Normal Soften in Max

jordan.kocon

I am a maya/xsi user. However a client needs me to send them a model in Max format, with smoothing groups. In maya to bake my normals I just select my model, and go normals -> soften. My question is, how do you 'soften' your model in max? Thanks in advance.

Mark Dygert

I'm a little confused by what you're asking because I don't have maya installed and I can't double check exactly what that command does, but Max has smoothing groups.

You select all of the polys and assign them to the same smoothing group, its under Polygon Smoothing Groups in Edit Poly. Typically you select all the faces, click clear all then assign them to group 1. Auto Smooth will assign smoothing groups based on face angle.

If you want to create a hard edge you put different selections of polys into different smoothing groups. There are also scripts available on script spot, that allow to assign hard edges like you can in Maya, these are magic and a much better way to work in my opinion.



Technically the last example on the right could use only 2 smoothing groups. Group1 assigned to the top and bottom end caps and Group2 assigned to the sides. Because the caps are separated completely by another group the edges remain hard and the smoothing is separate. Using this method you can recycle groups and put more polys into one group to break up the smoothing.

Is that what you're after or did you mean something else?

jordan.kocon

Mark Dygert: This is exactly what I was asking, thank you very much. It is definitely a different workflow from Maya. Thanks a lot for the picture!