smoothing normals options

Introduction to Maya - Rendering in Arnold

This course will look at the fundamentals of rendering in Arnold. We'll go through the different light types available, cameras, shaders, Arnold's render settings and finally how to split an image into render passes (AOV's), before we then reassemble it i

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# 1 12-12-2009 , 01:31 AM

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Hi all. I have just been watching a video tutorial by Alex Alvarez, 'the making of smile'. In one bit, when he brought a sculpted model from zbrush into maya, he went to soften the normals. But rather than just press 'soften edge', he clicked 'set normal angle' and then cranked the angle right up. Obviously doing it that way gives a greater degree of control, but are there any obvious differences between the two ways of smoothing the normals? does one just do the edges while the other does the whole lot? any particular instances where youd definitely opt for one over the other? ive never come across this 'set normal angle' feature before...

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# 2 12-12-2009 , 08:29 PM

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Soften edges sets the normal angle to 180. Harden sets it to 0. It's just a quicker way of doing those two numbers.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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# 3 12-12-2009 , 09:39 PM

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ah. So nothing major then.

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# 4 13-12-2009 , 02:06 PM

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What is the purpose of angles between 180 and 0 then?

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# 5 13-12-2009 , 03:45 PM

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You can vary the hardness/softness of the normals. Just try some different settings and render to see the difference. You can even just see the changes update in the viewport.

cheers

gubar

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# 6 13-12-2009 , 04:14 PM

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can u show me an example where i should use something other then 180 or 0? :blush:

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# 7 13-12-2009 , 04:17 PM

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A rubicks cube being blown up?

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# 8 13-12-2009 , 04:55 PM

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What the angles are, is that it will make anything hard under a certain degree, and softer over.

For example, set at 89 degrees, any angle less than 89 will be hard (ex 62), and above (ex 120) will be soft.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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