What causes bad smoothing

Sims_doc

I'm just wondering what cases bad smoothing in Max or Maya? I've notice when in both that you'll have a crease line that clearly shows the Tri on a Qud and extremely dark areas that look like that they are warping.

An example Warping effect along with Wireframe that is happening around the slide.

ghaztehschmexeh

Smoothing groups/normals. Baking a normal map from a high polygon model will eliminate the issue.

Sims_doc

So.. The smooth groups are the reason for this? also this is my high poly model. I'll be downgrading its detail to do LODs and thats assuming i need them as it doesn't have a high tri count.

AdvisableRobin

Its your topology around the indent that is causing the triangle like shading error. In this case, having an n-gon to terminate the loops is giving you the error.

Farfarer

Bad topology causes bad smoothing.

You've got two non-planar convex polygons in the mesh, which is going to cause issues unless you triangulate it properly.

The two polygons on the body at the top of either side of the casing ejection port.

So you can tell that the top-left two verts in that polygon are both joining to the bottom-right vert of that polygon, which is causing shading issues as they're nearly overlapping each other (top image).

You want the triangulation to be at least like the bottom image to try an even out the shading.

Same for the other side, although it doesn't look to be as bad.




Same with that bad shading in the middle of the grip indents - you've got a quad there that has a triangle whose points are collinear. Turn that edge so it connects back up the mesh to where the other verts join.

ghaztehschmexeh

Sims_doc wrote: »

So.. The smooth groups are the reason for this? also this is my high poly model. I'll be downgrading its detail to do LODs and thats assuming i need them as it doesn't have a high tri count.

I think you may be confused about the purpose of a high poly. Usually you will be using subdivision so you can get nice rounded edges in your normal map. You wouldn't really make something like this and then just made LODs of it.

SuperFranky

ghaztehschmexeh wrote: »

I think you may be confused about the purpose of a high poly. Usually you will be using subdivision so you can get nice rounded edges in your normal map. You wouldn't really make something like this and then just made LODs of it.

I think some old games use this kind of method of creating assets, like Fallout: New Vegas. I'm not sure, tho.

Neoekamp

Yep add some up n down loops from the corners of the middle indent. For hipoly models, correct shading is way more important than a couple extra edge loops.

Sims_doc

Neoekamp wrote: »

Yep add some up n down loops from the corners of the middle indent. For hipoly models, correct shading is way more important than a couple extra edge loops.

Believe it or not i did try this and the result were the bad smoothing being push into a box space, although that being said i haven't tried doing it horizontally instead but that will increase its count.

SuperFranky wrote: »

I think some old games use this kind of method of creating assets, like Fallout: New Vegas. I'm not sure, tho.

Team fortress 2 but that being said i've got a huge limit in relation to Tri and Polys.

AdvisableRobin wrote: »

Its your topology around the indent that is causing the triangle like shading error. In this case, having an n-gon to terminate the loops is giving you the error.

I actually removed those while working on that and its why n-gon is there, normally its a few quds.