maya - strange shadow effect on verticies in line

n88tr

I get this little shadow effect when I have multiple verticies vertically arranged.

Any ideas why this is happening? It's very common for me.

CheeseOnToast

It just looks as though you have soft normals over a sharp angle. First off, go to normals>unlock normals. Then select your object in object mode and do normals>harden edge. If you want to soften some of the edges, select them manually and set the normals to soft, or shift+right click on the model, choose soften/harden edge from the marking menu. Go to the options and set the angle tolerance to something less than 90 degrees.

nullfed

Also, if it is happening often and annoying you, try going to Display>Polygons>Soft/Hard Edges.

This will display soft edges as dotted lines and hard ones as solid. Handy to see smoothing at a glance.