Shading errors and smoothing groups

Wayfray

Hello,

I'm dealing with some minor shading errors around points with more than 4 meeting edges. I couldn't fix the problem with blended smoothing groups or detaching the problem faces to a separate element. Does anyone have any suggestions? Here is an image to illustrate this:
edit:
This is in 3dsmax. Also, photo to show geometry:

passerby

add a edge loop that outlines the door in the arch, that should contain the shadeing error

Wayfray

Thanks for the reply, I still would appreciate more help though. The best I can do so far was to create edge loops as in the picture below, but the center area still doesn't quite smooth nicely.

Eric Chadwick

You could edit the vertex normals, using an Edit Normals modifier. Select all the normals on the front by Face, and move them somewhat towards the same direction. You still want some curvature for the normals, since the surface curves inwards. But unifying them a bit more should help solve this.

Eric Chadwick

For example
http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap#Edited_Vertex_Normals

Wayfray

Thanks for the tip, I will experiment with that.