you must be very lucky then :p I run into this issue frequently. Maya face extrude seems to hate geo thats doesnt have uniform faces or organic surfaces. the local translate usually will be ok, but thickness is the buggy one.
If you are doing this for self promotion then a full face mask isnt really a good idea. If you want this for your portfolio then you would have to show some shots without the mask. A good compromise is a model with an open face setup.
looks nice! small crit would be the face, its a bit noisy and hard to read with everything. First the face, and then the hair(wich kinda looks like an arm brain to begin with) and then the glass on top of that, and then the cross on top of THAT, so many layers.
Ok in that case can I have the head with its own UV and put the rest of the body on a different map? i.e. have the body mesh use 2 different UV tiles - one for the faces on the head and the other for the faces on the body?
The face looks amazingly real. I think that's the best face I've seen in UDK yet. I've not played mass effect 3 though. It almost makes the rest look CG, as if it's footage/CG composite. Awesome work man.
If I am right about the lights positioning your first image is correct. The edges facing the lights are receiving highlights(yellow) whereas those facing away are shaded(blue). With that said, modelling this will create stronger normals that are physically accurate.
There's also this thread http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=75753, which resulted in a script by the lovely SyncView that lets you align vertex normals to face normals on a per-face basis. Automatically collapses the stack and is reset by an Edit Poly.
Wait on closer inspection this does not do want I need, unless I'm using it wrong. Because it works on faces not shells the mapped area can't filter small shells just small faces that might be attached to a large shell.
Is it possible in your project for you to move the verts beyond the curve, then cut through the faces that lead to them along the curve, delete those faces now hanging off, and end up using those new verts aligned already?
To make sure your normals aren't inverted, convert your model to editable mesh, select all faces, and check Show Normals. That way, you'll see which direction your normals are facing. This is assuming you are in max however...