need a cut tool that keeps normals as they were pre-cut

SHEPEIRO

any ideas, this is so i can cut and weld normal mapped peices which fucks stuff up at diaganol corners, now if the cut tool kept the normal from the surface pre-cut then thing would be rosie, any ideas, tools, plugins workflows etc...

thanks in advance

SHEPEIRO

ps maya if pos

Mark Dygert

Ahh crap Maya huh... not sure. Last time I had to cut anything I inserted loops rather then hack them in, lucky for me I didn't have to weld anything as I think that would have jacked things up.

But in 3dsmax it has a "preserve UV's check box" that doesn't mangle your UV's if you use the cut tool. I'm away from Maya right now otherwise I'd check for something similar.

tom.drin

Sorry, I don't know any advanced cut tool.
But If I have to modify mesh after normal map generation I usualy edit normals by myself (yes its quite nonaccurate, but it woks most time).
In max there is Edit Normals modifier (must be last thing before export, because every operation will ruin it).
And I believe that Maya has option to edit normals by some standard way.

katzeimsack

hmm, doesn't "lock normals" and then cut work?

SHEPEIRO

Kat- cheers worked a treat- thought it might be simple saves me plenty of time the way i was doing it previosly was duplicating the obj then cutting and transfering the normals back from the orig based on proximity- pain in the arse.

Ryno

Damn, Kat. That just makes too much sense. lol

arshlevon

you can also save your uncut model, then cut the hell out of your model and then use the transfer attributes tool and transfer vertex normals from one to the other, i use it all the time mostly for hair and transferring the normals from the main shells to the fly away planes, this makes it all shade correctly.

MoP

arsh: i think Shepeiro said he was already doing that, but thanks for the usage tip