Smoothing groups / faces acting crazy

Raider

So i've been working on my lowpoly for a gun and i've just noticed a tonne of the low poly has somehow been screwed up, like the normals have been flipped.. causing black boxes / incorrect smoothing all over the model.

E.g. There's no smoothing groups on any of those faces and look how they're acting, anyone know what the hell i could have done to cause this over multiple DIFFERENT objects? And is there a fix because it'd probably be faster to remodel the whole lpoly rather then go back and fix up all the corrupt faces.

Eric Chadwick

Try a STL Check modifier, could be duplicated faces?

Racer445

Try selecting all and welding, then play with the amount. It could be edge loops that are inside of each other.

Raider

I've been messing around with it, it isn't dup faces, it isn't unwelded or inside edge loops, i just pretty much have to manually delete every face and recap to fix the problem, which is a problem in itself that it makes me want to kill myself

r_fletch_r

export as an OBJ without smoothing groups or normals. delete the meshes re import them
This will trash all your normal data and recalc it.

This would be a good time to post a max file. just 1 element would be enough

Raider

Ok seriously now this is just pissing me off. attaching the max file if anyone has time to look http://brettholton.net/dump/wtf.max

ixumanu

Just like r_fletch_r sayd
Try to export to .obj and import it back. I had the same problem on max 2009, win 7. Also, sometimes you can try reset xform and convert to poly.
Hope this helps!

p.s. Select borders ann hit ctrl-a so you can see if you have any holes in mesh.

Eric Chadwick

Added an Edit Normals modifier (left). Selected all normals and hit Reset (right). (edit... smoothing groups seem to have been preserved just fine)

Raider

hmm it fixes the faces but all the smoothing grps are still screwed afterwards (it's the same for you from that screenshot)

Eric Chadwick

Oh I see, you did a bunch of SG work on the barrel. All I can say is use Save Incremental, or set your Autobak to a greater number of files and a smaller interval, like 20 files and every 5 minutes.

Michael Knubben

Raider: as a good start for smoothing groups, use AutoSG and set it to 30 or 45 degrees or something.
I hardly ever have to tweak anything after doing so.