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  1. Autosmooth off with smooth shaded

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  1. Autosmooth on with Mark Sharp

I come from a 3dsMax background so the usual process is to create a mesh, some of the elements are bevelled all around while some have no bevelling. I would set the smoothing of the entire object to 1 smoothing groups making all the bevelled elements perfect while the unbevelled ones will look bad. Then manual set smoothing groups for those elements. All this is done on a single merged mesh.

I'm replicating this process of modeling in blender but i have issues. The mark sharp on the autosmoothed off version does not seam to harden the edges. Trying to clear sharp on the autosmoothed version does not work as well.

Is there anyway to do this other than edge split? I believe edge split literally splits the edges which is not what I want.

Right, I added the blend file. Using blender 2.90

Wonkey
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  • just to add on, the 2nd image is also smoothshaded – Wonkey Sep 28 '20 at 13:54
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    Hello, not really sure if it's what you are looking for, but have you tried lowering or increasing the angle value next to the "autosmooth" tickbox ? (=Auto Smooth Angle) – Gorgious Sep 28 '20 at 13:57
  • Are you using a subdivision modifier here? – lemon Sep 28 '20 at 15:37
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    Hello :). Works just fine for me, consider sharing the file so others can take a closer look. – jachym michal Sep 28 '20 at 16:25
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    Coming from 3DS to Blender, you're changing the definition of smoothing groups from smoothed regions to their boundaries. The (misnamed?) Autosmooth must be switched on to introduce a layer of per-face-corner normals, as opposed to simple vertex normals. Given Autosmooth, 'Mark Sharp' prevents interpolations of face-normals over the marked edge, whether or not the Edge Split modifier is used to physically separate the faces.. see https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/156718/35559 – Robin Betts Sep 29 '20 at 10:08
  • Currently what I have had problems with is this from 3ds as well, I have to keep parts of my object in separate objects and group them, then set smoothing settings for each of them. This is done of coruse to keep poly count low, The marking of "sharp" edges is the only way so far I have figured out that works (sort of). I much prefer 3ds's smoothing groups so I can understand the OP frustration here. – osirisgothra Sep 09 '23 at 16:13

1 Answers1

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Considering you are talking about the Look of the Normal, here's what you can do -

Select the Edges you want to make them Sharper, now press Ctrl + E or go to Edge menu, Select Mark Sharp.

Now You will get the Marked edges sharp with the smoothing you applied.

Timaroberts
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HDFX VFX
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  • I think the problem is that there is no 1:1 way to group normals together in the same way you would do it in 3DS. It is a re-inventing the wheel problem. Edge marking can be a pain as well, It also doesn't allow for smoothing across disjunctive surfaces that should share the same smooth angle but not the same boundaries. (yes those are very rare cases, but they do still exist) – osirisgothra Sep 09 '23 at 16:18