Maya plugin or script for manual weighting vertex normals

PetSto

Hi, I am looking some good plugin or scripts for manual weighting vertex normals in Maya, but without sucess, maybe you help me. I like this workflow.



Now I working on some assets, where can I used this workflow. In Maya is very basic possibilities to play with vertex normals and take long time to setup as I want. I need something when I am in Vertex Face mode, I select some vertices which I want control and set direction to last one vertex I select, etc.

pasha_sevez

http://polycount.com/discussion/122478/vertex-normal-script-for-maya
Hope it will help!

m4dcow

I've used migNormalTools for ages
http://cmcproductions.co.uk/files/migNormalTools.mel

Quack!

Maya 2015 and 16 do this automatically to about 90% perfect. No script needed. They call it Area and Face Weighted normals in the objects attribute menus.
If you want perfect then you run the scripts posted.

pasha_sevez

m4dcow said:

I've used migNormalTools for ages
http://cmcproductions.co.uk/files/migNormalTools.mel

Never heard about this tool for some reason ) Tried it today. It works pretty good, and does its job just fine. While some features, like randomize or grow / shrink, are nice, in general I find it overcomplicated. PompVertNormFaceAvg script is simple, convenient and fast - select faces and run, that's it. Also migNormalTools generates tons of extra hard edges, I'm not sure, that it's ok.

Fansub

Made a script some time ago that does exactly that

1. if ( size(`filterExpand -sm 34`) < 1) {
2.           error "This operation only works when a face component is selected ! \n";
3. }
4. string $Faces[] = `filterExpand -sm 34`;
5. select -cl;
6. for ($Face in $Faces) {
7.           select -r $Face;
8.           string $faceNormal[] = `polyInfo -fn`;
9.           $array = stringToStringArray($faceNormal[0], " ");
10.           float $X = $array[2];
11.           float $Y = $array[3];
12.           float $Z = $array[4];
13.           ConvertSelectionToVertices;
14.           polyNormalPerVertex -xyz $X $Y $Z ;
15.           ConvertSelectionToFaces;
16. }
17. select $Faces;
18. print ("All vertex normals oriented to their face normal(s) ! \n");

We've used this workflow for a game I'm currently working on and what i did to make the workflow easier was to make all assets that go into UE4 Houdini assets.This allowed us to be able to unable/disable the effect right inside the game engine,which is pretty cool tbh

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Quack!

TeriyakiStyle said:

Am I taking crazy pills I see all these threads like this is some new dx11 feature but this has been around since nearly the beginning of 3d.  What are they teaching you in school?!  

What is your point?

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Quack!

TeriyakiStyle said:

And you don't or shouldn't need to wait for scripts/plugins if you understand more about something so fundamental.  Understanding would help you more as an artist than relying on a script.

Umm, I am not sure you are understanding what is happening here...you might be responding to something else?
You NEED scripts for this to work in most 3D packages pre-2015/2016(and some post 2016).  You can't just "understand" to make this work...

But yes, this technique has been around for a while, but it is developing into a more essential technique with vert/tri headroom becoming higher and higher, so the adoption and discussion is happening more frequently now.

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throttlekitty

@TeriyakiStyle Pros and cons. Some geometry layouts or styles trip up Maya's FWN. Personally I usually stick with soft/hard edge workflow, since it's nearly automatic. There are many cases where it won't give you a straight normal, it's always skewed, and in the case of the star citizen example I don't think they're using normal maps to cover their beveled edges.

Here's an example anyway, from left to right: subd, all soft edges, manual normals. Nothing special about the geo, circles are beveled and supports on the box borders.

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