What's up with Maya 2015's smoothing/shading?

Fogbrain

I'm no hard surface expert by any means, but doing something simple as a door would be not too difficult in Maya when it comes to hard surface modelling.

Ever since I installed 2015, and don't get me wrong it's a fantastic improvement for a change, but what the heck is up with the smoothing?




It's almost like they look like some poorly baked normals and the only way I can get my shapes to look like hard is by adding what seems like too many support loops and geometry. All it is, basically, is a door frame.

http://gyazo.com/5a355daecc01f076c9d982a198521641

What I'm doing here is, adding a support loop to the bottom of the shape, to bring the surface forward and harder, but it still looks weirdly shaded and smoothed.

So I take the loop away and that's what it looks like.

Or maybe this is all because I suck at hard surface and haven't a clue what I'm doing.

Bartalon

Those bold edges look to be creased. To my knowledge, creased edges have never rendered well, visually, in any version of Maya. The three loop technique is pretty common in lieu of creasing and always produces aesthetically accurate results. True, your mesh could get pretty hairy with tons of supporting edge loops, but as long as you place them with purpose things shouldn't get too messy.

In terms of game art, you probably don't want a perfect 90 degree edge on your high poly anyway, as it won't bake down very well to normal maps: you'll want at least some edge softness on most things unless you're making sharp objects such as knives and swords.

Fogbrain

Okay, I'll start over the model and have another go, when you're talking about a perfect 90 degree edge, do you mean like bevelling the edges to create the illusion of a 90 degree edge?

Bartalon

It depends on what you're modelling, really. In the below example, the center cube's edges are probably too tight. You could either loosen up the support loops to allow a softer edge or bevel it for a harder, wider surface to catch light.



If you're having trouble understanding edge flow for high poly modeling, you may want to try challenging yourself with the Weekly Hard Surface Challenge (here's Part 2), or you can take a peek at what other people have already done there to see how they achieved their shapes.

Fogbrain

Thanks Bart, I've got the basics of hard surface down, and thankfully this project I'm working on for the next 6 months (hopefully) will involve ALOT of hard surface stuff.

I guess the puzzling part about whether or not to determine what I'm doing right in Maya is down to the black shading that 2015 has, but I did a quick comparison with a simple cube, and everything looks fine. So yeah, must be the creasing or placement of edge loops.

I'll check out the hard surface challenge and give it a go!

Also one last thing, do you recommend a high poly version of a door like this?

Bartalon

For something like that you might be able to get away with using NDO instead of doing an entire high poly model, however if you need the practice I would say go for it. On the other hand, if the door is off in the distance or just some nondescript inaccessible door, you may not even need a normal map. It really depends on your platform/art style/budgeting/etc.

Fogbrain

Yeah it's pretty much what I was thinking since the detail in the metal and shapes are so basic it doesn't really warrant a normal map let alone a high poly bake. Any NDO normals would be incredibly subtle anyway.

Fwap

Is that AIE?

throttlekitty

Just a note, you should either be using supporting edges or creasing to handle the corners of your model, not both at the same time. Or at least in the same spot. Creasing acts as a magnet to pull in subdivided edges towards the crease, which is why you get funny shading*. Using support loops can be thought of as "holding the shape" to maintain closer sharpness of corners, for example. Doubling up the techniques means that half the edges between the corner and the support loop sit close to the corner in sub-d for a low-poly look.

*That big black area looks like you're showing the same polygons as the top image with smooth edges, not in smooth mesh preview, where the creases actually do their thing.