3D Modeling Surface issues

indie3d

Hi everybody,

I have a question about 3d modeling,

I just made a 3d prop using hexagon, but the object surface makes some weird triangle shaped reflections,

is there any way to make the surface smooth reflective as one solid thing instead of many triangles each reflecting the light his own way?

Thanks. :)

SickleYield

You need some sharper edges. I'm not sure how this works in Hexagon, but I would do it by selecting that ring of verts at the bottom of the post/top of the base and subdividing between it and the next one, then dragging and scaling the new ring very close to the first one. Then repeat for the raised area of the base and other portions that have this issue. I also don't know if beveling is a thing in Hexagon, but it does terrible things to your control of geometry flow so I would use it sparingly.

Roygee

Difficult to see what you have going there - if you could post a wireframe view it would help in identifying issues.

Try this - with the object selected in the properties panel, go to the top menu -> Selection then select in turn - Select over-4-point faces, Select non manifold edges. If anything gets selected, you have a problem - let us know what it is.

Also look for reversed normals - with the object selected, go to Utilities->orient normals. That should show you a lot of red arrows, all facing away from the object surface. It is difficult to spot any faces which may be facing the wrong way, so hit the A button, then the "unify normals" button - you should get a single yellow arrow pointing away from the surface. If it is pointing inwards, hit the A button again.

See if that fixes the problem.:)

indie3d

Hello,

SickleYield, Roygee,

Thanks a lot, both advises worked pretty fine.

I'm posting an image of the wireframe view.

Thanks :)

Wee Dangerous John

SickleYield and RoyGee have given you excellent advice, another thing to look at is the direction of the Normals (Utilities tab), if a face is pointing inwards then you may have problems when it comes to rendering the object.

One thing to watch out for when extruding a face is to go with the direction of the manipulator arrows, if you go against them you will end up with reversed normals, very easy to fix -

With the object selected choose Orient(ate) Normals, in the propertied tab click on the large A icon and press the Space bar till the arrows turn yellow and pointing outwards.

Roygee

Looks good to me: - all quads as far as i can tell:)

Just as a matter of interest, did you find any faults and fixed them, or was cutting in more edges as suggested by Sickleyield sufficient?

What is the model?

Cheers

Wee Dangerous John

i thought the same thing Roy, that's why I suggested having a look at the Normals.

indie3d

Roygee said:

Looks good to me: - all quads as far as i can tell:)

Just as a matter of interest, did you find any faults and fixed them, or was cutting in more edges as suggested by Sickleyield sufficient?

What is the model?

Cheers

No, I checked the model as you suggested, but nothing got selected, that as long as I understand should be good :)

Cutting in more edges helped a lot, but on the other side it makes the polycount raise a bit, I'm trying to keep the polycount as much lower as possible, it should be a low resolution mesh.

The model is an old street lamp, at least this is the idea :)

Thanks :)

Roygee

OK - thanks for satisfying my curiosity - I did think it was a street lamp:)

Those few extra poly's surely won't cause a burden and definitely improved the model.