Edit Normals in Maya
polycounter lvl 15
Hello polycounters,
hope you enjoy your day. I am running today in a simple problem which exceeds my Maya knowlegde.
I get really bad shading artifacts in Maya after editing the normals of my lowpoly Object. The errors only occour when the mesh gets animated If the polyobject is still in place the normals will result in a fine shading.
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My workmates are doin everything in Max and I trying to improve my Maya skills besides work. How should I edit the Normals in Maya to get the same shading as in Max.
What we do in 3Ds Max:
- Average the vertices (overlapping verts on doublesided hairplanes)
- make Explicit
--> Everything works fine in every situation.
What I do in Maya:
- Average the vertices same as in Max (Normals are displyed yellow in viewport)
- But how to unlock them, no Maya Normals function fixed that prob( I think they need to be green = unlocked again, right?)
That would be same as in Max and everyone would be happy
I didn't get it running. I am looking for an equivalent "make Explicit" function in Maya.
I also read about the the vertexnormal technique in your Polycount Wiki.
What is also very strange. We are able to export our meshes from 3ds max with their specific normals into the UDK and the normals are still intact. But if I import the same FBX into Maya the customized vertexnormals are away.
Software used: Maya 2009 and max 2010.
Thanks for your help in advise.
Cheers
Thomas
hope you enjoy your day. I am running today in a simple problem which exceeds my Maya knowlegde.
I get really bad shading artifacts in Maya after editing the normals of my lowpoly Object. The errors only occour when the mesh gets animated If the polyobject is still in place the normals will result in a fine shading.
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
My workmates are doin everything in Max and I trying to improve my Maya skills besides work. How should I edit the Normals in Maya to get the same shading as in Max.
What we do in 3Ds Max:
- Average the vertices (overlapping verts on doublesided hairplanes)
- make Explicit
--> Everything works fine in every situation.
What I do in Maya:
- Average the vertices same as in Max (Normals are displyed yellow in viewport)
- But how to unlock them, no Maya Normals function fixed that prob( I think they need to be green = unlocked again, right?)
That would be same as in Max and everyone would be happy
I didn't get it running. I am looking for an equivalent "make Explicit" function in Maya.
I also read about the the vertexnormal technique in your Polycount Wiki.
What is also very strange. We are able to export our meshes from 3ds max with their specific normals into the UDK and the normals are still intact. But if I import the same FBX into Maya the customized vertexnormals are away.
Software used: Maya 2009 and max 2010.
Thanks for your help in advise.
Cheers
Thomas
Replies
I'm having a hard time seeing how your mesh looks like, but you seem to have non-manifold geometry which might be causing some trouble.
I don't think you should use average normals, it might be soft normals/edge you are looking for....
where maya shows them correct, they are wrong in max after export.
so my workmate usually make normals "Set to face" in maya and then make them soften edge(if needed).
if I remember well, this way normals will be correct both in max and maya with obj format.
http://migugi.net/mel/normalTools/
I tried unlock normals, but It looks for me that unlocking breks the average of each vertexnormal again and they are splitted as before(I doesn't want it). The Set to face option doesn't work for me.
I checked the mignormalTools but nothing changed so far.
hmm, still looking around for a solution. I tell you when it's working.
Maya's importers often "lock normals".
The proper steps to reset this is to do:
1. Normals -> Unlock Normals
2. Normals -> Soften Edge
3. Edit normals manually now, if you need to.
If that doesn't work then something else is wrong... maybe double-sided polygons as mentioned already?