Black polygons and smoothing groups

Zephir62

I'm working in 3DS Max, and I've had this problem throughout all the versions I've ever used. When using smoothing groups I get these black polygons and I haven't yet been able to put two and two together as for what the problem exactly is. I also have this problem when animating See the pillars in the screenshot below for an example:



PS: Any crits on the model/design are welcome too

Mark Dygert

It might help if you labeled your render with the different smoothing group numbers? Right now with out seeing how you smoothed this I can't really give you much advice about what you are doing wrong.

Smoothing groups is not a broken feature, so you are most definitely are using smoothing groups incorrectly =/ It might help if you read up on smoothing groups?

F1 > Search for "Viewing and Changing Smoothing"

Basically your black polys are being smoothed with some other far off polys or the polys on the very bottom of the pillars. Auto-Smooth might be your best friend, just set the angle of the faces you want to be the smooth breaker and try it out. I bet it works perfect.

Zephir62

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Basically your black polys are being smoothed with some other far off polys or the polys on the very bottom of the pillars.

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Makes sense - I didn't know that steep angles caused those kind of 'artifacts'. That's all I needed to know Thanks!

Marisa

I've had that same rendering problem too, but the problem for me was that the vertices weren't welded in those areas, the vertices were just on top of each other.

mvelasquez

yeah. select all your verts and weld with a .00001 threshold.

Jarrod1937

i've had this happen with smothign groups if i have verts too close together (they were not overlapping or unwelded), this also happens when you have single polys stretched too far with smoothing groups applied too, atleast in 3ds max.