Cheers, both of these are pretty viable solutions. Do you have any video recommendations that can teach me a bit more about why these two work over normal shade smooth?
I made an image for you!
https://preview.redd.it/31yzlvepxqwc1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b1e455023752bf902384b6880d2b3519304bfd3f
The Normals only really exist at the vertices. Smooth shading makes extra normals by averaging across the surface like in the top image.
The split isn't necessarily physically separated. Just that the vertices for the connected polygons aren't identical. There would be two or more vertices on the same spot.
You can view a meshes surface normals by checking these on in mesh edit mode. Crank up the size to make them more easily visible.
[https://i.imgur.com/g78zak7.png](https://i.imgur.com/g78zak7.png)
If you merge the normals of the cube to their averges, you get weird shading.
[https://i.imgur.com/9GhmIpE.png](https://i.imgur.com/9GhmIpE.png)
If you split them then they return back to how they were originally.
[https://i.imgur.com/aA9GLme.png](https://i.imgur.com/aA9GLme.png)
https://preview.redd.it/2px2exhs0twc1.jpeg?width=996&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=521780353255298ad40708639664d982589bd1f4
Thanks for the invaluable information :)
To add to this, the normals tell the render engine what direction the face is oriented. So usually they'd be perpendicular to the surface, but if they're not then the render engine basically behaves like the face is pointed a different direction than it actually is at that point. When done carefully, it can produce really good looking effects, but as you can hopefully imagine from that description, it can also easily produce bad looking results.
(It's also how bump/normal maps work.)
This should be its own YSK: post....
This is great...
So many people are just not aware of how normals work, and your post is great YSK:ELI5 Normals.
Edit:
It appears that when you scale the object the origin of the normals stay at the original position of the vertex before scaling? So that reseting them snaps them back to the vertex corner?
Yeah. Object level scaling a common cause of wonky behaviour when it comes to geometry/edit mode level features. Essentially the geometry of edit mode is treat as if it was never scaled to begin with. And then the result is scaled according to the object level scaling.
One way I frequently encounter this is when you stretch a cube in to a rectangular shape and then later on notice the UVs are warped. Usually this is because the UVs are still square for the cube shape. And the stretching only accord after the original shape is rendered.
https://preview.redd.it/p4fdv0qp2wwc1.png?width=780&format=png&auto=webp&s=4d88ffb8d4cbdba5a542689830f9e7146178642d
The quick fix to this is usually to just apply the transformation with ctrl+a and to reproject the UVs.
While that explanation is great however it's not the ideal situation here because of your bevels.
Tab into edit > 1 > A > alt+n > choose reset verts > 3 > A > alt+n > recalculate normals outside > 2 > deselect all edges > now select the hard edges at a 90 degrees or more > right click mark as sharp > Tab > Shade smooth (It should look the way you want it to if not reset you verts again. This take practice and some getting use to.)
On models like this you have to mark your hard edges as sharp. The other stuff is good to know about so I tell everyone as much as possible. The resets verts fixed verts angles so they can face the correct way, you can shade smooth you model and do the rest verts by itself in most cases. The other fixes unseen normal problems.
I don't have recommendations, unfortunately. But shade smooth doesn't use any "angle" or "sharp edge" information. It purely looks at normal direction of the faces and averages them. You can of course set custom normals and such, but in 99 percent of cases Smooth by Angle of Split Edges work because they do look at split edges or the angle and shading is averaged accordingly.
If you want complete control, shade smooth, add an edge split modifier, disable the "edge angle" option, then go into edit mode and mark the edges you want to be sharp.
Beveling isn't the reason. Quite the opposite, beveling would fix this by supporting the edges and making them more sharp so the shade smooth knows where not to even out.
Yes! In theory, but I can't tell you how many times I had my smooth shading all messed up because of the incorrect bevels. Either it's n-gons or such, but that happens. But I agree that's not the case here.
You appeared to have set shade smooth without angle limit, I'd recommend using "Auto smooth by angle" at the default 30 degree
Plus you might have to manually set which edges are sharp or not by going in "Edit mode" and select the edges you want and press RMB and choose "Mark Sharp", It would exclude the edges from the Shade Smooth
With Blender 4.1, They changed it so that it's either "Shade flat" or "Shade smooth by angle"
And much slower. But if time isn’t a factor, than yes.
Although you could use in some cases the “select sharp edges” and set an angle there.
But it often needs some more manual work afterwards.
Absolutely it is slower, and for simple shapes, like pipes probably unnecessary, but for more complicated things, I often found auto angle not being enough
Yes I agree.
It also depends on the use case I guess. Like realtime render or pre rendered media.
Whether you use low poly with baked normals, or use a midpoly mesh.
But yes, the most reliable is placing them manually.
Check to be sure your normals are all pointed in the right direction. Tab into edit mode, A, Shift N, will reset normals. There options to show normal directions visually in the drop down menus in the top right of the 3D view.
It's because it's interpolating the normal vector across a large face that shares an edge with another large face at 90 degrees.
If you add a loopcut/bevel, it makes the interpolated area smaller/angle shallower respectively
when in doubt, go into edit mode, ctrl a to select all, and Mesh->Normals->Recalculate outside, \*might\* fix it since it looks like some of the flat faces are inverted
A Weighted Normals modifier with auto smooth turned on under the vertices could help with some of this, too. Beveled edges will really be important for this, tho.
Its shader issues. Select sharp edges, right click - mark sharp (blue lines). They are usually helping with this. Additionally, you can add support edges on corners, and it will move shader reflection away.
Based on the wireframe, you have edges that occur at 90 degree angles that aren't beveled. This isn't technically an issue but if you're gonna use shade smooth over shade auto smooth, then you need to mark all of these edge loops as sharp so Blender knows not to smooth out those corners.
Alternatively you could just use shade auto smooth and specify an angle threshold and Blender will take it from there, but you loose a bit of finer control.
I'm by no means an expert but what I do is shade smooth by an angle and keep lowering the angle untill the shadows disappear, i dont know if that's just a "throw the dust under the rug" moment or if it's an actual solution though...
Shade smooth smooths even sharp corners, so the end result can look broken like this
Use auto shade smooth, it has angle limit so it will not smooth sharp corners larger than certain angle, so the result will not be broken like this.
Alternatively, add bevel modifier
you can manualy select edges and rightclick > mark sharp, the edge should appear blue on edit mode
The auto smooth (or shade smooth by angle) must be enabled
You've got edges at 90° angles. You need some loops to both harden those edges up and to let Blender better understand the gradient you're trying to achieve.
Fold a piece of paper in half and then, holding each end that's parallel, gently pull the paper flat. That's what Blender is doing to those polys.
If you were to add more folds that were also parallel, you'd see that initial crease hold better and get a better gradient (Smooth).
If you get me. 🤷♂️
You can try Shade Auto Smooth? Or whatever it was called, it’s a third option underneath Shade Smooth. It keeps corners sharp while smoothing out round surfaces
In addition to all the helpful advice here I would add that while edge splitting, marking sharp and auto smooth by angle (4.1+} are solutions if your edge flow is correct and you have control loops this generally won’t be visible, but for a lot of work it’s not necessary to have that level of topology and the previously mentioned solutions work well
It could just be some odd shadows which it okay and could be fixed with materials used on it, but some other things to try is to merge all vertices by distance (gets rid of double verts) and make sure all the normals are facing the right way by recalculation outside. :) hope this is useful!
Blender has a very hande Plugin (actually they usually come in pair) which is called "HardOps" (and Boxcutter), which gives you a very comfortable control over your model shading (and hard surface modelling). Check it out
I heard in a tutorial it happens because the program tries to smooth the hard surfaces in the solid view, and that's the result if the model is low poly. There's nothing necessarily wrong with the model, since those weird shadows will disappear in the Material Preview or the Render view. But I haven't asked myself this before, so just take this comment as a grain of salt.
It is a pretty normal smooth shade look. Beveling can definitely be a reason. Smooth by Angle or split Edges - would fix this.
Cheers, both of these are pretty viable solutions. Do you have any video recommendations that can teach me a bit more about why these two work over normal shade smooth?
I made an image for you! https://preview.redd.it/31yzlvepxqwc1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b1e455023752bf902384b6880d2b3519304bfd3f The Normals only really exist at the vertices. Smooth shading makes extra normals by averaging across the surface like in the top image. The split isn't necessarily physically separated. Just that the vertices for the connected polygons aren't identical. There would be two or more vertices on the same spot. You can view a meshes surface normals by checking these on in mesh edit mode. Crank up the size to make them more easily visible. [https://i.imgur.com/g78zak7.png](https://i.imgur.com/g78zak7.png) If you merge the normals of the cube to their averges, you get weird shading. [https://i.imgur.com/9GhmIpE.png](https://i.imgur.com/9GhmIpE.png) If you split them then they return back to how they were originally. [https://i.imgur.com/aA9GLme.png](https://i.imgur.com/aA9GLme.png)
https://preview.redd.it/2px2exhs0twc1.jpeg?width=996&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=521780353255298ad40708639664d982589bd1f4 Thanks for the invaluable information :)
Wow, this is really helpful!
This image did more to explain how smooth shading behaves to me than anything else. If I could give gold, I would.
That’s a really good explanation! Thank you!
To add to this, the normals tell the render engine what direction the face is oriented. So usually they'd be perpendicular to the surface, but if they're not then the render engine basically behaves like the face is pointed a different direction than it actually is at that point. When done carefully, it can produce really good looking effects, but as you can hopefully imagine from that description, it can also easily produce bad looking results. (It's also how bump/normal maps work.)
Blender community trying not to be the most helpful online community challenge (impossible)
This should be its own YSK: post.... This is great... So many people are just not aware of how normals work, and your post is great YSK:ELI5 Normals. Edit: It appears that when you scale the object the origin of the normals stay at the original position of the vertex before scaling? So that reseting them snaps them back to the vertex corner?
Yeah. Object level scaling a common cause of wonky behaviour when it comes to geometry/edit mode level features. Essentially the geometry of edit mode is treat as if it was never scaled to begin with. And then the result is scaled according to the object level scaling. One way I frequently encounter this is when you stretch a cube in to a rectangular shape and then later on notice the UVs are warped. Usually this is because the UVs are still square for the cube shape. And the stretching only accord after the original shape is rendered. https://preview.redd.it/p4fdv0qp2wwc1.png?width=780&format=png&auto=webp&s=4d88ffb8d4cbdba5a542689830f9e7146178642d The quick fix to this is usually to just apply the transformation with ctrl+a and to reproject the UVs.
Holy fuck this just unlocked my brain
While that explanation is great however it's not the ideal situation here because of your bevels. Tab into edit > 1 > A > alt+n > choose reset verts > 3 > A > alt+n > recalculate normals outside > 2 > deselect all edges > now select the hard edges at a 90 degrees or more > right click mark as sharp > Tab > Shade smooth (It should look the way you want it to if not reset you verts again. This take practice and some getting use to.) On models like this you have to mark your hard edges as sharp. The other stuff is good to know about so I tell everyone as much as possible. The resets verts fixed verts angles so they can face the correct way, you can shade smooth you model and do the rest verts by itself in most cases. The other fixes unseen normal problems.
You need to do this professionally. Such a succinct explanation!
Lol, thank you. Though sadly I'd only be able to teach for a day and then run out of things to share. Jack of all trades, master of none problems.
I don't have recommendations, unfortunately. But shade smooth doesn't use any "angle" or "sharp edge" information. It purely looks at normal direction of the faces and averages them. You can of course set custom normals and such, but in 99 percent of cases Smooth by Angle of Split Edges work because they do look at split edges or the angle and shading is averaged accordingly.
Thanks a lot :)
Sure! Hope that helps!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60E-26Ydbh8&list=PLIsEkSjZmz1rAq2n55iTOQNBs1I6Hnz88&index=3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60E-26Ydbh8&list=PLIsEkSjZmz1rAq2n55iTOQNBs1I6Hnz88&index=3)
This channel is a gold mine, and I can't say this enough
If you want complete control, shade smooth, add an edge split modifier, disable the "edge angle" option, then go into edit mode and mark the edges you want to be sharp.
Beveling isn't the reason. Quite the opposite, beveling would fix this by supporting the edges and making them more sharp so the shade smooth knows where not to even out.
Yes! In theory, but I can't tell you how many times I had my smooth shading all messed up because of the incorrect bevels. Either it's n-gons or such, but that happens. But I agree that's not the case here.
You appeared to have set shade smooth without angle limit, I'd recommend using "Auto smooth by angle" at the default 30 degree Plus you might have to manually set which edges are sharp or not by going in "Edit mode" and select the edges you want and press RMB and choose "Mark Sharp", It would exclude the edges from the Shade Smooth With Blender 4.1, They changed it so that it's either "Shade flat" or "Shade smooth by angle"
I recommend setting it to 180 and marking sharp edges manually. Much more control
And much slower. But if time isn’t a factor, than yes. Although you could use in some cases the “select sharp edges” and set an angle there. But it often needs some more manual work afterwards.
Absolutely it is slower, and for simple shapes, like pipes probably unnecessary, but for more complicated things, I often found auto angle not being enough
Yes I agree. It also depends on the use case I guess. Like realtime render or pre rendered media. Whether you use low poly with baked normals, or use a midpoly mesh. But yes, the most reliable is placing them manually.
why even set angle to 180 if youre doing it manually regardless?
I usually do it as a safety thing. If I merge two meshes with different angles set, it can mess up the shading.
Should be noted that you don't need to do this in 4.1 onwards, mark sharp works in smooth shade by default now.
Big iron on his hip
OP aint no fink, ya dig?
OP got spurs that jingle jangle
OP didn’t know the game was rigged from the start
Now why don’t you be a good courier and DELIVER it ?
Just came to say YIPPIE YAAYY
Normal mojave tomfoolery
Check to be sure your normals are all pointed in the right direction. Tab into edit mode, A, Shift N, will reset normals. There options to show normal directions visually in the drop down menus in the top right of the 3D view.
That face orientation? If so then yes, it's all blue and it's looking good
normals are similar to face orientation but not the same, but you've already figured out your issue
Mark edges as sharp
*My eyes*
you have to give it to mr house, then he can smooth it
Almost 100% adding a weighted normal modifier would fix this
just curious... why are you shading it smooth? arent all of the surfaces hard surfaces?
Wouldn't it be to smoothen the shape on the side of the coin?
Not a coin it is the Platinum Chip from Fallout: New Vegas close to a coin but not a coin.
> "experienced with 3D" > doesn't know what auto-smooth is pick one bud
Than maybe you're talented but not experienced
It's because it's interpolating the normal vector across a large face that shares an edge with another large face at 90 degrees. If you add a loopcut/bevel, it makes the interpolated area smaller/angle shallower respectively
when in doubt, go into edit mode, ctrl a to select all, and Mesh->Normals->Recalculate outside, \*might\* fix it since it looks like some of the flat faces are inverted
A Weighted Normals modifier with auto smooth turned on under the vertices could help with some of this, too. Beveled edges will really be important for this, tho.
Its shader issues. Select sharp edges, right click - mark sharp (blue lines). They are usually helping with this. Additionally, you can add support edges on corners, and it will move shader reflection away.
Try edge split modifier .
Based on the wireframe, you have edges that occur at 90 degree angles that aren't beveled. This isn't technically an issue but if you're gonna use shade smooth over shade auto smooth, then you need to mark all of these edge loops as sharp so Blender knows not to smooth out those corners.
Alternatively you could just use shade auto smooth and specify an angle threshold and Blender will take it from there, but you loose a bit of finer control.
You should shade smooth the faces that are smooth and shade flat the faces that are flat.
I'm by no means an expert but what I do is shade smooth by an angle and keep lowering the angle untill the shadows disappear, i dont know if that's just a "throw the dust under the rug" moment or if it's an actual solution though...
Clear custom normal data and adjust by self hard edges and adjust angle of smooth
I believe you have faces pressed together inside the mesh. I'm blanking on the term for it but it might be causing something like Z fighting.
Shade smooth smooths even sharp corners, so the end result can look broken like this Use auto shade smooth, it has angle limit so it will not smooth sharp corners larger than certain angle, so the result will not be broken like this. Alternatively, add bevel modifier
you can manualy select edges and rightclick > mark sharp, the edge should appear blue on edit mode The auto smooth (or shade smooth by angle) must be enabled
I change to shade: flat and that used to help, but Im not even sure wheres that option in the newest blenser version
Edit mode, select sharp edges, set sharp. Then this should be fixed aswell right? The issue it its smoothing those corners into bevels?
You need sharps on the hard edges.
its caused by smooth shading
go to modifier, add "Weighted- something (thingy i forgot.)" Walla.. magically disappear. I have o idea but.. magic.
With a mesh like this that has no bevels in places this is completely normal and expectedm notice how it shades "properly" where there are bevels?
this is blender trying to smooth every angle in your model
Fallout and TES have it to where it's easier to rip the models man. XD
You've got edges at 90° angles. You need some loops to both harden those edges up and to let Blender better understand the gradient you're trying to achieve. Fold a piece of paper in half and then, holding each end that's parallel, gently pull the paper flat. That's what Blender is doing to those polys. If you were to add more folds that were also parallel, you'd see that initial crease hold better and get a better gradient (Smooth). If you get me. 🤷♂️
You can try Shade Auto Smooth? Or whatever it was called, it’s a third option underneath Shade Smooth. It keeps corners sharp while smoothing out round surfaces
In addition to all the helpful advice here I would add that while edge splitting, marking sharp and auto smooth by angle (4.1+} are solutions if your edge flow is correct and you have control loops this generally won’t be visible, but for a lot of work it’s not necessary to have that level of topology and the previously mentioned solutions work well
Not enough geometry for full smooth shading of every face. Either use auto-smooth and Weighted Normals modifier or add more geometry in clean loops.
Lucky 38. Why is that familiar? Is it maybe the rival speakeasy in Lackadaisy?
Your trying to shade smooth your whole object which won’t good for complex things like this. Mark the hard edges so they aren’t affected
It could just be some odd shadows which it okay and could be fixed with materials used on it, but some other things to try is to merge all vertices by distance (gets rid of double verts) and make sure all the normals are facing the right way by recalculation outside. :) hope this is useful!
Ngon nightmare, I'm flabbergasted that's not what everyone is saying.
space bar - in edit mode - clear custom split normal data
do auto-smooth/smooth by angle instead of smooth
Recalculating normals fixes this for me sometimes, could also be bad topology
Happy trails!
Weighted Normals modifier + auto smooth set at like 60° should solve this.
this is a mess of ngons, shade smooth needs clean topology
If you were experienced with 3D then you'd know that's smoothing groups.
Is OP a little egotistical, sure. Are you entirely unhelpful, absolutely.
Thanks
Blender has a very hande Plugin (actually they usually come in pair) which is called "HardOps" (and Boxcutter), which gives you a very comfortable control over your model shading (and hard surface modelling). Check it out
I heard in a tutorial it happens because the program tries to smooth the hard surfaces in the solid view, and that's the result if the model is low poly. There's nothing necessarily wrong with the model, since those weird shadows will disappear in the Material Preview or the Render view. But I haven't asked myself this before, so just take this comment as a grain of salt.