Here's a question that's hard to ask if I don't have a pic to show along with it:



Here's a model I'm working on, and this problem has always bothered me in the past.  The red arrows point to seams where 'smoothing' (consistent shadowing) doesn't seem to happen.  These seams appeared after I did some scaling and vertex-manipulation tweaks.

Anyone know how to take the seams out so the entire model looks smooth?  PS:  There are no unwelded vertices where the smoothing is broken.



Thanks!

I can't really say for sure just looking at one stationary picture, but I wonder if you're having the same problem I was having with Jack the Rabbit.

Basically, for some reason, I had a couple of faces that were on the front of the model, but showed up as "backfaces."  (In other words, they were on the front, but the program considered them to be part of the back.)

If it's the same problem, I'm not sure how you'd fix it in your case.  For me, it was easy, 'cause the model is symmetrical, so I just deleted the offending faces, duplicated the other side, and mirrored the duplicate.

Hope that at least gave you some ideas.

Nah, that's a different problem Mychael Z.  There's an easier way to fix your problem, though  (I'm assuming you're using MilkShape...) :

1)  Right-click on your 3-d view and select 'Flat Shaded'.  See how the model now looks like it's made up of triangles (faces) instead of being smooth-shaded?  The grey faces are what you'll see in Elite Force; the black ones are faces that are flipped, or 'backface'.  

2)  Select the 'backfaces' by selecting in one of your model edit windows.  You can check to see if you have the right ones selected by going between 'Flat Shaded' and 'Wireframe' in the 3D view (the selected face will be a red outline in the 'Wireframe' 3D view).

3)  Once you have the 'backfaces' selected, go to 'Face' > 'Reverse Vertex Order' and POOF!  You just flipped the backfacing triangles over, after which they'll turn grey just like the ones around it.

I think my problem has something to do with 'smoothing groups' or whatever...  actually, if I knew what the problem was, I'd have it solved by now!  AARGH!!!  *reaches for another chug of Mountain Dew*

Maybe you can use that 'vertex order' flip idea to fix backfaces in the future.  

Thanks for the response, though!

Yup Nagus, you need to break your model into smoothing groups

I found a tutorial somewhere.. let me see if I can find it again
[edit] This one is quite simply and easy to follow http://www.planetfortress.com/tf2mode....c2c.htm
Machinima also has one: http://machinima.com/articles/modelling_intro_6/page6.shtml [/edit]

7

Thanks for the tip, Nagus!  In my particular case, it wouldn't have worked, for the simple reason that I had no way of selecting any of the three problem faces without selecting other faces at the same time.  However, I'll definitely keep it in mind for the future!

well the head looks awsom ....   it needs a texture though

Thanks for the links, 7o'nine!  The first link showed me how to smooth it in 'groups', and it worked like a charm.  Yippee!  Now to model the rest of Mario's head.

Hey, Mychael Z.  Deselecting stuff is as easy as selecting it.  Here's some tips:

1)  Select by left-clicking and dragging a box around the stuff you want selected (but you already knew that!   ).

2)  Select more by holding 'shift' and left-click dragging a box around the other stuff you want selected.  The old selected stuff won't get deselected.  Nice!

3)  Deselect by holding 'shift' and right-click and dragging a box around what you want deselected.  The selected stuff that doesn't get caught in your selection box won't become deselected.  Really nice!

It seems clumsy at first, but you'll get used to selecting and deselecting stuff with practice.  Also, you can use the 'Ignore Backfaces' to sometimes make selecting faces easier.

Hope that helps!  It'll cut quite a bit of time out of modelling once you get used to it.

Hey, thanks again!!  The only thing you mentioned that I didn't know about was deselecting, but you were kind enough to explain how to do that, so that shouldn't be a problem in the future.  (I thought there hadda be a way to do it, but wasn't ambitious enough at that time to look for it -- I was too busy being frustrated...)