How do you Automate Smoothing of Vertex Normals in Maya?

Sammy101

Hi I was referenced from someone that Maya has the ability to automate smoothing of vertex normals through a settings menu. Considering Max has maxscripts which don't seem to work for me, I've been willing to turn to my student version of Maya in order to get smoothing of vertex normals done faster.

ESF wrote: »

Sammy101: looking nice! and no i'm not using any scripts but in maya in the bevel settings you can control the smoothing

He talks about bevel settings, and I have no clue what this means. I don't want to bother him with so many pesky questions and I don't think he's got a lot of time either. So I am hoping someone from here can help me out on figuring out what he means. The base question is basically, how do you control vertex normals through the bevel setting in Maya? Please help!

edit: I have found all the way at the bottom of the page, this group of tools in Maya: (http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/VertexNormal#GetVertNormalsFromFace_MAXScript). Is this the toolset he was talking about?

DireWolf

Can you elaborate a bit more what you're trying to achieve?

Maya has bevel but it's going to round out the edges by adding geometry, not by adjusting normals as far as I Know. To adjust normals, we normally select the edges we want and do Normal > Soften/Harden Edge, or sometimes the just use it on the entire mesh. Be careful tho if you import your models from other apps you'll want to unlock its normal first.

Clark Coots

after you Bevel, in the channels box there is a "Smoothing Angle", default is 30 degrees, you can turn this up to smooth the normals of the bevel if you have only a couple bevel segments.

.Wiki

I guess this is what he is looking for. Seems to be a script for maya and a additional script for max...

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=85809

Sammy101

.Wiki wrote: »

I guess this is what he is looking for. Seems to be a script for maya and a additional script for max...

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=85809

Hey guys thanks for responding, Wiki though seems to have found something that definitely interests me. I will see if I can get it working though.

At the matter of hand, I am asking to edit the vertex normals for environment objects to use in UE4. This is a model from a study of Vertex Normal method, I want to be able to speed up the process of editing vertex normals faster, so I don't have to do it all manually.

Sammy101

Update: When I run the maxscript from the thread you linked Wiki, all it does is create an edit normals and does nothing to change the vertex normals, from what I can see. I probably am using it wrong, so if that's the case, please help!

Sammy101

Update: Got the script working, had to make all faces on one smoothing group and then use the script. Vertex Normaled the box in seconds!