Smoothing groups problem

[MOHAATiger]

I am looking for an explanation/fix for why the texture or faces on the handle of my M16 have certain faces that light up, or go dark depending on how the lights hit it. I took off ALL SMOOTHING GROUPS on the handle (piece with green elliptical around it). None of these faces are being smoothed yet some of them appear to have an unwanted smoothing effect.







Thanks.

[211476]

try smoothing your model, don't autosmooth

[jv_map]

This might indicate a vertex normal problem. Whenever you use rgbGen lightingSpherical in the shader you use for that weapon part, the vertex normals of the model are used to interpolate the lighting on that part. When one of these normals is pointing inward, with the others pointing outward, (or vice versa) you get the type of visual error as shown in your image.

Note that the .skd format has no notion of smoothing groups, all smoothing information is contained in the vertex normals. It is your exporter's job to convert smoothing group associations to vertex normals, and since most exporters are of sad quality this probably went not entirely well.

If you are using lightray, convert your skin to mesh and have a look on the panel on the right. If I remember correctly there are various tools/buttons to show and fix your normals.

Good luck!

[MOHAATiger]

Thank you to both 211476 and jv_map.

jv_map -- I looked at the normals of the vertexes on the handle. I noticed that one of them was pointing inward. This particular vertex was on the top of the handle, and it marked the point where the darkness started when all the other faces were light. Also it was the point of lightness when the other faces were dark.

I decided to re model the whole handle, which I am currently working on. I will post later on with the results, hopefully tonight.

Again, thanks for the quick reply for this post and my previous post. Some of these bugs are crucial to fix in order to continue the development of my m16a1.

[Rookie One.pl]

You could've just flipped that normal...

[MOHAATiger]

Well, yes but I thought I would just remodel the whole thing because I needed to change a few things on it anyway