Smoothing Poly Objects ???
 

HI,

I have attached an image of a simple poly object that I created (I took a cube poly and did a boolean operation for the hole using another cube that I had modified). My question is how to smooth the inner surface for rendering.

If I add more subdivisions and move the points to create a rounder surface I still get flat edges regardless of how close the points are. I have tried smooth and proxy smooth, which just seem to distort the object (could be using them wrong). I have also adjusted rendering options to Production for anti-aliasing and increased passes ?

Anyway, what's the best way to smooth this top section out please ?????

Cheers,


Don.

The problem you're having has nothing to do with the number of faces on the shape but, rather, the direction of the normals on the contained vertices. It looks like each vertex has a set of normals for each face instead of sharing one normal between connected face. You can see what I mean by turning on Vertex Normals (Custom Polygon Display options box). For the vertices connected to the faceted faces, you should see a bunch normals emanating from them. Anytime a vertex has more than one normal, you will see a sharp edge in the shading.

There is a simple solution for your problem:

Select the faces you want to smooth out.
Go to Edit Polygons -> Normals -> Average Normals.

You can probably get rid of those extra faces from the smoothing/subdividing. They are completely extraneous.

Good Ghosts,

You are GOOD !!!!!!!

Yep, that solved it in a New York Minute ... thank you very much. Can I ask you how this might have happened and how I can try to prevent it when I am modeling .... especially with polys.

Thanks again dannygan,

Don.

Glad I was helpful. Having spent the last 4.5 years using nothing but poly tools for game development, I've gotten to know polys pretty well.

Anyway, when you use a boolean, the output shape will inherit the normals from the input. For instance, say you want to use a sphere to carve a chunk out of a cube. The default poly sphere is created as a faceted shape. When you apply the boolean, you will get facets in the cube. If you average the normals on the sphere before you apply the boolean, then you'll get smooth shaded faces in the cube.

This is just the way it is with polys. You have explicit control over where each poly component goes, but you also have to deal with how the normals are calculated for the components. There really isn't any way around this.

Danny,

Thanks for the explain .... it's always nice to know the how's and why's.

Your help is MUCH appreciated.

Cheers,

Don.


Now we're up to two beers :o)