Thats what I thought too Jeramy, and it probably is the problem, but when I delete them and create new ones it still looks like that. Could verts, edges or other faces be affecting them? Just to make sure I'm doing things right... when you create a poly in polygon mode you go counterclockwise to have the face pointing at you, right?
oh don't delete the faces, recreating them will just put your normals inside again. I'm not sure how to do this in Max, but what you need to do is find the command to set your normals outside. See if Max has a Normal Modifier. If so just flip it and see if that works.
The normals don't look flipped, it looks more like they have a different smoothing group that the surrounding polys (or they all have no smoothing group at all).
Try adding a Smooth modifier (just Smooth, not Turbosmooth or Meshsmooth) on top of the stack (make sure you don't have anything selected or are in any sub-object mode otherwise it'll only affect your selection). Then check the "auto smooth" box. Then you can try changing the auto smooth angle to a lower value until the surface looks right.
If that still doesn't fix it then I'd suspect you have some duplicate verts around there, kinda looks like leftovers from a Boolean subtract operation to me.
It looks like a botched Boolean to me too. I suspect the odd verts fall on the path of an edge that already existed. To clear that up either target weld the extra verts, or select the verts in that punched in piece and weld them all, then re-smooth.
If its not a botched boolean, this can be caused by some of the polys not being flat. Select the polys around the punched hold, and click make planar XYZ or Align View.
Also to check if its flipped normals, right click the mesh, go to object properties and check on "backface cull" This will make the back faces transparent making those polys look like holes. Something Maya does do, or at least haven't figured out how to do it yet =.
Vig: Maya does do it, just not by default. Just go Display -> Polygons -> Backface culling for culling or in your view menu bar shading->backface culling.
Joe: Vig's answer is right on.
The boolean sink you've done has triangulated the polygon you put it in and those two differently lit polys are due to the verts not being in the same plane as the surrounding ones.
Either follow his suggestion to align the border verts on the punched hole, or undo the boolean and make that one large piece into a few smaller pieces, perhaps bevel it in a bit to make a smaller inner polygon where the boolean will be done thus preserving the existing exterior geometry.
OR, unless you really need this to be punched into the object, you could make it a floating piece of geometry. Ie keep the existing area flat, and build the boolean above the surface, so it just looks like its indented. This can work well if you are doing building this for a normal map, but not as much if you are planning on doing rendered scenes with this model
Thanks Jeramy, MoP, Vig, and Vailias. It is a Boolean and it is probably is screwed up. Usually I can fixed them when I do boolean's... usually. I'm sure they are a big no! no! with game companies, but booleans seem to be the best way to cut out circles or whatever. Thanks again for the help!
Replies
Try adding a Smooth modifier (just Smooth, not Turbosmooth or Meshsmooth) on top of the stack (make sure you don't have anything selected or are in any sub-object mode otherwise it'll only affect your selection). Then check the "auto smooth" box. Then you can try changing the auto smooth angle to a lower value until the surface looks right.
If that still doesn't fix it then I'd suspect you have some duplicate verts around there, kinda looks like leftovers from a Boolean subtract operation to me.
If its not a botched boolean, this can be caused by some of the polys not being flat. Select the polys around the punched hold, and click make planar XYZ or Align View.
Also to check if its flipped normals, right click the mesh, go to object properties and check on "backface cull" This will make the back faces transparent making those polys look like holes. Something Maya does do, or at least haven't figured out how to do it yet =.
Joe: Vig's answer is right on.
The boolean sink you've done has triangulated the polygon you put it in and those two differently lit polys are due to the verts not being in the same plane as the surrounding ones.
Either follow his suggestion to align the border verts on the punched hole, or undo the boolean and make that one large piece into a few smaller pieces, perhaps bevel it in a bit to make a smaller inner polygon where the boolean will be done thus preserving the existing exterior geometry.
OR, unless you really need this to be punched into the object, you could make it a floating piece of geometry. Ie keep the existing area flat, and build the boolean above the surface, so it just looks like its indented. This can work well if you are doing building this for a normal map, but not as much if you are planning on doing rendered scenes with this model