sometimes you just gotta dig in and get dirty and get it done.
Looking at your model, this is like a three minute job. I don’t mean to be rude. If it’s your model, then now you know how not to model like that!
the conform command should work just fine.
Sometimes imported meshes have their normals locked, so to be sure hit the “unlock normals” then “conform”.
I have never once had the Conform command fix normals, in any type of imported geometry. Not once in hundreds of attempts. Never.
probably because normals were locked like i said. Try the “unlock normal” command before the “conform” .
I’ve always unlocked the Normals first when going in to fix them, so that’s not the issue. Like I said though, it’s from imported geometry that I have issues with Normals, never from geo that I created inside Maya. I run into this all the time when importing .dwgs and .objs from manufacturers, such as Kohler or Delta, with their plumbing fixtures, or big-time from appliance manufacturers such as Viking or DCS or GE. Usually the best you can get from them is an .obj or a .dwg file, but also when I export my own models from Rhino (being sure to check the Normals in Rhino first, often still having to re-fix them in Maya anyway) I’ll run into some issues too. Then depending on the model, you “Soften” the normals after you fix them to get that smooth surfacing again (such as faucets and tubs).
Conform is a good idea, it’s just never (in practice) worked for me. Not saying not to try it but it’s hardly a one-click fix.
yeah i’m also having this type of issues with .dwg files, the conform command works when the mesh is not combined.
So what i’m doing with these files when i’m having these problems is always separate them before (and be sure that there is no holes, lamina faces, nonmanifold).
Yeah, that actually makes a kind of sick sense, now that you explain it like that. A sloppy mesh, combined, only makes it that much harder for Maya to “Set to Face” or “Conform”. Thanks for the tip, my friend! Didn’t mean to naysay you out of hand, just sharing my experiences and I’m glad you’ve shared yours. Very helpful.