Maya hard edges..cant make them soft edges
polycounter lvl 14
Hey guys,
I've made the transition from Max to Maya recently..and I've had a recurring issue that I've struggled with.
Often when working with geometry in Maya, I get to a point where I cant soften edges. So far I've tried deleting history, freezing transforms, grouping the mesh to a dummy object, among other things.
I was just curious if anybody had suggestions to avoid this issue happening or what they do to fix this. I usually end up having to export and fix in Max.
I've made the transition from Max to Maya recently..and I've had a recurring issue that I've struggled with.
Often when working with geometry in Maya, I get to a point where I cant soften edges. So far I've tried deleting history, freezing transforms, grouping the mesh to a dummy object, among other things.
I was just curious if anybody had suggestions to avoid this issue happening or what they do to fix this. I usually end up having to export and fix in Max.
Replies
Normals > Lock Normals
Locks vertex normals. Normals have a direct affect on the appearance of shaded polygons. You can modify their appearance by first unlocking, editing the normals, and then locking them.
To change the X, Y, or Z values for normals, you need to unlock the normals using Normals > Unlock Normals. The normal values you specify (or if you use the default values) are fixed for each normal associated with the vertex or vertex/face component. This means that if you change a vertex position, normals do not change position.
not sure why it does this im sure ive had this problem too. maybe something to do with the normals locked? perhaps someone can answer better than i can but hopefully the set to faces method works. the only down side is youll loose any edge smoothing your already done
respawnrt
I had already tried unlocking normals..in the past I've had that happen to me..but that isn't it.
pinkbox
I gave that a shot, that didn't work either.
bugo
Ahh interesting. I haven't sent this to max yet, but that may happen soon. I'm not too worried about losing smoothing groups from Max..All I'm trying to do is make all the edges soft, but all the edges are currently hard.
I'm guessing I can fix the issue in Max...but this happens to me pretty often....so I was wondering if anybody knew what I could be doing wrong or if theres an easier fix.
I would if I could, but this is for something at work, so they probably wouldn't want me to do that.
o2_is_alright
Good point. Smooth preview still has hard edges.
Also a point I forgot to add...this mesh has been passed between Maya and Zbrush a little bit..if that opens up any ideas.
Thanks dudes
1 - or you extruded the faces, merged the faces, and everything got messed up
2 - sometimes maya by extruding a face, or toying around with the mesh, maya likes to lock some of the normals, not sure which function does that.
3 - as I pointed out before, you could have exported from max to maya, which made ur mesh get locked normals.
Did you try normals -> unlock already?
Like the OP, I tried all the usual things: unlocking the normals; freezing transforms / deleting history; cleaning up the mesh / trying to see if there were double verts; the cube-combining trick; and exporting it as an obj/ opening it in another version of maya (I use 2018 usually, but have 2020 installed as well)/ softening them there / importing it again... none of these tricks worked, which led me to believe it wasn't an issue with the mesh, and was probably just a maya problem.
If you encounter this, and none of the above fixes it-- I recommend exporting the problematic mesh, closing maya, and then deleting your prefs folder (or cut + paste them elsewhere). Then import the mesh back into a clean maya scene and the normals should be ok.
dpaynter26 solution worked for me. The mesh was fine before export and had all its vertices welded, but upon re-import, it's almost like it splits the verts. Welding them all by a small amount fixed it.
this is pretty old, but I encountered hard edges that wouldn't switch to soft & no other fixes listed here worked. however, when I simply deleted one of the faces that the problem edge was supporting, and then filled the gap in again with Bridge, it behaved like any other edge from that point.
also leads me to believe it was something buggy or treating it as a floating edge somehow. regardless, this was a pretty simple fix so thought I would share in case it helps someone else down the line :)