What exactly does average normals and set face do in Maya?

G3L

I started using them today because I was getting some different smoothing/shading on an asset I was fixing but I looked at the prior asset, trying to replicate the same look and I was having trouble until I started messing around with average normals ant set face.

Granted now things are looking better but I have no idea what these two things do. I have a small idea but would like to fully understand it.

For the most part, I would always just use soften and harden edges options and call it a day. But now these seem these other new options I'm using seem to create different shading on the model.

Mr.Mint

"Set to face" conforms the vertex-normal to the direction of the face while "average normals" calculates the average normal-direction and aligns the normals to that direction.

G3L

I was noticing that when I display vertex normals, at first they are green. Then when I do an average normal on the face, it turns yellow.

What does it mean if it's green or yellow? Seems the different colors do something different to the shading a bit although the vertex normal stayed the same, it's just the color that changed.

Mr.Mint

http://www.3dtutorialzone.com/tutorial?id=86

The lines that are yellow indicate that the normals there are locked. Unlocking them is pretty easy. Select the model and go to normals>unlock normals.

Now I have learned something new for myself.

G3L

And so did I! Good find and I actually could've saved myself some more time earlier but now I know.