Looking for a way to edit Vertex Normals with falloff or soft selection in Maya LT... or Substance!
polycounter lvl 8
So I'm looking for a workflow to use on countless terrain meshes that meet up and create seams, show in an idealized/simplified version here:
I knew it probably wouldn't work, but I tried anyways:
Gives this result, which is indeed removing the seam, but of course creates two new seams that are softer but of course worse looking:
So... after doing some searches I didn't stumble on any way to easily lock some vertex normals and average surrounding vertex normals with a falloff, as I would like to do.
I would also be open to a solution that involved Substance painter, such as using the texture normals rather than vertex normals and painting with a soft brush directly into the normal map with a brush where the seams are. I'm not sure if anything like that is possible, but I'd prefer a simpler solution with the meshes themselves.
Anyone know of a good direct solution to this problem? I am constructing a scene in a way where *everything* is a unique sculpt, and that is not something negotiable so I need an actual solution to blending their edges-- and their edges will never be something I can make into one mesh. Since it is terrain, 90% of the time they meet the vertex normals could be blended from a pure Y up setting, if that makes it easier.
I am not worried about strange lighting results from my vertex normals not matching the face directions of the mesh-- the absolute priority is accomplishing a smooth transition from one mesh to the next.
I knew it probably wouldn't work, but I tried anyways:
Gives this result, which is indeed removing the seam, but of course creates two new seams that are softer but of course worse looking:
So... after doing some searches I didn't stumble on any way to easily lock some vertex normals and average surrounding vertex normals with a falloff, as I would like to do.
I would also be open to a solution that involved Substance painter, such as using the texture normals rather than vertex normals and painting with a soft brush directly into the normal map with a brush where the seams are. I'm not sure if anything like that is possible, but I'd prefer a simpler solution with the meshes themselves.
Anyone know of a good direct solution to this problem? I am constructing a scene in a way where *everything* is a unique sculpt, and that is not something negotiable so I need an actual solution to blending their edges-- and their edges will never be something I can make into one mesh. Since it is terrain, 90% of the time they meet the vertex normals could be blended from a pure Y up setting, if that makes it easier.
I am not worried about strange lighting results from my vertex normals not matching the face directions of the mesh-- the absolute priority is accomplishing a smooth transition from one mesh to the next.
Replies
While looking for the Transfer Attributes in the menus I noticed a 'paint attributes tool' which got me excited for a bit, but alas I found no proper way to use it with vertex normals. It does look like it could be used in conjunction with the transfer attributes method somehow, but maybe not for vertex normals.
If anyone knows if there are any plugins that would simply allow me to paint vetex normals to y = 1 with a brush falloff, I would love to hear about it as that would be much easier/smoother. For now I'll try to see if I can use the shrinkwrap > transfer method on my real meshes.
Paint Attributes is generally used with other systems in maya, cloth for example. I can't say that I've ever seen a way to paint normals in Maya. (until just now that i searched for it lol) https://gumroad.com/l/normalpaint Would be nice to pick from a hemisphere palette in addition to the sliders though.