Jump to content
3DCoat Forums

Normals problems


Grimm
 Share

Recommended Posts

  • Advanced Member

The more I play with this model the less I like it.   :mad:   It looks like the surface normals are all messed up.  

 

post-38101-0-21394200-1441089345_thumb.p

 

I can go into Blender and fix each poly, which would be a nightmare, but doable.  I'm not sure if there is anything else that could be done as there is no order to which poly is inside out and which is right side out.  Is there a tool in 3D-Coat to fix these?  I did a search but nothing came up.  I just need a way to flip the normals so they point correctly.  Thanks,

 

Jason

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
  • Advanced Member

In blender your model in Edit mode hit A select all  (faces)  hit W scroll down to Flip Normals   and your nightmare is done :) you could also make sure to remove all doubles also. Happens to me all the time I think its all done perfect and then you find 1,2,3, things wrong in the mesh. also 3dcoat does not like any 5 sided poles on a mesh always show up in ppp.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • New Member

I don't know if 3D Coat has a tool for this (it probably does) but for re-orienting all faces coherently you can use Meshlab instead of Blender if you feel you need to do this outside of 3D Coat. I think you might find it easier than Blender.

 

Just install, import the mesh (File => Import Mesh) then go to Filters => Normals, Curvatures and Orientation and go to 'Re-Orient all faces coherently'. Then go to File => Export Mesh As to export your mesh with proper face orientation.

 

Please note that Meshlab will muck up your smoothing groups / merge/average all of your vertex normals because it doesn't understand multiple normals per vertex so you may need to redo your selective normal smoothing or smoothing groups after exporting the mesh back out.

 

If you want to do normal smoothing by angle outside of 3D coat you can use Wings 3D for that. It has an autosmooth feature where you can select the angle for an edge to be considered a crease or hard edge so vertex normals are not smoothed over it.

 

That's what I used for this model :

 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwJaCsyXIqEedjNsajduUU83R3M

 

After importing the model in Wings 3D toggle the body selection mode by clicking the red cube near the middle-top of the window then select the mesh, right click and select Auto-Smooth. To be able to specify the crease angle click the rectangle to the right of 'Auto-Smooth' in the context menu, enter the crease angle then press ok and export your mesh.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

Thanks guys, sorry I missed your messages.   :(   Thanks for the advice I will definitely use it the next time I have this problem.  I used Blender to fix all of the problem normals and it wasn't too bad, although I did have to select every bad poly and fix them.  

 

@ballistic - Wouldn't that also flip the good normals?   This model had normals all over the place, no rhyme or reason for which would be good or backwards.   :blink:

 

@sonyad - Is there a Linux version of Meshlab?  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...