Normal seam between head & torso (Maya)

putka

Hey guys, a little help, please!

I have a human mesh, separated into two parts - head and torso.

On the edge where the head and torso are connected, the vertex normals point in different direction, which makes the shading inconsistent. Easy fix, I thought. I selected all the vertices on torso and neck edges, then issued the 'average vertex command'. However, the results are not as expected, the vertices still point in different directions as you can see on the image below:



I just want to make the normals point in the same direction. I also tried combining the mesh, running the average command through all the vertices (which fixes the shading problem), but when I try to transfer attributes back to the separated mesh, it just turns black... This issue has been frustrating me for the last couple of days, so I would really appreciate any help! How to make vertices on two separate meshes have the same angle? Thanks so much!

CheeseOnToast

There's a script called mhCopyVertexNormals.mel I use for stuff like this. Unfortunately, you need to copy/paste vert normals one pair at a time, so it's a bit laborious. Easiest wasy to do it is to move the head up in Y a tiny bit, so you can more easily select individual verts. After you're done, move it back down.

Grab the script off my dropbox here : https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1889770/mhCopyVertexNormals.mel

putka

Thanks for your input! It seems this should fix it, but I'm not getting any results with the script - I select the vertex, run the script, but then nothing happens?

Eric Chadwick

Maybe mig Normal Tools?
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/VertexNormal#mig_Normal_Tools

CheeseOnToast

Run the script first. It should give you a little window with two buttons in it, one for copying and one for pasting. The window remains open until you close it for easier use.