Difference between revisions of "Working With Nifs 201 : Meshes, Data, and you"

Working With Nifs 201 : Meshes, Data, and you (edit)

Revision as of 12:59, 3 July 2010

523 bytes added , 12:59, 3 July 2010

The Smooth Normals command does not smooth edges at all angles; only edges with an angle equal to or less than the smoothing angle [default is 60 degrees].

Anonymous user

imported>Vince Bly

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 Each vertex has a "Normal".  Normals define how light reacts to the mesh.  By default, vert normals are "set to face" - They point away from the polygon perpendiclarly.  When viewing this polygon straight on, it will show the most light.  As you rotate this polygon, it reflects less light to you, to help determine the "depth" of the scene.  Also, having all normals set to face results in hard, chiselled edges between every polygon- the kind of thing we associate with older-model low-poly 3d graphics.
-We can give the model a smoother look by altering each vertex normal.  If we need to fix this in nifskope, you can do rClick>Mesh>Smooth Normals.  This is an operation usually easier done in a 3d modelling app, where greater control over what gets smoothed is available.  This method applies smoothing to the entire shape, and only unwelded edges will retain their "hardness"  (Say you have a simple cube, and all the vertices are welded together: the smoothing will affect all the edges, the cube now looks a little funny.  If the vertices are unwelded, the faces are free-floating of each other, but still in the same positions: Smoothing now won't alter the hard edges of the cube.)
+We can give the model a smoother look by altering each vertex normal.  If we need to fix this in nifskope, you can do rClick>Mesh>Smooth Normals.  This is an operation usually easier done in a 3d modelling app, where greater control over what gets smoothed is available.  This method applies smoothing to the entire shape up to the maximum smoothing angle (default is 60 degrees).  This works fine for most objects where the only edges that need to retain their "hardness" are greater than 60 degrees.  Object that have edges that need to remain hard that are less than the smoothing angle need those edges to be unwelded.  [Say you have a knife blade where the seam between the sharpened edge and the blade's core is 12 degrees, but you want that seam to remain hard (visible).  If the vertices along the seam are welded together, the visible seam will be removed by the smoothing process.  If the vertices are unwelded, so the faces are free-floating from each other, but still in the same positions, the visible seam will not be removed.  You can create a set of free-floating faces in Blender by selecting the faces, pressing 'Y', and clicking to Ok the split.  You can use smoothing groups in 3ds Max].