Morph distortion of shader (Modeling question)
I started building a simple wall / environment construction kit for myself to use. The idea being having props built in a way that they can be morphed to have more use cases.
This is it loaded in to Daz Studio. The wall is a simple plane subdivided, and the other bits are part of the overall mesh, but seperates.
The morph moves part of the plane to create batten on the wall.
This unfortunately seems to distort any shader applied. Obviously I could make these as seperates, but I wanted to know if there was anything I could look in to to getting what I'm striving for done.
Similar morphs made by moving the planes consisting of the side of the batten on the x axis in blender appear to cause the distortion. Moving the planes simple on the y axis in blender cause no distortion.
(these images are from Daz Studio but I modeled it in Blender)
Comments
I'm confused by what I am looking at, and I am not easily confused...
Is that Solid Mode view, Texture Mode view with an actual material/texture shader applied?
Please, first, show the wireframe view from multiple angles (and for the love of all things morphing, Solid-wireframe, please), so someone can better assess any topology issues.
If you are having solid shading issues, they could be topology related, or unintended vertex normals issues based on incorrect topology for hard-surface meshes (example: Lack of mechanical edge bevels, or smooth setting values).
So, based on my above statement, my best guess is you have a sub-divided plane and you selected subsets of polygons in rows on the Z axis in Blender. Then you created a morph by moving them backwards on the Y axis.
If this is correct, then you are introducing shading (smoothing) artefacts with the vertex normals.
If I am correct with my assessment, and this is indeed the case, you can fix the issue with mechanical bevels (not to be confused by what the Boolean crowds call bevels, or true edge beveling -- mech bevels is a control technique going back nearly two decades).
What you will need to do is create extra control loops (the mech bevels) at the morphing batten edges (both sides of each batten), and employ their control location through the morphing. Meaning, they will be loose, or about halfway distance between the main polygons pre-morphed (to prevent visible crease/seam while plane is flat), and then you will slide them to near coincident edges (almost sitting on top of each other) with the morph itself.
Or, you can try to control them with smoothing value settings, but I believe that will be a lot more involved with manipulating the mesh once back in Studio.
Sorry, yes it was texture shaded. Here's the same obj in texture wire frame.
As for mechanical beveling, you'll have to provide me with something specific I could google. Because currently I'm at a loss. (I'm new to modeling)
Also I orignally just had the edges close together, nearly on top of each other but, changed it to the current topology to try to solve things.
The texture will distort when applying morph as the UVs do not change.
In Blender you can use option "Correct Face Attributes"(N panel > Tool > Options) when moving verts, but that will not help you in DS.
In DS, you will either have to create a material in Shader Mixer, so you can control Texture projection. Or, if using Iray, you can use an "Iray Decal Node" and use its Planer projection to add the texture.
Sorry, ran out of time to help you, but this is mech beveling (control loops) to control shading normals.
Can be done with creasing in Studio, but that is a whole lot of work, and this technique will work for any renderer whereever one may use their models...
Okay, thank you both I believe I have a better understanding now. Essentially the normals moving beyond a certain angle are causing the shader to distort. As suggested I will try, while not a bevel an extrusion that is so small it is imperseavable on the original mesh. If that fails to accomplish it, or doesn't work out, I will simply go with seperate props.
Again, thank you for your replies.
If it is just smoothing problems (rather than an applied shader problem), then split the edges(normals).
DS does have a smoothing angle property on all surfaces, which may help with this (or you can just turn the surface Smoothing setting off entirely).