Weird shading on model, Topology to blame or what? (blender or max same deal)

aphixe

So I just cut a simple section i wanted extruded inward, and added in geo to either a quad or tri setup and getting weird issues, i guess its a topology issue, perhaps something else, it isn't the material as if i take it into max or unity looks bad.

If i was to apply a sub-d on either there is bad pinching, I'm just curious best way to cut along any curved mesh and extrude inward.

One person that not a hard-surface guy online said he thinks its because i have such low poly. Whats a good way to fix this, thanks guys.

Obscura

Its the vertex normals. If you don't want to do highpoly from this, and you only need the lowpoly, look into "face weighted normals". If you want subd, you need better topology indeed.

aphixe

Any particular topology design I should try for sub d

Michael Knubben

No

RN

The auto-smooth option (mesh properties panel) should make it look better.
Some people also prefer to cut a plane like they want and then bend it as a cylinder to make sure it'll have the smoothest shading possible and perfect roundness. The bending can be non-destructive if done with a modifier on Blender or Max (meaning, you can still edit the plane and see the cylinder that results from it).

aphixe

Rn auto smooth is already on. When I started with cylinder I smoothed it, went to edit mode and took a mesh and project cut a curved shape and then connected it either with quad or tri and extruded inward. I have to see which bend your referring to. I check after work

Eric Chadwick

Stickies in this forum section cover this exact issue. Worth a solid look!

RN

Try using a smaller angle in the auto-smooth settings.
I expected at least the upper part to be auto-smoothed, it makes a sharp turn.

FourtyNights

Or even better, change the angle of Auto Smooth to 180 degrees and mark your sharp edges manually. That way you have a full control of smoothing groups in your low poly mesh.

One more benefit: Once you're done with your sharp edges and you'd like to UV unwrap your mesh, you can quickly select all of your sharp edges with Shift + G in the edit mode with an edge selection mode, to active "Select Similar" tool. After that you can mark your selection as seams too.

And remember this golden rule: "All of your sharp edges are always UV seams, but not all of your UV seams need to be sharp edges."