Noobie question - softening hard edges?

OhNoItsCritical

Alright, so this is kind of a stupid question, but I was wondering what the best way to make a hard edge look not-as-hard would be?

For example, say I have a single brick, a 6 sided rectangle. How would I make the edges look softer once it's all textured and whatnot? Would that be through the normal map? If so, how?

Chamfering the sides would obviously be out of the question for a game, as well as using some type of turbosmooth obviously.

Any tips would be appreciated.

stringkeeper

It depends on what program you use.
For example in Maya you can (in the Polygon Menu) go to Normals->Soften Edge while having the edge selected.
In 3dsMax, you can use smoothing groups

OhNoItsCritical

Smoothing groups usually cause some funky shading/lighting when I try to use them for that purpose. Maybe I just need to play around with them more?

Also, I use 3Dmax.

Bal

Let the normal map give it a smooth aspect, if you don't have the budget to chamfer the edges.

cryrid

When it comes purely to rounding an edge instead of higher frequency surface detail, would adding an extra texture (a normal map) for this really be cheaper than a few extra faces?

Rico

I would use a normal map to fake the smoothness of a corner.

I did a brick a while ago, it turned out ok.

Just remember to give each face it's own smoothing group and for each smoothing group make it a separate UV island and you should be good.

OhNoItsCritical

What do you mean by "seperate UV island"?

I really need to practice with my normal maps. Sadly, The Art Institute doesn't really seem to be that great of a school. I've been here for 2 years, and I still don't feel ready to enter the industry. I end up doing most of my learning through online tutorials.

Rico

UV islands are the chunks of UV's.

So for example, don't unwrap a box and weld the sides together, keep them 6 separate pieces.

The reason you want every face a separate smoothing group is because the edge where they connect is really sharp.

For example, a cylinder can be 2 smoothing groups. You can assign the faces that wrap around to be smoothing group 1 (because they're less than 90 degrees) and the top and bottom cap smoothing group 2.

If you gave a cylinder 1 smoothing group you will see some gnarly shading because of the 90 degree connection with the caps.

Same thing with the box, all faces connect at 90 degree angles this is why you're getting the funky shading on it when you give 2 connecting faces at a sharp angle the same smoothing group.

fearian

Ah, the 'two years into my course and they haven't taught me normal maps' moment. I remember it well.

This page is excellent reference. http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap?highlight=(\bCategoryTexturing\b)

read through it once or twice, you may not 'get' all of it now, but if you keep coming back to it as you learn more and encounter problems, it will help a ton.

OhNoItsCritical

Makes sense, thanks Rico. I've always wondered why smoothing groups were funky for me sometimes.

fearian, it's good to know that I'm not the only one.. actually, it's not really "good", but it gives me a bit of inspiration, I suppose. I guess this is also the point where I realize that I know nothing and really get to work to improve my skills.

Thanks for the link, definitely going to bookmark it and give it a read.

PredatorGSR

Depends on the situation, sometime you get the smooth edge by baking down from a high poly, and sometimes beveling the edges makes sense. You can still bevel edges in games, in fact you do it a lot, you just have to be smart about it. Like you wouldn't have any issues with beveling a wall edge because it will be using a tiling texture anyway, you just try to only bevel edges that will be very visible to the player.

Btw, when I say bevel, I don't mean just using the bevel tool. Adding a 2 edge bevel will create pillowed surface if it is a large object, so sometimes you just add an edge loop on each side of the corner and soften the normals. That way you get a softened corner, but the softening doesn't extend beyond the beveled area and ruin the smoothing like you mentioned earlier.

Btw, my school didn't teach me normal maps either, so join the club. I learned them by doing mod work and research outside of school. Although that was 4 years ago, so I would have thought schools would have caught up by now.